Design Firm Next

In a world where the population is growing rapidly and the need for more advanced technology is growing there is a need for a company like Next.

At our firm we attempt to bring people and technology together as a life collaboration.

That’s why our mantra is “Human and digital experience as one.”

With this in mind we help companies build products that will assist everyday life and better human experience.

We are up for any challenge as we, more than anyone, believe in interactive technology as the future.



Final Presentation! Take a bow !

For our third and final presentation my group and I worked well together to:

–      Create a realistic business in the year 2030 in our chosen quadrant; high population growth and exponential growth in technology

–      Developed a short and simple mantra that highlighted the vision of our design firm

–      And successfully developed a business model and product for a fictionalized client

This presentation really focused on being able to communicate the business in terms of why it exists, how it can provide for the betterment of society and the process of forecasting possible future scenarios. These are all concepts that are important in both the business and design industries, and whilst working on this pitch I was able to better understand how to apply innovation in the real world. I also was able to understand how crucial it was to apply design thinking in businesses and to work in collaboration with a diverse group of people.

Group work has not always been my strongest point, as I like to work as an individual. But looking at the way most businesses are structured, it is evident that working in a collaborative environment is much more beneficial, especially when it comes to producing design outcomes. Innovative thinkers such as Tim Brown help to emphasize this importance.

I think that our design firm Next, worked well to cater for the needs of the population in the given scenario. We looked at what the consumer needed and produced a service that would make life easier for them through the use of innovative technology. A downside to this product however was the fact that we did extensive market research into the clients customer base and looked only into markets that concerned the retail industry. I think that as a design firm situated in the future, our products would have been more meaningful if we had looked at what the society needed rather than just the needs of a certain market. More radical innovations can be made when businesses and design firms look at the whole picture- that is, the needs of society and the way forward for the community as a whole.

Without Competitive advantage Innovate Design is Meaningless

When working on the business pitch, the importance of having a competitive edge in both the design solution and business strategy became increasingly apparent. There are many ideas out there and businesses and designs start to become similar due to the diverse immensity of all the ‘stuff’. Without a plan to innovate competitive advantage in a design of a product, service or experience, the overall business can become boring quite quickly and the market looses interest.

The design of our product ‘Changing Rooms’ however, is an innovative idea that we hope to see become a necessity. A service to customers that will change the way they shop online through the medium of a virtual shopping interface. This is the type of innovation that does not become boring quickly as it is a useful tool for so many people, and becomes a necessity to a majority market made up of online shoppers. It also opens up the possibility to attract new markets, such as people who shop only at physical stores.

When the mobile phone first came out it was a radical innovation. Now that everyone is using smart phones you can see that it has come a long way and phone companies are constantly refreshing their designs. Looking into the future, it is crucial for the design firm Next to keep refreshing this service, because although it will become a necessity to online shoppers and revolutionize the shopping experience, it is a service that will keep having to refresh its image and develop even further as people’s expectations rise.

World of 2030

Quadrant: accelerated growth of population, slow advances in technology

Presenting my world

Quadrant: accelerated growth of population, slow advances in technology 

Hi I’m Lisa, Director of the design firm Next. Isn’t 2030 shaping up to be a good year!? As seen in recent years, the population has seen yet another huge increase in growth. The Research and Development Team have new figures showing Australia’s population today sitting at approximately 35 million!! Isn’t that a crazy figure, compared to the 25million that was projected a decade ago? But a lot has changed since 2020, I mean we started seeing changes long before then in the year 2010 when the world started running out of natural resources and then a few years later this depletion started to have an affect and slow down the rate of growth in technological advancements.

In the past decade and a half we have seen incremental technological growth, so many people have lost faith in technology and are no longer excited because they have not seen any new technologies, products or services that have made much of a difference to their lives. This had a major impact on the economy, many businesses had to shut down because they no longer had the resources to keep operations going or their products and services became redundant in the new economy. When the cost of petrol sky rocketed, people stopped driving cars altogether and the car industry just plummeted. There were however positive aspects especially for the environment. We started to see a shift in the market where people were more ecologically minded and conscious of environmental factors and their well being when it came to making consumer decisions. The price factor or the consumer driven by price no longer comprised the majority of the market and the altruist consumer emerged and started to take over!

This is where firms like Next were able to successfully enter into the industry to help business take on challenges to adapt to this new environment and rekindle the relationship between people and technology whilst still keeping in mind the new concept of the altruist consumer.

