Designers at Moment have a wide variety of backgrounds, from graphic design to film to architecture and I am no different with a background in industrial design. While the products we’re designing now are produced in a very different way than those that I worked on as an industrial designer, the core of what we’re doing is the same – trying to design something that is valuable to the people who will use it and the business that produces it.
The design process of industrial design has heavily influenced our process here at Moment, and as the digital product design space matures, the parallels between industrial and digital product design appear to be growing stronger. Designers have been applying their skills to the development of software for thirty to forty years and in that time the process has come a long way. However, designers have been creating manufactured products for at least a hundred years longer. So with that history, what have we learned? And what else can we still learn? Read More »
10 years ago, I may have asked to see your iPod and take a quick look through your music… judging you, maybe asking if you are really listening to Tears in Heaven on repeat (let me guess, someone else put it on there?), and automatically forming my opinion about whom you are, and whether or not I’ll ever hang with you again. Of course I won’t show you mine… my collection would have blown your mind (Dave Matthews, Sugar Ray, Smash Mouth)
Well, today we’re not comparing iPods; we’re comparing iPhones (sorry Android, Blackberry, and Nokia users). What’s great about the iPhone is now I can take a look at a person’s app selection and judge them on so many more levels. Not just what cool apps they have, but how they are arranged, which ones they put in the dock, what they name their folders, or how many unread emails and unupdated apps they have. Heck, even the annunciator tells us their poor choice of service provider. Or if they have an apps location services draining their juice, which they never know about because they haven’t displayed their battery percentage.
Each phone’s home screen tells a little story about their owner… Here’s a little collection of home screens from our own Momenteers. I guess you can judge a book by its cover…
Recently my wife and I traveled to Ireland, making our way across the country and encountering a variety of common yet new experience along the way. There was one instance in Galway which really made me think about how important affordances, or a little bit of instruction, are in these new situations.
How do I turn on the Lights?
Our hotel in Galway seemed like any other at least at first. There was one thing that proved to be very different (and confusing) – the lights. The first thing I do when I enter into a hotel room is turn on the lights. I flipped the first switch near the door and nothing happened. My wife and I then ran around the room flipping switches for ten minutes attempting to get the lights on, but with no success.
As I mulled this over, debating calling the front desk, I took a closer look at the switches near the door and noticed a white, square box on the wall nearby. It had no markings, but its proximity to the switch made me curious. On closer inspection I saw a slot in the top of the box that looked just wide and narrow enough to fit the room’s key card. I thought to myself “I wonder if the card would fit in that? Would that turn the lights on? It wouldn’t hurt to try… right?” So I hesitantly shoved the room key card into the white box and success; the overhead light turned on!
After I learned this was the trigger to activate the lights, my confusion was gone. If only that white box on the wall had some bit of instruction on it then I wouldn’t have spent ten minutes discovering how to turn on the lights. In fact, a simple illustration of a card, an arrow and a light bulb would have been enough information and would be language independent! Next time I encounter this system, I’ll know what to do and may not need instructions but how many other people out there haven’t experienced this before? How many will stand in their rooms scratching their heads wondering why the lights won’t turn on? A little instruction to help a new user learn the required action to accomplish their goal goes a long way. Read More »
After months of incredible effort and detailed planning by Abby, Anne, and Calli, we set out on an adventure. Last Friday afternoon we boarded a bus, left our Crosby Street home, and headed for Manchester Village, Vermont for our very first retreat. We wanted to get out of the office and away from our projects to recharge and refocus… So that’s exactly what we did. Read More »
“Don’t try to be funny,” explains improv teacher Rick Andrews, “just serve the reality of what’s happening. React earnestly and honestly to the situation that’s arising, listen and play with the fun that is there, and the funny will come.”
When you’re trying to act out scenes such as an arsonist during a corporate job interview or a conversation between a cannibal and his next meal, Rick’s lesson is a difficult one to practice; however, that’s just what my classmates and I have been attempting over the last few Sundays at Rick’s Introduction to Improvisation class at the Magnet Theater. We stumble through cannibal and arsonist small talk, searching for angles that can make these outrageous characters genuine. Afterwards, Rick keeps us on track, reminding us to listen and watch for missed opportunities; those unnoticed moments that could have been further mined for entertainment value.
Affirming and reacting to the details of each other’s performance breathes life into the characters, creating an organic energy that propels the situations down unique and often hilarious paths. Improv, with its shared spontaneity, is a lot like design. We work through a shared creative process, trying to reach relevance in our end product and elicit audience reaction.
