ARCHIMOOD

One of the greatest shortcomings of human-centered design is its lack of guidance on how to include diversity as part of the design process. Which human, exactly, belongs in the center? Most designers end up using their own abilities and experience as a baseline for their designs. This problem is even more pronounced for the predominantly young and able-bodied designers that work in technology. The result is products that work well for people with similar abilities and resources, but end up largely excluding everyone else. This is especially true for roughly 1 billion people on the planet with disabilities.

FiDO is a circular physical interface connected with a mobile app, which is a plug-in to different semi-autonomous vehicles. FiDO collects driver data and traffic information to give personal recommendations. Consequently, drivers can provide active feedback by rotating FiDO during their drive. This entire process is represented in purple and blue gradients to communicate what the vehicle is processing.

Vochlea is a revolutionary project to enable easy capture and expression of musical ideas. Expressing an idea is all about converting a thought into something that can be communicated to and understood by someone else. When it comes to music we are all capable of composition in our head, but few of us are able to outwardly express this music.

Material Design is Google’s open-source design system that serves as the foundation for Android 13. Our latest version, Material You, enables designers and developers to easily build beautiful, usable interfaces. In reimagining the interaction patterns and visual language of Material Design, the team wanted to expand the discourse of design systems beyond usability and consistency, ultimately asking: what if form followed feeling? When we created Material You, we explored possibilities and polarities of scalable UI systems, arriving at more flexible color, shape, typography, and motion ranges for app makers to build with. The new system is expressive and surprising, without compromising UX best practices. To make our system feel more alive and customizable, we tested the limits of conventional UX beliefs – those long held beliefs and modernist paradigms, such as predictable = usable, and we pushed on inherited one-size-fits-all models for manufacturing hardware and software. The team that made Material You imagined a system for adaptable, expressive, personal experiences that work for you…whomever “you” are.

One of the most wholesome fabulous projects in the world in the last decade has been a startup in Nairobi, Kenya. They are exemplars not only in the global digital community but particularly for the African design community in showing them what's possible to have big, hairy, audacious goals.

Signet is a concept that brings personal shipping into the digital age, by giving everyday users the ability to send a package or letter to a person, not a place.

In 2007, the world’s most visited website was Yahoo.com, and the iPhone was considered “technology with potential.” It’s also the year that Zendesk took its first bold steps into customer service. Unlike other solutions at the time, Zendesk aimed to deliver a beautifully simple experience for customer support agents. Much has changed since 2007. Social media has quickened the pace of communication and mobile apps have made it 24/7. The invention of applications like Messenger, WhatsApp, and WeChat have added complexity to customer service. Each app represents a new communication channel, and for support agents, switching between them means lumbering between disjointed dashboards.

Recent political events have highlighted a deep disconnect between society and government. Internationally, people have taken to the streets to protest, or used their vote at the ballot box to voice their dissatisfaction with ‘the establishment’. The problem facing policymakers is no less challenging – with the breakdown of traditional media and the rise of ‘fake-news’, it’s harder than ever to communicate effectively with citizens resulting in a breakdown in civic dialogue and an erosion of trust in our public institutions.

100 BPM is a concept that helps to save lives by greatly increasing the success rate of administering compression-only CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) to an adult after a cardiac arrest. It does this by giving the rescuer tangible and intuitive feedback through sound and light, for the two most important factors for the success of the procedure: compression depth and frequency of the compression. 100 BPM uses light to create a depth scale illustrating compression depth, and a 100 BPM beat for the user to follow. Sound is used not only to guide the rescuer to administer 100 BPM compressions, but to also manage the stress and emotional stages the rescuer experiences over time.100 BPM comprises of a comfortable central silicone coated pad (housing the main electronic components), through which the compressions are given. This pad sits on a larger fabric base, interwoven with LEDs. The product uses the surface area surrounding the rescuer's hands as an interface space, which is easily visible when in use. Rows of LEDs form an intuitive depth scale surrounding the hands and illuminate in yellow (for too shallow), green (for correct depth) or red (for too deep).

We collaborated with pro riders to create never-before-seen digital skate experiences. What came out of it changed the way skaters participate in the world’s biggest action sport.