Tag: IDEO

3 Reasons Design Will Shape the Future

Posted on by Sara Adam

Design begins with a problem, a pain, or an inconvenience. This makes designers problem solvers at their core. They are directly involved with the way material is represented visually as well as with the interfaces that connect us to our devices. Design is a critical part of shaping the future and here’s why:

  1. Our World is Increasingly Visual
    In our always on, always connected world, people are stopping less to read large chunks of information. We want information that we can digest on the go- like lists or infographics. As the demand for visual information increases, designers will play a larger role to organize that information in ways that make sense and are aesthetically pleasing. Join JWT as they dive deeper into this shift in their seminar Reading Is No Longer Fundamental: The Shift to Visual Vocabulary.
  2. Good Design Makes Technology More Human
    We have all interacted with a piece of technology (e.g. every VCR ever made) that makes us feel unintelligent because it seems impossible to figure out. Designers are simplifying devices and making so that they can enhance our lives instead of detracting from them. To learn more ways that designers are shaping the future and making technology more human, check out this seminar, hosted by The New Museum, Why The Future of Innovation Belongs To Artists & Designers.
  3. Design-Thinking Unlocks Creativity
    According to Tim Brown, president and CEO of IDEO defines design-thinking as “a human-centered approach to innovation that draws from the designer’s toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success.” Sign us up! Design-thinking is part of how businesses are reshaping their processes and creating new and better technologies. Experience it for yourself at Design Thinking LIVE, hosted by City and Country.

Whether you are a designer or not, there is something for you at SMW NYC, February 17-21! Check out our schedule for events on other topics like health and wellness, entrepreneurship and marketing. Register now and we’ll see you soon!

 Featured image courtesy SocialisBetter

5 Minutes With Colin Nagy

Posted on by Lindsey Taylor Wood

Advisory Board Member, Colin Nagy, is the Executive Director of earned and social mediaThe Barbarian Group. We asked him about the future of social, his interest in SMW and a few other questions. Here’s what he had to say:

1. What is your or your organization’s greatest success with social media to date?
We’ve done several interesting things, but I think our continued work with GE creating content for individual platforms, has been the best received. People particularly like the approach we took to Instagram, really investing original amazing photography and having a clear creative approach.

2. What do you think is the most exciting thing happening in the emerging technology and/or new media space right now?
I think 3D printing is going to change the world and have huge implications for where manufacturing takes place.

3. What speaker or event are you most looking forward to at SMW NYC?
I read Emily Steel’s work in the FT and I’m excited she’s going to moderate our panel. She’s a serious journalist and I’m sure she will bring really tough and rigorous questions — something a lot of discussions seem to be missing lately.

4. What prompted you to join Social Media Week’s Advisory Board?
I love the global approach and the ambition.  I also like the many different disciplines involved.

5. What is the most creative way you’ve seen social media used?
I loved the Heineken Star Player app, that allowed people to predict the outcome of real-time events in a soccer game. Not strictly social but hugely interesting. I also loved that Elmo Calls app that IDEO did. Absolutely brilliant.

Colin Nagy works at The Barbarian Group as executive director of earned and social media. He also co-founded the travel company Fortnighter.com, and is also a brand and communications advisor to several NYC-based startups including Percolate, OLO, and Lot18.Prior to joining The Barbarian Group, he was a partner at Attention, a social media marketing agency based in New York. At Attention, Colin helped Tina Brown launch the The Daily Beast, and advised other media companies such as CNN, Newsweek, Mashable and the Guardian. He also represented lifestyle brands such as Ligne Roset and Herman Miller as well as respected hospitality brands Morgans Hotel Group, The Ritz-Carlton and Hilton Worldwide.Previously, Colin worked in policy, crisis communications and public affairs roles for a range of commercial and public sector entities around the world, including The Brunswick Group, based in New York, and the East West Institute, based in Prague. His work has been cited in publications including The New York Times, The Financial Times, Fast Company, Creativity and Monocle. Colin has written for AdWeek, the innovation blog PSFK, as well as various arts and culture publications. Colin graduated from New York University with a degree in Politics and European Studies.

Spotlight: Advisory Board Member Ashley Pinakiewicz

Posted on by Michelle Welsch
Ashley Pinakiewicz, twitter: @AshleyPina

Meet Ashley.

Ashley is the New Business and Client Relationship Manager in Clear‘s New York office. She devotes her energy to expanding Clear’s U.S. business through compelling, strategic projects and attentive client relationships.

No stranger to to creativity and innovation, Ashley worked in Business Development at IDEO before joining her current team. While at IDEO, she negotiated between clients and design teams, facilitated business leads, and assisted global marketing in strengthening the company’s New York presence.

