Philips Design Probes

A Design Probe by definition needs to be as provocative as possible in order to attract and generate enough discussion and ideas around it as possible. A Design Probe will eventually lead the researchers to insights into our (people/consumer) mind and in particular get insights on future preferences.

Therefore Philips seems to have conceived a full program around the concept of Design Probes, certainly in an effort to continuously tap and track future trends that may open doors into mainstream issues and potentially future business solutions for them.

Here’s two of the several examples coming out of the program:

Future of Food

Off the Grid

if you’d like, you can read more about the Philips Design Probes Program or simply join the discussion at Ning.

Ergonomics in Design

É já na próxima 2ª feira às 14 horas no Salão Nobre da Faculdade de Motricidade Humana que terá lugar o ‘Ergonomics in Design“:

O programa está disponível aqui. Estava a pensar dar lá um salto para assistir à apresentação do Prof. M.S. Wogalter sobre “O futuro dos avisos: activados pela tecnologia“, um problema bastante actual e pertinente como vem descrito no último livro do D. Norman: “Design of future things“.

Pode ser que nos encontremos por lá.

Online Communities Clinic Workshop Materials

As promised, here are the materials from the workshop I gave out yesterday at LIFT 08 about Online Communities Design Patterns. The presentation as I’ve said before is still a work in progress since I’ve started it for Web2Expo Berlin last November, so they share quite a lot in common.

If you’re interested, you can get the FULL VERSION of the presentation in PDF or you can simply watch the Design Patterns part on SlideShare (sorry, but the 30Mb limit on SlideShare wouldn’t let me post it in it’s full extent):

I’ve also prepared a Patterns Matrix that basically categorizes the patterns in four different classes that you can use to test or plan your own community according to the patterns use or misuse:

1. Community Support Patterns: Registration, Login, Welcome Area , User Profile, Users Lists, Buddy’s List, Exit / Suspend;
2. Group Support Patterns: Invitations, Shared Artifacts, Reputation, Voting;
3. Communication Support Patterns: Messaging, Comments, Chat, Forums;
4. Awareness Support Patterns: Neighbors, Activity Logs, Interactive User Info, TimeLine, Periodic Reports, Aliveness Indicator.

Mark Kuznicki took some pretty extensive notes from the workshop, so you might as well gave them a loon if you’re interested.

One special work to the crowd that actually stood up for the 3 hours the workshop took: Thanks