2017
ROLE
Product Designer + Researcher + Design Engineer
Designers:
Alejandro Ramos Saveedra, Alexander Davies, Gregory Pepper, Helen van Baal, Johannes Mutter, Liwa Soosuk, Melisa Leñero, Michele Chu, Mikhail Wertheim Aymes and Steven Chang
INCREASING CROSS-COLLABORATION BETWEEN TECH AND NON-TECH TEAMS THROUGH A VISUAL REPRESENTATION OF NEW TECHNOLOGIES
Context:
FLOW is a toolkit and methodology that makes designing with emerging technologies and in complex systems more visual and intuitive. The design facilitated methodology aims at helping designers, individuals and businesses alike better understand and apply digital and information technologies. The aim of this is to enable anyone to create innovations based on emerging tech - something that otherwise is left to a privileged few who have the resources and structures to do so. The initial kit is designed to adapt and incorporate new elements and discoveries as they emerge.
MVP FLOW KIT
Ideation card set to get you started
The toolkit. A connected system that can be visualised by the whole team, regardless of their level of knowledge in tech
Connected bits
PROBLEM
Designing with emerging technologies can be complicated between engineering, tech and design teams. Also, the emerging tech concepts can be understood differently between teams therefore, we designed a toolkit that helps different stakeholders to visualise how to connect and design with emerging technologies in a more intuitive way.
USER
B2B. For project managers and team leaders designing with emerging technologies leading a team of experts in different fields.
CLIENT
Power of X. Think tank committed to exploring and creating positive impact at the intersection of design, art and technology.
To start designing with FLOW, you will need:
Ideation card set to get you started.
Concept Cards. The building blocks of your idea.
A board to keep track of your concept cards.
Toolkit pieces to visualise how emerging tech connects within different components.
The Handbook in case you need to clarify concepts. (You can download our handbook)
Case Scenario
Application of FLOW to help non-technical teams to visualise how a smart-thermostat works
DESIGN PROCESS
Inspiration & first iterations
Layout of tech + design components
Ideating in Thailand
Prototyping and User testing in Singapore
Prototyping the user experience in Singapore
Magnetic tips to visualise the connection between components
Workshop with students in Singapore
Workshops
We ran a series of workshops for user research and user testing with students, professors, experts in tech, design and management.
During this workshop, we realised that users were referring to different concepts using the same word. (i.e; Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing)
Therefore we designed a Handbook that will enable teams to design a system using the same language.