THURSDAY

DAY SIX: Wednesday

DAY EIGHT: TUESDAY

With the presentations of our pitches today the subject Business Innovations was concluded.

Looking back prior to when I began this subject I assumed I would be getting out skills to run and work within the business sector of a company. What I have actually come out with is a knew understanding of design innovation in not only how to design and pitch a product/service but more important the fundamental points in establishing a design firm or becoming an entrepreneur. It has become very apparent that the most successful people have designed products/service that add meaning to the people living in the present, but also which are able to be carried to the future. I believe the role of the future is vital for designers to work towards and to have a clear imagine of what it is.

Reflecting on task one, what I have gained from this specifically is almost a trend forecasting skill. From task two I learn how important it is to be visually able to picture the world you are designing too. The assistance of our ins usual posters really help drive our pitches and narrow what it is we were designing. Through this understanding of our world I believe my group presented a very good product which sounded viable in such a scenario. Leaving this course, these skills learnt will continuously be implemented into future study or work to some degree, no matter what design faculty we are from.

DAY SEVEN: MONDAY

Today’s lecture focused on presentation skills; what to do and what not to do. Our tutors took us through a select few examples from Dragon’s Den. The first entrepreneur was confident, knew his product inside out and was clearly well prepared in that he had a response to every answer asked. On the other scale, a bad example we were shown was a guy who had little confidence and failed to explain what his product is, what it does and who it benefits. The ‘Dragon’s’ tried to assist by directing questions that he failed to address. From these episodes it is clear that the most important factor in creating a successful pitch is to know EVERYTHING about your product.

In our afternoon tutorial we handed in task 2, and presented our individual posters. I believe my group’s four posters worked together really well and visually the impact was very dynamic. Feedback we received were that we explained our product well, and the visual aid really helped. For our pitch we will take this aboard and ensure that apart from a verbal dialogue we will also include visual dialogue. An improvement we can make is to really sell our world and our product. We need to take our ‘clients’, Westfield and engage them in the entire ‘retail experience’.

This afternoon our group met for the final time for a final run through of our pitch and some tweaking. We also filmed Sam as our ‘persona’. I am very happy with what we have prepared for our pitch and if we can deliver it with a lot of confident tomorrow I believe we can sell it successfully.

FRIDAY

Today our group developed our pitch for Task 3. We had an idea where we would bring out our world by making up previous products our firm, Chimerical, had previously created such as individual communication booths and individual travel pods. This sets up not only how strong our firm is but also but also the social context of the world in 2030.

Furthermore, we developed a persona whom we will film on Monday. Basically this persona will have ‘tested’ our system, and will give general feedback on his experience of using our design. We are also utilising this persona to further represent 2030. This persona:

• Leads a very fast paced life, very reliant on technology
• Earns a high income, and lives by himself
• Hates people, more specifically customer sales people and avoids physical interaction

Extras we have planned to include in our pitch are photos of scenes from our design firm and photos which show our collaboration with other.

DRAFT TRANSCRIPT

Sam: Hi, I am Samuel Biro. The CEO of leading design company Chimeric and these are the leading designers.
Dani: We design Safe solutions
Gemma: Secure environments
Anna: To make life more convenient

Sam: Our firm’s culture is about safety, security and convenience and about bringing these concepts both to our client and end user. Here at Chimeric, we strive to provide a unique experience to our customers using human centered innovation.

Gemma: Our previous projects have been very successful following this clear business objective.
let us take you on a journey to remind you of our previous services:

Dani: In 2020 we released our communication booths to replace phone booths. This recognized a shift in consumer values towards their growing reliance on technology and a stronger need to socialise with one another due to their busy work schedules.

Anna: in 2025, We revolutionized cityrail with our new travel pods, This was made in response to the individuals growing concerns about privacy when travelling, we created an environmentally sound and a totally individual environment

Sam: due to increased collaboration and close ties with other design firms that focus on communications and media, we are able to source the best and most up to date advancements in technology which fuels our interactive environments.