Beyond excelling in her work, Ashley is an active volunteer for community development and youth programs. She is an avid traveler and reader who has spent many hours performing as a jazz and hip-hop dancer. She graduated from Georgetown University with a BA in English Literature and Art History.

Ashley took time out of her busy schedule so that we could get to know her better.

What is your favorite part about the work you do?  
Getting people excited. My job as a Business Developer is to get potential clients excited about my company, get our internal teams excited about new clients and projects, and get our group excited about our growth vision. I love catalyzing people and building enthusiasm – the best reward is watching people light up, generate momentum, and take off.

What’s your dream job?
I absolutely love what I’m doing now, and hope to be doing it for quite some time. If I were ever to shift completely (and had the funding to do it), I would run a non-profit focused on redesigning the educational experience in America, doing everything from teacher training to curriculum design to funding new school models.

If you had an extra hour each day, how would you spend it?
Reading for pleasure. I love to soak up information but wish I had more mental energy for reading the novels that I love so much.

You are gifted $1 million dollars. What do you do with it?
Donate some to an educational cause I love (New School Ventures, perhaps?), buy my parents a pied a terre in wine country, and buy myself a one-year trip around the world. I suppose I should invest some of it, too?

 

Clear is a brand consultancy that uses the crisp power of simplicity to advise brands and businesses with qualitative and quantitative insight, innovation, and strategy. Founded in 2002, the agency has rapidly grown and is now part of the M&C Saatchi group. The Clear team is diverse in skills and personalities, blending insight and research to address clients in industries ranging from food and drink to pharmaceutical and personal care.

 

 

Leave Your Smartphones at the Door: Humanizing Social Media with IDEO

Posted on by Amanda Bird

Amanda Bird is Brand Manager at 360i. You can follow her on Twitter @oiseau678.

This post was co-authored by Mae Karwowski, Community Engagement Specialist at 360i. You can follow her @maekar_wow_ski

IDEO is a self-described global design consultancy that uses human interaction as inspiration for their designs. They’ve designed everything from seating configuration concepts for Chrysler to folding tables for Akira to a transcutaneous immunization delivery method for Intercell. And for Social Media Week they hosted an event designed to bring the “human” back to social media. The description for the event, with its claim that communication via technology has had “the effect of sterilizing human communication and leading to social media offerings that can be shallow,” provided little insight into the type of experience we were about to have. But we were intrigued…

Upon first arriving to IDEO’s Soho office, attendees were required to check their coats and relinquish all non-analog devices in order to fully appreciate the experience without the pull of the outside world (but seriously, no @ing or txting for 2 hours!?!?).

Scattered about on a table were several hundred brightly colored buttons marked with various words and phrases – ‘nerd,’ ‘brooklyn,’ ‘us weekly reader,’ ‘artisanal cheese.’ We were instructed to choose four buttons and given a white shirt to wear for our newly gathered ‘pieces of flare.’ As if the white t-shirt uniform and buttons weren’t enough to get the 70 or so of us interacting, IDEO provided a delicious food spread and open bar as an added social lubricant.

For forty minutes we mingled and noshed only to start wondering if perhaps this was the great social experiment. Finally our hosts took the mic and let us in on the real experiment for the evening – do pretty much we we’d been doing (mingling, asking about each other’s button selections) but with an added twist. A few blank buttons and sharpies were thrown into the mix so that we could all make custom buttons and pin them on the backs of the folks we’d just met.

In just 60 seconds, you could meet someone and “tag” them with a label you felt was befitting. A bit nerve wracking, but that just made it all the more fun. The buttons worked naturally into conversations, eliminating the need to blindly seek common ground with a total stranger and accelerating the dialogue.

Image via PSFK

At the end of the night, we spoke about how it felt to be untethered from our electronic communication devices, yet tethered to this group of people and only a few buttons for self-identification and definition. Perhaps most enlightening was the way the event facilitated a brainstorm process. We’re always seeking new ways to spur group dynamics, creativity and the ideation process. In trying to translate the mores of one form of communication into another (in this case social media’s “rules” into a real-world cocktail party), we began to more deeply question our inhabited assumptions about the way social media “should” function. Are tags and bite-size descriptors opening us up to build deeper relationships – or are they allowing us to feel as if we’re connecting, even if all we’re doing is acknowledging similarities?

This same brainstorm activity might be applied to any challenge. Its effectiveness lies in forcing us to rethink and even question the success of our current approach.

All in all, the event was enjoyable, and it didn’t feel that weird or unfamiliar, except maybe for the phantom blackberry syndrome we kept experiencing. At the end of the night we all gathered up our belongings and (not surprisingly) whipped out our mobile devices to tweet, text and email about the experience we’d just had.

For more takes on the IDEO event, check out @kylecameron’s post over at psfk.com.