Long before the likes of Facebook and Flickr co-opted the color, the original Big Blue had established itself as a giant in a different era in tech. A perennial fixture of “most valuable brands” lists, IBM is pleased to announce that will be committing over $100 million to “globally expanding its consulting services capability to help clients with experience design and engagement.” The Armonk, NY-based company is capitalizing on its strength in the Big Data with plans to open IBM Interactive Experience labs in Bangalore, Beijing, Groningen, London, Melbourne, Mexico City, New York, Sao Paulo, Shanghai and Tokyo. In short, IBM is making a major foray data-driven service design, a nod to a broader definition of product as experience or interaction (a.k.a. the shift from physical to digital, hardware to software, etc.). Shannon Miller, a Global Strategy Leader at IBM Interactive Experience, shared more details on their vision for what the future holds both for IBM, its clients and the end user. Core77: We’ve witnessed the rise of service design (i.e. experience design) as a discipline in its own right, what makes this a good time for IBM to make this major investment in this area? Shannon Miller: We have seen growing client demand in the marketplace around experience design capabilities and the front office transformation—and this market only continues to grow as consumers continuously look for the next best experience. IBM is the only company that can bring research, creative and design skills together with data experts and a traditional consultancy to solve our clients’ biggest problems. We see this demand globally and wanted to expand our reach to create centers around the world where we can collaborate and co-create with clients to develop innovative solutions. To what degree is this data-centric approach to experience design an extension of the company’s long history in the computer industry, and to what degree is a new frontier for IBM’s strengths? Technology is becoming ingrained into the DNA of every business and personal interaction, especially in today’s customer-centric world, and IBM is helping clients understand their customers as individuals through the use of Big Data. While this certainly is an extension of IBM’s 100-plus-year history and commitment to design, IBM researchers within IBM Interactive Experience invented unique algorithms that conduct the analysis for new capabilities—Intelligent Customer Profiles, Influence Analysis and Customer Identity Resolution. These join an existing portfolio of data-driven capabilities including Life Event Detection, Behavioral Pricing and Psycholinguistic Analytics . IBM Interactive Experience is an industry first—a management consultancy and systems integration company combined with a digital agency powered by data and research. IBM Interactive Experience drives insights from data—including information on individual decisions, choices, preferences and attitudes—to transform the customer experience. (more…)
Tag: make-your-own
A Simple Trick for Getting 3D-Looking Results from Moving 2D Images
Watching movies in 3D is fun, if you can stand the splitting headache those headsets give you. For now they’re the moviemakers’ way of tricking your eyes into feeding your brain a false sense of depth perception, but a bunch of GIF-happy blogosphere denizens have discovered a more low-tech way to do that: By adding two vertical white stripes to your moving image. Presumably they needn’t be two perfectly vertical stripes, nor is it important that they be precisely white so much as in sharp contrast to the predominant tone of the image. But by adding a visually static element that interrupts, and becomes interrupted by, a moving object, our brains are fooled into perceiving depth. (more…)
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A Simple Trick for Getting 3D-Looking Results from Moving 2D Images
Flotspotting: Kibum Park’s Awesome Urban Residences
You undoubtedly remember those slick renderings for the Lowline , the still-in-progress underground NYC park tentatively scheduled for a 2018 opening. The renderings were done by architect Kibum Park, a partner at James Ramsey’s RAAD , a firm that “[focuses] on single and multi-family residential, commercial and hospitality projects.” Well, turns out Park’s got a Coroflot page , loaded up with renders of some bee-yootiful hotels, restaurants, houses and apartments, the latter being the ones that most caught our eye. The clients are of course anonymous and text descriptions are largely absent, but the images do most of the talking. Check out this NYC penthouse with its crazy, sun-dappled, yurt-like master bedroom with elevated library: (more…)
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Flotspotting: Kibum Park’s Awesome Urban Residences
Amos Chapple’s Photographs of the Coldest Town on Earth
Globetrotting photographer Amos Chapple has shot in sixty countries, eventually working his way up to be named Cathay Pacific’s Travel Photographer of the Year for ’09. More recently, New Zealand native Chapple recently photographed a region with weather very opposite from that of his home country: Oymyakon, Russia, where the average winter temperature is negative-58 Fahrenheit (negative-50 Celsius). As Chapple told Weather.com , “occasionally my saliva would freeze into needles that would prick my lips, ” and “focusing the lens would sometimes be as challenging as opening a pickle jar.” Viewing these photos officially means you can never complain about being cold ever again. The temperature is so brutal that Oymyakon residents’ lives are structured around surviving it, with inconveniences aplenty. For example: No wearing eyeglasses outdoors, unless you want them to stick to your skin. Even worse, there’s no indoor plumbing. It’s impossible to keep underground pipes from not freezing, so guess where you’ll go when you need to use the bathroom: Then there’s the gas situation: When you stop your car, to run into a store for instance, you cannot turn the car off, or it won’t start again. So everyone leaves their cars running (except at night, when they’re parked in heated garages)… (more…)
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Amos Chapple’s Photographs of the Coldest Town on Earth
Brilliant Transformational Transportation Design: The Track N Go Converts Your Truck Into a Tread-Equipped, Snow-Going Beast in Under 15 Minutes
Even though I live in America, I never saw as many monster trucks anywhere in the ‘States as I did in Reyjkavik. For drivers who need to navigate the Icelandic hinterlands, owning a pickup truck converted to drive man-height tires is more practical concern than pissing contest. Sure, they looked silly and inconvenient in the city, but it was a trade-off everyone was apparently fine with. So I wonder if the Track N Go would gain any traction in Iceland. This has to be the coolest off-road conversion I’ve ever seen, because it’s completely reversible and only takes fifteen minutes. Check out how it drives: Before we get to how they put them on, the following video, narrated in French, gives you a good look at an individual Track N Go (and gives you a sense of how heavy it is): (more…)