Dani: As you may know, 95% of shopping is now done online, We want to bring customers back into the store by taking advantage of our reliance on technology with a new system that operates in retail stores. It monitors what shops people go into and what they purchase. We will take you through the user experience with someone we picked off the street earlier:

Dani explains start of the system
Gemma explains the inside of the system
Anna explains the end of the system when user walks out:
Sam: With this boom in online shopping, it is in Westfield’s best interest to gain a competitive advantage over online shopping so that retail outlets will continue to want to pay rent to be a part of their shopping centres.

Gemma: It is very convenient and provides a tangible experience to the end user that online shopping cannot provide. Consumers will be happy to have an account with the system so that shopping can be tailored to their needs. It’s a really fun way to shop, an interactive experience.

Dani: This benefits the retail stores as we can provide them with data about what different market segments are purchasing, which is imperative information for marketing their products. In turn, Westfield will gain more foot traffic from consumers. Infact, we guarantee that with the system in place, you will see atleast a 50% increase in customers coming to the store

Anna: Not only this, but they will save money on hiring staff for the stores, as most of the customer service will be done by the systems in place and theft will be minimised considerably as everyone who enters has to have an account with Chimeric, which they can join for free when the Westfield

Gemma: We invite you to our showroom in the chimeric headquaters and try the system out yourselves, if you enjoy your experience, which you will, we can install the system for you.

Anna: The price varies according to the size of the store, The system in our showroom costs $15000 – $70000 and additional maintenance costs may be included for the long term.

Dani: We not only design this environment for you, we update and maintain the system from our headquarters, monitoring quantitative data that can be shared to you for further analysis.

Sam: We really think we can offer you a competitive advantage in our online age.

Dani: Safe.
Gemma: Secure
Anna: Convenient
Sam: Chimeric

THURSDAY

Today I went back on all the information and ideas gained through this entire experience and began creating my individual poster. To ensure the four individual posters within the group are cohesive we decided that when joined together a wholesome shape will be created, such as a circle. We took this further and decided it would be most effective to have this to be earth, and according to our future we will create the city skyline of our world on the circumference. My future, in a nutshell looks like this:

Due to the driver of a rapid advancement in artificial technology the world is ‘buzzing’ with satellites and telecommunication models, and skyscrapers are high and dense. Westfield has become the largest corporation in retail. This is especially important because of the second driver of change, a trend towards impersonal communication methods. Because of a much lower desire in interacting face to face, people want fast retail experiences where they can be in and out in almost an instant. In such a scenario, products will be readily available, and there is no need to interact with sale assistants either. The entire shopping centre would be run by automated systems, or rather artificial intelligence, the connection with driver number one. And, for this to be possible, the shopping corporation must be one that is big and have the funds to implement such as system. Thus, we have chosen Westfield, where such stores like Apple would have a space within and the interactive technologies to design such a personal retail experience.

In the remainder of the space I will extrapolate on this city skyline and focus on designing and representing the retail experience within the world (or rather, within Westfield). There will be few people in this scenario whom will not interact with anyone else. Other than these customers there will be no sales assistant. These jobs have all be replaced by the artificial intelligent and provide all the customer service needed.

In our last tutorial, we had agreed that our logo will consist of a lime green umbrella representing safety and security. The handle of the umbrella is where we make a connection with our individual worlds. The symbol I am thinking of is a simplified robot, which represents both the high reliance on technology and the trend towards an impersonal world with the replacement of artificial intelligence. While working on this poster I have realised that these two drivers, although different, work hand in hand with each other to build this world.

FINISHED POSTER

IMAGE REFERENCES

The Global Transition, 2010, Viewed June 26 2011

<http://www.theglobaltransition.com/artificial-intelligence/how-to-become-immortal-upload-your-mind/>

Apple Store, Fifth Avenue, Viewed 28 June 2011

<http://www.apple.com/retail/fifthavenue/>

Westfield Doncaster Redevelopment, 2007, Viewed 30 June, 2011 <http://www.doncasterhill.com/Media_Centre/Image_Library/WestfieldDrumExternal.jpg>

Multidisciplinary Design, Viewed 30 June 2011

<http://www.buronorth.com/#/wayfinding-portfolio/westfield-sydney>

Sydney Architecture, Viewed 30 June 2011 <http://www.sydneyarchitecture.com/images/11-hero_01_sydney.jpg>