Next is an interdisciplinary design collective which design concepts and experiences that use the technology and available resources in a sustainable way to help connect businesses with their market, and essentially build a strong and meaningful relationship with their consumers. With so many people in the world today, who are all developing an eagerness to support the natural environment and less interested in the ordinary technology advancements, businesses must take on board this new type of market and recognise that there is a definite opportunity to bring technology back to the forefront of design by easing it back into people’s lives in a meaningful way.

A recent and major project developed by my team and running smoothly is the sky bridges development. To cater for overpopulation the city had to restructure itself by constructing enormous buildings that were around 900metres tall. This however did not solve the congestion problem as people were still finding the streets to be overcrowded and difficult to navigate due to the immense capacity of users. Next was able to work alongside the construction company Gledhill to produce footbridges that connected the buildings together, so that people could travel from one suburb to another easily without having to go all the way to the ground floor. So these sky bridges created new pedestrian zones and relieved some of the congestion but more importantly it also became a product, which highlighted the benefits of sustainable technology in design. They are made up of translucent solar panels, that is energy efficient but also extremely beautiful to look at especially from the streets below. This is only one example of the many design solutions that we at Next have successfully implemented to address the fact that there are more people in the world, but we can still excite them even without new technologies if we have the right motivation and that is to create meaningful designs!

All four future scenarios

I believe within our natu…

I believe within our nature is a fine balance between wanting to create wealth (entrepreneurship) and distribute wealth (philanthropy). Good business generates both.

– LuAnne Speeter

The context economy: Integrating service, product and connectivity

Many contemporary films and literature depict the future as a dystopian society where technology has advanced to the detriment of human beings. However there are many insightful educational papers and research that predict a different scenario, where the advancement of new digital technologies contribute to the health and wellness of individuals, and builds connected communities who live in a more sustainable economy and environment.

The 21^st century is defined not by mass consumption but by mass creativity, as we have new technologies that allow people to explore greater expression, create personalised experiences, and gain more knowledge through easy accessible and accurate information systems[1]. Furthermore these technologies are matched alongside social networking and community enhancing websites, which opens up new ways of sharing resources and living in a more sociable and connected community.

Imagine…

You now live in an economy based on information, services, experiences and solutions, in and through specific contexts. You value being able to customize this in a way that is personal and fitting to you, as an individual or as a group. Living as you do in a context economy, value is based on customization, adaptability and transformation [2].

Entering into a context economy means that ambient technologies become embedded into our everyday lives and instead of consuming goods and services, people are able to live with it side-by-side as it supports and facilitates daily living[3].

Making Future Magic is a short film collaboration by Dentsu London and Timo Arnall. It looks at a not too distant future where media is able to travel freely onto surfaces of everyday life and therefore can speak more frequently and quietly[4]. This film takes into account how social networking and the media have become a huge part of people’s daily lives, and as technologies continue to advance, it shows the possibility that these mediums can be highly integrated into ordinary objects. The products that are depicted in the film successfully portray the type of technologies that are now entering into the context economy where service, product and connectivity are all combined to create personalised experiences.

Don Norman discusses some of the dangers of intelligent devices and how future design should be focused on developing an optimal relationship between humans and machines. Making Future Magic is interesting because it shows a high integration of smart technology but it is not a dangerous integration, as the technology can co-exist with humans in an intimate and meaningful setting. This is the type of innovative thinking that businesses should implement when looking at technology as a means to innovate, and to understand that products are no longer valuable to consumers as much as the experience.

---

[1] Green, J. 2007, ‘Democratizing the future: Towards a new era of creativity and growth by Josephine Green’, paper presented to the IIT Institute of Design Strategy Conference, 17-18^th May 2007.

[2] ibid 1

[3] Ibid 1

[4] Jack Schulze . 2010. Media Surfaces: Incidental Media. [ONLINE] Available at: http://berglondon.com/blog/2010/11/03/media-surfaces-incidental-media/. [Accessed 04 July 12].

Making future magic: Incidental Media

 

Pundits and industry insi…

Pundits and industry insiders expect smart cities to become a sizable market, with projections of nearly $40 billion spent on smart-cities technologies by 2016. And real estate experts predict that smart cities will in the future be attractive to the educated work force and will therefore become real-estate gold.

– The Top 10 Smart Cities On The Planet | Co.Exist: World changing ideas and innovation