How Shipping Containers are Made
As we saw last week , shipping containers carry our manufactured goods all around the world. There are some 17 million of them in existence, and that number will never shrink; no one can make a profit recycling shipping containers, because it takes a lot of energy to melt 8, 000 pounds of steel down. So once brought into existence, these sturdy, hulking boxes are here to stay. A portion of you are undoubtedly curious as to how they transform raw rolls of sheet metal into shipping containers. Well, here’s how, as documented by Canadian company Big Box Steel . Pretty cool to see all of the jigs, rigs and fixtures, like the horizontally and vertically sliding chairs the welders sit in: Now having seen the vid, what do you reckon is the worst job in that manufacturing squad? I think that guy at 8:12 who has to do the underside waterproofing has got it the worst. (more…)
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How Shipping Containers are Made
Be the Change You Wish to See: Design for the US Mint
“Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other one thing.” -President Wacom, November 5, 1855 If you’ve ever dreamed of making your art available to millions of indifferent people in the form of a cold, hard choking hazard, we’ve got good news. The US Mint and the National Endowment for the Arts are teaming up for a wham-bam coin-design slam, and they want you to apply . They’re looking for professional artists with several years of artistic training and a portfolio that shows mastery of symbolism and complex subjects. Digital skills required. Up to 20 artists will be given year-long contracts to make commissioned demonstration designs. The designs produced will be considered for use on circulated coins and national medals of honor and/or importance. If chosen, the designs are rewarded with additional ca$h money and the offer of longer term contracts. The first application deadline is January 10th, so don’t put off for the next year what you can do while avoiding your relatives during the holidays. If you’re a US citizen with a passion for coinage or obscure types of fame, put that wolf painting on the back burner and apply for your chance to design a national icon . You too could creatively serve the country by carving a bas-relief turkey butt in plastilene. (more…)
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Be the Change You Wish to See: Design for the US Mint
Babies: There's an App for That
Due out in January, the Mimo Baby Monitor shows the softer side of technology trickle-down. The key object is a baby onesie or “kimono” (kidmono! oh ho ho) employing Bluetooth Low Energy, wearable-washable sensors, and turtles. Once you’ve suited up your progeny in this thing, you’ll received real-time information on your babe’s position, breathing, temperature, sleep status, and future SAT scores on your phone. Although it has one proverbial foot on either side of the precious/practical divide, there definitely seems to be a trend towards wi-fying babies. Mimo is just one product in a small herd of baby-applied tech devices poised to crowd the digital shelves. Never mind tracking your runs and heart rate. You’re a new parent now; no time for running, and your heart rate is likely to be higher than healthy at all times. Get used to it, get the app, and get some rest. (more…)
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Babies: There's an App for That
Eden’s (Plantable) Paper Takes the Cake When it Comes to Holiday Gift Wrapping Must-Haves
Half of the fun of the holidays is ripping into presents from family and friends or watching someone else do it . We might feel just a twinge or two of guilt as we crumple shreds of once-pristine paper waste into a trash bag and toss it to the curb for garbage collection, but what the hell, you’re on much-needed vacation and you left all of your cares at the office. Wrong. The facts: In 2011, Great Britain alone racked up 227, 000 miles of wasted paper after the holiday season. (That’s enough paper to wrap the world nine times over around the equator.) And according to a study done by Stanford, if every American wrapped three presents in reused materials, the saved paper would cover 45, 000 football fields. The upshot of the guilt trip is that it leads to solutions like wrapping your gifts in the comics section and recycle it when the present party is done, or, say, reusable packaging . UK-based agency BEAF does the DIYers one better with Eden Paper, wrapping paper for the rest of us that you can plant once you’re finished tearing into those gifts. It’s simple: By planting the used paper in some soil and watering it like a regular potted plant, you’ll see sprouts in no time. As with Democratech’s sprouting pencil and plantable OAT Shoes , the gift wrap is produced with the seeds embedded right into the paper. The brand is currently offering the paper in five flavors—chili peppers, onions, carrots, tomatoes and broccoli—but looks to include various flowers and herbs in the future. The gift wrap looks good, too—as good as it tastes, I’m sure. Design-wise, it’s a much-needed upgrade from a lot of the holiday wrap you see around the time of year. There’s only so much you can take when it comes to iridescent snowflakes and glittery ornaments. (more…)
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Eden’s (Plantable) Paper Takes the Cake When it Comes to Holiday Gift Wrapping Must-Haves
New, Massive Solar Power Plant Goes Online in Japan
Japan was once colloquially known as the Land of the Rising Sun, and it can’t be only environmentalists hoping that a country with such a moniker would take solar power to heart. Following the Fukushima disaster of 2011, safe and renewable sources of energy have been under study, and at least one corporate giant has done something about it–rather swiftly, by Japanese standards. This month Japanese electronics manufacturer Kyocera pulled the wraps off of the Kagoshima Nanatsujima Mega Solar Power Plant, a project constructed at a backbreaking pace from September 2012 to October 2013. Some 290, 000 solar panels are arrayed on 1.27 million square meters on the coast of Kagoshima Prefecture, making it the largest solar power plant in Japan. The juice started flowing on November 1st, and the KNMSPP is expected to generate 70 megawatts of power, enough to power 22, 000 homes in the region. As promising as that sounds, the stark math is actually a bit dismal compared to Fukushima: The latter facility generated 4.7 gigawatts, or enough to power nearly 1.5 million homes. (more…)