WordPress, 2008, Viewed on 30 June 2011

<http://eventcity.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/hcpshow08-032a.jpg>

DAY SIX: WEDNESDAY

Today’s lecture was very relevant in giving a better understanding of what is the future, and who this may be created. Coming out of today’s class I feel I have taken away the skill to design a better representation of the world in 2030 based on my two drivers of change. Our speakers, Chris Riedy and Aleta Lederwasch, work at the Institute of Sustainable Futures where they create change towards sustainable futures; climate change, water and sanitation, resource futures, international development, cities and buildings. The key points they addressed in the lecture were that everybody thinks about the future. It is the natural ability of human and by thinking about the future danger may be averted. The role of the designer is to address what the future needs which are on the horizon may be.

The lecture gave techniques in predicting or creating this future vision. Techniques include:

•  Future studies/applied foresight. This technique emerged in the 1950s-60s and is about integrating or meta-discipline. It offers futures, foresights and journal of future studies.
• History of future works. There are four varieties; empirical, cultural, critical and integral. Empirical are those that are predictive and linear. Cultural includes interpretative and exploratory alternate scenarios. Critical is post modern, discourse and world views. While integral is synthetic, inclusive and draws on all traditions.
• Future tools and methods. It may be a creative, fun and imaginative process where narratives, stories and scenarios are created and may be depicted through visual arts or performances. The future is blank and the designer may draw on alternate world views. This is possibly the most relevant method to what we have been asked to do in task 2. This scenario we will create should be a coherent narrative of how a particular future came about. In essence, a history of the future. And this is exactly what I feel as I have been doing with my research into past and present technologies as well as near future predictions and narratives.
• Backcasting. This technique was a really interesting one. While forecasting extrapolates trends forward from the present, backcasting, as the name suggests is the opposite where the beginning is at the vision of a desired future and the designer works backwards by identifying with feasible pathways to develop a normative vision of the future.
• Casual Layered Analysis. This technique is the most complex out of the list and I haven’t quite grasped on to the context of it. But basically, it sees reality as layers. Chris presented this as an ice berg where the tip of the ice berg represented problems. The deeper level, or causes steep are short term historical sources uncovered. The solution is changing external structures. The layer below is made from world views where the solution is often in consciousness transformation. And the final layer is metaphors and myths. The solutions for these can rarely be rationally designed.

The information and suggestions from today’s lecture could be implemented directly into today’s tutorial of creating our future scenario and into our posters. In the afternoon tutorial we worked individually on developing a possibly future scenario and creating our pitch suited to that scenario. My design firm have kept with the idea of addressing the retail experiences of people in 2030. In particular we want to address Westfield. Questions we had to address were:

• What are your roles in the firm? And how does that impact what you are presenting?
• What do they need to hear from us?
• How will you impress your clients?
• The method of delivery? What are you going to draw on?
• How do we communicate our credibility?
• How do you as a firm envision success? What is success in this project?
• How do you envision it working? Do you need diagrams without showing them what it is.
• What are you selling? Why do you need it? How much do I have to pay you? How will I access it?

These questions help set up what further information needs to be considered and depicted in our individual posters.

DAY FIVE: TUESDAY

In our afternoon tutorial our group/design firm agreed to focus on designing safe and secure retail experiences in our futures. Obviously, depending on the high and low drivers of each future the retail experiences the people of the world will have will vary significantly. For my quadrant where there is a high level of artificial intelligence vs. a high trend to impersonal communication shopping experiences will be based less on face to face service and may consist of more self serve counters and such, or rather be done completely through the internet.

Dani, my group member suggested I look at Prada’s interactive dressing rooms, something she had come across in her research last night, because it may be relevant to my quadrant and to the high tech shopping experiences and interactions I had been looking at. Prada is the first designer to have this technology, which allows staff members to stay longer with the customer and offer more assistance. After extensive interviews and analysis, IDEO specialists were able to incorporate into the design of the store’s information architecture these interactive dressing rooms as well as in-store devices which offered customer assistance.