Read More »
Every other week, all the Experience Designers of Moment come together to explore and discuss new ideas around user experience. Each meeting is a little bit different, ranging from a ‘show-and-tell’ of new apps we find exciting, to creating group challenges for new design methods, or even taking a trip within New York City to have an experience of our own.
Recently, the team headed to Dialog in the Dark, an exhibit that lets visitors experience New York City as a blind person. The simulation “brings you face-to-face with New York City’s landmarks – in complete darkness.” Instead of being left to explore on your own, participants are guided through the experience by a visually impaired person.
Throughout the tour of New York, we learned to “see” with our other senses. As we moved through everyday locations like grocery stores and scenarios like walking through Time Square, we learned how to use our other senses to ‘visualize’ our surroundings. For many of us, including Sean, sounds took on a whole new meaning:
“Sound is such a powerful medium for information when you actually pay attention to it. Everything makes a sound; people, machines, echoes, or natural elements define a space.”
As we navigated through these spaces and scenarios, we had to find new ways to make our way around. We had to learn how to touch as well as what’s important to touch and listen to. Although each of us was equipped with a walking stick, we found our guide’s voice and experience to be most helpful. Of course, our guide being visually impaired understands what is most important to hear and touch when trying to accomplish the simplest of tasks and was in tune with communicating the right directions at the right time for all of us. Read More »
2012 has been a busy year for us so far here at Moment (and we’re not complaining). We just keep growing; so we thought we’d take a minute to introduce you to the latest additions to the Moment gang.
Jose Manuel Villanueva
Meet Jose Manuel, our newest experience designer. Joining us from Barcelona, Spain, previously Jose was an art director at Golden Gekko, working on mobile products for clients like Diesel and Aljazeera. Outside of Moment, this graphic-designer-turned-experience-designer is training for the New York City Marathon (just as a hobby), traveling or turning ideas into tee shirt designs.
Alex Voorhees
We’re excited to have Alex join the graphic design crew here at Moment; the native Baltimoreian joins us from The Lathe, where he worked on mobile applications and web design. A design-lover from the start, he earned his BS in Graphic Design from Drexel University. Outside of the Moment world, Alex is a diehard sports fan and especially when it comes to football. When he’s not watching, he’s playing in a flag-football league in NYC.
Tim Rodriguez
Since we design digital products, we rely on our technology; so we’re especially delighted to welcome Tim, our new IT Associate to Moment. Tim joins us from the consulting and freelance side of things, running Epistech Consulting, helping small businesses with all their IT needs. Tim is a bit of a jack-of-all-trades, holding both a professional certificate in product design from NYU and a BS in Food Science from Cornell. When he’s not making our lives easier at Moment, Tim’s either coming up with his own product designs, new games (‘Feed the Birds’ anyone?), cooking something delicious or playing rugby.
Welcome gentlemen!
via flickr
For the last year (well, 10 months technically), I have been a marketer among designers. At Moment, we design digital products and I am not a designer; I was merely a design fangirl when I arrived here, but that’s taken on a whole new meaning now. Being among visual and experience designers everyday, ‘design thinking’ has permeated how I think about and approach marketing and everything it entails. The separation of those two worlds has become blurred in my mind as I absorbed tidbits of design know-how from my colleagues and apply them to marketing be that content strategy and creation or community management.
Lately, there has been a lot of talk about experiences. From the experience design of a specific product to the brand experience and all this has to be designed to. When it comes to considering to the marketing side of that experience, I find myself turning to the bits and pieces I’ve learned from my designer colleagues more and more. No doubt that ‘good design’ is subjective, but there are 3 aspects of good design that stand out to me, especially in relation to marketing: ease, utility, and longevity. Read More »
Having recently made the decision to shift from architectural design into user experience design I am constantly amazed at the similarities between the professions. While both share language, design process and the use of drawing to explain concepts, the most important similarity is the mutual desire to create memorable and meaningful experiences between products and people.
While it is difficult to quantify a meaningful experience, I believe there are design decisions that help create meaningful connections between products and people. These decisions are part of the design process and can be classified as product semantics, the meaning, and product syntax, the organization. In architecture, semantics and syntax play key roles in the decision-making process, dictating spatial layout, inclusion of architectural elements, and material choice. What do these architectural principals have in common with the digital product design process? Read More »
Not many people possess the obscure, but charming talent to recognize Casio watches by their model numbers, but Yixiu Wu does. Her favorite is currently the MTG-1100B. Obvious from her watch collection, Yixiu, an experience designer at Moment, loves her physical products (likely because she is a trained industrial designer), but now loves the digital ‘hardware’ that embodies almost everything now.
The native Singaporean moved to Chicago to get her Master’s in Design from the Institute of Design at IIT, looking to learn more about product strategy and research. Read More »
