• Weeknote 415

    November 4th to 10th

    There is a sharp rise in post-it consumption, and it shows. Everywhere in the studio walls are covered with colorful clouds of little rectangles. These artefacts of brainstorm sessions are interspersed with A4 sheets depicting product ideas – the results of client workshops using the Design Studio method. This week Michael and I ran the third workshop in a series of three.

    There also was another workshop this week, which Sthuthi, Henne, Christophe and I prepared and conducted. This one was not about product ideation but brand identity. It kicked-off a new project – Nowata – which we really look forward to.

    All those workshops we ran in the last weeks produced so many ideas and sketches that documenting and post processing the results is quite a task. Fortunately Arved helped a great deal with this.

    When not hosting our clients for workshops this week, part of the team worked on Puichon and Kathadin as usual. To be honest, I’m not sure what David did exactly, because he wasn’t at our weekly team meeting on Thursday. It was his turn catching the virus or whatever it is that keeps knocking off our people one after the other. But I’ve seen screens of Puichon on his monitor and several Android test devices. Same goes for Christophe. Michael worked on the related Kathadin project. In our meeting, he briefly mentioned some of his first hypotheses. It had something to do with traffic rules and nested rectangles.

    Posted by Johannes.

  • Weeknote 414

    Oktober 28th to November 3rd

    This week ended on Saturday with our yearly indoor studio picnic. Last year - after we moved to our new location - we wanted to celebrate the arrival with our families. Back then we had no kitchen and not enough chairs for everybody to sit, so the idea of a picnic was born. Do you remember the image of Anna an me playing badminton?

    I'm happy that the whole team and their families came together again this year. Hopefully the yearly picnic will become a precious tradition.

    A lot of things happened in the past year. A lot more than I am able to reflect in todays weeknote. So here is just a quick comparison of both events:

    picnic 2012 picnic 2013
    People at picnic (invited) 9 (9) 15 (18)
    Guests younger than 1 year 0 2
    Seating furniture Blankets Chairs
    Plates Paper Ceramic
    Amount of food Plenty Way too much
    Type of bread No-kned-bread Walnut-bread
    Drinks Icetea, Cremant Lüttauer Schorle, Fritz Kola, Red Wine, Beer
    Activities Playing Badminton, Flying RC Helicopter Playing Badminton, Winning Kinect Games, Carrying around babies, Painting with Henna
    Christophe and I were hosting another workshop for a longtime client based on the Design Studio Method. The photo above was taken right after our guests left. The people are already gone, but the intensity of the workshop is still visible.

    David, Arved and Christophe had a good time using Sketch for project Puichon. Stuthi, Henne and Christophe were planning a workshop for a new client to kick off Nowata on Friday next week. I started to work on a different project for our Puichon client - code name Kathadin. We are looking for a helping hand to support me documenting a new programming language – here is the job description in german language, english soon to follow.

    Johannes was ill and had to stay in bed - we are happy to have him back on Monday!

    Posted by Michael.

  • Weeknote 412 + 413

    Oktober 14th to 27th

    Teaching at HAWK Hildesheim
    We felt flattered when we arrived at HAWK Hildesheim and found our poster mounted to the wall of the Interaction Design Lab. Also, this delicately designed tote bag exposed in the hall of the university, tells a lot about the city.

    We’re currently teaching an interaction design class at HAWK Hildesheim. Michael and I kicked off the semester three weeks ago with a "design studio” session, I then took over the following two weeks alone. Together with around 15 students we’re exploring and developing product and service ideas (and later prototypes) as answers to the question “How to behave well in a multi-device world”.

    At the moment, all participants are thinking about the topic and general direction for their project. The first step is gaining a better understanding of respective context and behaviors. We introduced a couple of human-centered design and qualitative user research methods such as personas, user journeys, cultural probes and contextual inquiry. They will be used to gather insights during the next weeks.

    At the core of each project is an assumption that every student (or group of students) needs to define for their product or service: what is the “better” behavior they want to achieve in a chosen context? Why is it better? How do they think they can achieve this behavior change? Observation and deeper analysis of actual behavior will help understand and inspire new approaches. In addition, we studied BJ Foggs’ Behavior Model - with the Persuasive Technology Lab at Stanford University he created the Behavior Wizard, a very helpful tool to learn more about the different nuances of behavior change and how to approach it.