The interactive dressing room consists of:

• one wall which forms the door where the customer can change from being opaque for privacy while changing and clear to show a garment to someone outside the boot.
• One wall containing a “magic mirror”, a camera and display with a four second delay so that the customer may spin around and view all sides of the garment.
• Senors which detect electronic tags triggering touch screens that then display the item and it’s relation information such as availability, colour, fabric and size. The tag also serves as a remote control for the entire boutique. If a customer isn’t sure if they would like to purchase the garment right away the information from the electronic tag is saved on a customer card and can be accessed via the internet, and if however the customer decides to have another look at the garment tried on they only need to log online.

<http://www.ideo.com/work/staff-devices-dressing-rooms> accessed June 28th

What I have drawn from Prada’s innovative technology is the idea of an interactive shopping experience where there is a bigger focus on the customer as an individual and his/her desire. What I imagine the shopping experience to be is a lot more efficient on the Prada shop assistants where all the information the customers may need is already stored in the electronic tags. I believe this would lead to less personal interaction between with the customer, or rather the customer would need the sales assistant less since all information, right down to whether there’s any stock in the stock room, what is in the branch across town and when the next shipment is coming in from Milan.

References:

‘Staff Devices and Dressing Rooms for Prada’, http://www.ideo.com/work/staff-devices-dressing-rooms

‘Prada – Interactive Dressing Rooms’, http://www.milanostyle.com/php/article.php?id_art=20

Furthering the research on interactive retail experiences because I think it is an interesting and innovative idea to develop on, I found similar retail experiences on the IDEO site. The second interactive retail experience I found interesting was for Warnaco, a fashion company that manufactures and sells underwear and lingerie. IDEO designed a shopping experience to increase sales after a decline due to such specialist stores as Victoria’s Secret and Walmart. Below is a model of the entire designed shopping experience.

<http://www.ideo.com/work/retail-experience-redesign/> accessed 28 June

The experience begins at the Gateway, encouraging customers to begin their buying journey. They move to Storytellers, where seasonal and updated modular displays help customers identify and become enthusiastic about particular products. From here they are able to access Dispensers, a device that stock staples allowing customers to quickly and reliably obtain refills. Changing room modules are plug-in units that similarly to Prada’s Interactive dressing rooms allow women to take quick measures, select the right size and get sales help. Social hubs are an option for groups of friends to try on products together and the Concierge desk is at a central and visible location for fitters and cash wrap.

I began searching for visuals that could help me envision and articular a future where customer service has become very automated and completely dependent on technology.

http://www.cartoonstock.com/cartoonview.asp?catref=gca0004 <accessed 28 June 2011>

http://www.cartoonstock.com/cartoonview.asp?catref=jban7 <accessed 28 June 2011>

I believe the two above cartoons reflect the absence of sales assistance who would be offering customer service. Instead, as the picture on the right shows it is replaced by an automated system giving out a list of instructions. My future world to some extent, has this aspect where customer service has become very impersonal, where machines replace all duties of sales assistant and the customer would walk in, select whatever it is they desire or need (maybe try it on if possible in an interactive dressing room), pay for the product through the automated system.

Tonight, my homework task was to summarise my quadrant and how my design firm delivers in that future. Very briefly, this includes:

• Understanding how a high level of artificial intelligence and a high trend in the impersonal communication and interaction of humans alter retail experiences. Now there is now a lack of face-to-face, physical customer service. There is no need for sales assistants and these roles have been replaced by automated systems such as self-refilling product dispensers and self check-out services.
• Designing a safe, secure and convenient retail experiences for both large corporations such as Westfield as they have the money and resources to invest in such an advanced system.
• Our clients are the head of those large department stores or small scale shops wanting to ensure their customers have a safe experience as well as the security of their products. The end user thus becomes both the client and their customers.
• Looking at the architecture and the space of the store as well as the layout of the product and interactive technologies to create an interface that maintains or monitors the security of the store without invading the privacy of those customers. In a sense, this system replaces the duties of the security guard.
• Our competitors are other security systems, the security guard profession and the old security cameras. Our aim is to beat them by diminishing the need for physical protection for security and a constant customer/store monitoring. With our product, there is no need for someone to be surveillance. The system is completely reliable and can detect any abnormal behaviour.
• Our firm is filled with expert designers in innovative technology and creative thinkers who focus on designing personal experiences. We deal with all clients through the internet/an interface of high level technology as no one deals face to face anymore. We create the security system and send it back to them through the Internet. Potentially it could be just a file that they would download and open.

