Open And Activate, Mobile Monday, London Jan 2010

View more documents from Vodafone User Experience Team.

What do a Toyota Prius and Avatar (the movie) have in common?

So I went! While almost all parts of my body and brain where holding a ‘noAvatar’ position, the social moviegoer in me was surprised when someone asked ‘We are going to watch Avatar, do you want to join us?’.

And it was better then expected. But that’s not the point.

And the 3D animations where almost credible. But that’s not the point.

And the fact that the story was the same of ‘Dance with wolves’ and ‘Pocahontas’ (see here, I’m not lying) was not so disturbing. But that’s not the point.

And the Stereoscopic 3D interfaces of control panels, computers, tablets etc are in line with some concept video seen in the past (e.g. Office 2019), and they are more credible than those movies from the ’80s and ‘90s (although, I guess, after Minority Report the attention to this aspect is much more). But that’s not the point.

What’s the point then?

The point is that – while watching the movie – I was drinking from a plastic bottle of beer. And munching tasteless popcorns. And wearing 3D plastic goggles.

WTF?!? You may ask.

Think about it: I’m watching a movie that would like to make us more aware of the potential and beauties of nature; a movie that opens to the interconnectedness of what we find in our ecosystem. And then the cinema is full of things that (to my knowledge) are going against what the story of the movie say. It’s a matter of credibility.  It’s a matter of delivering the message in a clear way, avoiding all possible contradictions. Ultimately, it’s a matter of designing as much as possible of the experience, from the point of view of those who sit and watch the movie.  Including multiple touchpoints. It’s service design, someone would say. Or experience design. Or design.

I can hear you say: “Yes, but this was just a movie!”

Yes, Avatar is just a movie, and it’s been designed to be as credible as possible. To generate that suspension of disbelief typical of a very engaging film. Everything has been conceived and planned for making a spectator feel part of it. Given what I assume is a pretty strong negotiation power, the production could have extended the ‘designed components’’ to other parts of the experience to make it even more credible. To differentiate the movie brand. What if they would ask cinemas to sell organic, locally produce food. Or not to use plastic bottles. Or at the bare minimum, offset their carbon emissions and then tell the story to everyone.

This thing makes me think about the Toyota Prius. It is a technological revolution.  It  benefits the environment.  But it fails when it’s time to take the core proposition and create a system around it. How does the Prius get produced? What is the impact of shipping it? And why aren’t the colours chosen to reduce the albedo as much as possible? As metacool say:

“What if Toyota could make the entire Prius brand cradle-to-cradle by maintaining it and taking it back in a completely holistic way?” (see more here: http://metacool.typepad.com/metacool/2007/06/rewarding_brand.html)

And the same is valid for Avatar: what if Avatar would have been designed in a holistic way. Not just the message, not simply the interface and interactions with the main touchpoint. But the whole experience.

This is what I think design should do. Interaction design it’s great. But too many times it becomes too obsessed in polishing few details, rather than considering what other elements haven’t been even painted.

mini versions

a mini version of what this blog is (was?) supposed to be, is now here:

http://bobbywatson.tumblr.com/

More a visual appeal than a textual elaboration, but still has something to add than a simple mirror of others’ images and video

So it will be a reflection point: both mirror and reasoning

Passion. Time. Quality.

Personalisation and customisation is typical, when we speak about cars and bikes. It’s a demonstration that a person values the time spent for doing it less than the desire to communicate something about his/herself, and the way to approach the road, life.

I love you through my plate

What does this customised plate communicate?

I love my bike?
I love my country?
I love my plate number?
I Love my country?
I am a rather romantic person?
Or maybe there are subtleties I don’t know / don’t get.

Children need support, especially in poor countries;

Governments create an organisations to support children;

Organisation need money to operate;

Organisation does a lot offunding and advertising;

European football team wants to show they are not only good at playing football;

European football team accepts the logo of the organisation that supports children on their t-shirts, for free;

Also, European football teams makes money by selling t-shirts;

Original t-shirts are too expensive. People in poor countries produce and consume fake t-shirts;

Children in poor countries love European football;

Children in poor countries wear fake t-shirt of European football club who is sponsored by the organisation that wants to support children.

Short circuit?

I’m not here, I’m there

I’ll be travelling for a while. If I happen to have some random thoughts while I’m there, I’ll try to write it somewhere else: https://sites.google.com/site/googlingburkina/home

2012

EcoMo09 – the first 13 hours

Time lapse video of the first part of EcoMo09

EcoMo09 – the first thirteen hours (v2.0) from Carbon Tippy Toes on Vimeo.

Today is EcoMo09!

I’ve spent a few days of my life in the past moths to organise (with ToryD) EcoMo09.

EcoMo09 24-hour dev camp

Today is the day… 24-hour dev camp for projects that help people understand their impact on the environment, and act upon it. I now have a much better knowledge of how design can help creating a more sustainable world. I should share it with you one day or another….
Anyway: check the EcoMo09 link and come along… http://ecomo09.eventbrite.com/

sustainability community – Betavine

you may be aware of Betavine: a community where mobile apps live their open source life. Well, Betavine has now added the Sustainability community: http://www.betavine.net/bvportal/community/sustainability
which is part of the initiative I’m working on at the moment.
read and comment and enjoy, and expect more news on this channel.