    A guiding principle of the course is to avoid “digital dualism”. We take for granted that “the real” and “the virtual” equally coexist in our everyday lives. For example, “offline time” or “real world relationships” aren't considered as something better than “online time” or “internet relationships”. So the current movement of “unplugging” from technology – also known as “digital detox” – and the “back to analog” trend is not the answer. "The real world” isn't more worthwhile than “the digital world”. Forward thinking is especially important when considering our kids – future generations, not at all familiar with a world without pervasive technology.

    We’re happy and excited about the group and their approaches so far and looking forward to the next few months. In three weeks they’re going to visit us in our studio, present their ideas and status quo to the rest of the team. We’re also going to have a guest lecture and hopefully some stimulating discussion.

    We rescheduled our studio week a bit: we’re now having a short all hands for weekly planning every Monday morning, and another one each Thursday afternoon (starting with our studio lunch ritual), where we do reviews and reflect on our work (and the world). Two of us spent their last week sick in bed – winter is coming! We’re looking forward to welcome them back next week and start collaborating on a new project, with an all new client.

    Posted by Christophe.

  • Weeknote 411

    Oktober 7th to 13th

    Here's a quick roundup of what kept everybody busy this week:

    Michael did some groundwork for knockknock. Arved did some interaction and interface design for the same project. Also Sthuthi was involved in it, working on the visual design. Henne crashed and fixed his IDE and wrote some CSS for – you guessed it – knockknock. David continued with documenting complex grid systems for Puichon, with a help from Sigrid. I too was documenting a design we've been working on in the last weeks for another project. Michael and I did an ideation workshop with a client, and Christophe (technically still on vacation) and Michael went to Hildesheim for a teaching assignment.

    Posted by Johannes.

  • Weeknote 410

    September 30th to Oktober 6th

    Week 410 was a short one, and so is this weeknote. Because of a national holiday on Thursday, most of us took Friday off or worked from home. I enjoyed the quietness of the studio, something which doesn't happen that often anymore. Quite the opposite to Wednesday, when we revived an old habit: having lunch together in the office. Since we had a guest from Prague and a client we couldn't sent home hungry, minus Christophe, who was on vacation, there were 9 people to fed. Two kilogram of spaghetti and a huge pot of vegan bolognese did the trick.

    Posted by Johannes.

  • Weeknote 409

    September 23rd to 29th

    It was Christophe's turn to write this week's weeknote, but he was busy getting all his stuff done before leaving for two weeks of well deserved vacation with his family. So, here is my first weeknote (do not expect my best, I'm still practicing).

    I guess it was the first time since weeks, that everybody was at the studio at the same time. David and I returned last week, and Sthuthi came back from her honeymoon this Wednesday. We sat together for our weekly meeting on Thursday afternoon. Great people we are. Two things we decided and should not forget:

    • Weekly all-hands: once every week at the same time. Sthuthi promised to ring the bell and take care that this will happen for real.
    • Cooking was a precious ritual at our old office, but we kind of lost that ritual in the new studio space. I'm not sure why: Was it Johannes diet plan that stopped us from preparing food together? Or, more likely, the new, exciting and really good food places around the corner; or was it the lack of a kitchen for the first month, or the growth of the team? Anyway, we have lost that ritual and it did not return by itself. That's why we decided to get us back in the kitchen with a more formatted rule set: a) Two of us (chosen randomly) cook for the rest of the crew. b) Once every week. I'm looking forward to good food and better conversations.

    What happened

    Johannes was documenting a visual design system for mobile context, thinking beyond fixed screen sizes.

    David and Christophe where documenting as well - using their favorite shiny new toy: Specking.

    Here is a list of the most used words near Henne's desk: browserify, WebGL, toolkit, Plask, machine.

    Arved, Henne and I started to design a tool and process for our own needs. It has something to do with documentation. There is not much more to share yet, than the project codename: knockknock.

    Christophe, Arved and I finally managed to publish Christophe's MobX presentation on our website. We created a javascript (more accurate pdf.js) based script that renders Apple Keynote exported PDFs with speaker notes in the browser. It extracts and cuts off the notes and displays them as HTML. The code lives on github.
    Take a few minutes and enjoy the slidedeck: "How to behave well in a multi-device". And let us know if it works, and what you think.

    Posted by Michael.