DAY FOUR: MONDAY

Today’s lecture had a lot of information relevant to task 2 and 3, and also future projects. In summary, the main points were:

• Design does not always happen in a studio but rather within a corporation. The difference is an experience design firm where an insight into human behaviour creates products and services that engage, delight and differentiate. These are three key words I have come to understand is essential for a successful design. This links back to the idea that a successful product or service creates meaning first and foremost.
• Design in itself is to strategise what you will do and what is going to be. Overall, this makes up an experience and it is these which differentiate a company from their competitors.
• Another way to differentiate between competitors is through branding and feeling.
• Design can be undertaken by internal staff, consultants and technologists or designers.
• Design may be paid for by the marketing department, product department or the online department.
• It is fundamental to be able to communicate your design to your client. There must be a credible advisor.

Lastly, what I found to be really useful in the lecture, which should definitely be taken onboard for the final pitch in task three is the use of ‘business talk’. Subjects which should be touched on address all that the client may be wanting or needing to know are distribution, advantage, costs, efficiency, strategy, differentiation, acquisition, investment, customer satisfaction, profit margins and NPs)

Anthony left us with one final acronym, PAD (Purpose, Activity, Deliverable) for putting together an approach to delivering a convincing pitch. The goals of a convincing pitch is to be creditable, address problems and consequences, solutions and proofs. Above all, the pitcher must be confident and show a belief towards the product.

Although I found tonight’s reading to be biased and very much aimed at Phillips consumers and future consumers I did pick up on a few key points which I found connected to my groups drivers of change and mantra of our design firm.

The idea of a dynamic change of age results from a deeper structural change and radical innovation. The example given makes this easy to frame up. And that is how we re-think and re-invent some of our basic social industries such as health, care, education, transport and our lifestyles. The reading suggests that these areas need to be re-invented for the 21st century, as Peter Drucker (1994) suggests that every hundred years there is an occurrence of sharp transformation. Drucker claims that within a few short decades society rearranges itself, its worldview, basic values, social and political structures, arts and its key institutions. “Fifty years later there is a new world”. Whether or not a complete ‘new world’ does present itself in fifty years, there is a visible ongoing reform in all the areas Drucker has mentioned, and thus to be able to create a more realistic world of 2030 I should build my future upon these things.

The reading also suggests the more progressive and ultimately more successful companies will have progressed from a consumer/market-led approach to a people/social-led approach. This would be an excellent approach for our design firm and would set us up to create a better product or service.

FRIDAY

As my group’s second drive of change is the importance of social interaction, today what I wanted to explore through my research was human interaction, comparing interaction through face to face contact and contact through such mediums as the internet.

I came across this blog post from 2008 (http://therealmccrea.com/2008/04/28/the-evolution-of-my-social-media-interactions/) which spoke of a profound transformation in media we are in, a “seismic shift as the web becomes more social” (McCrea, 2008). McCrea predicted that the pace of change will accelerate dramatically as an open social web unleashes a wave of innovation where sites, applications and devices that harness a new “who you know” layer of the internet becomes vital. Even though it is barely three years since this post was written, already you can see a big change in how we use the internet. As mentioned in the post, people are excessively blogging and microblogging. Facebook and Twitter are major social networks and keeping up with all these things make “sometimes feel like a full-time job”. Rather than being a full-time job, I believe that social networking has become the norm, and not just for a particular age group but everyone.

Referenced McCrea’s blog was another blogger, Louis Gray. Gray posted his social media consumption (http://blog.louisgray.com/2008/04/my-social-media-consumption-workflow.html). which I thought was very interesting to look at. On an average day he begins on his email before moving to Google Reader, Twitter, FriendFeed and then may follow on to activity on a few other irregular social media sites. Having read that it also made me think to my own social media workflow, and that of my friends. My own experiences are as relevant to the creation of this driver. I believe McCrea is right in that we are in a time where the importance of social media is fast becoming more revolutionary. I believe this will only increase from now until 2030, and subsequently there will be less face to face interaction leading to that loss of social skills, or that loss in desire to possess social skills.