This article was originally published as part of a series for Core77.

This series has been an introduction to Takram as a design innovation studio, and Pendulum Thinking, the mental framework within which we leverage the creative methodologies of Prototyping, Storyweaving, and Problem-Reframing to iterate concepts, ideas, and future visions by continually oscillating between the reference points of context, user and product.

We have reached our final instalment in our series, an introduction to the methodology of Problem Reframing and how we approach the ‘problem-solution’ dynamic. Where the nature of a problem is not fully crystalised but an iterative investigation into a situation or context; where, as is the nature of discovery, the process reveals new information that impacts upon the focus, direction and ambitions of the project.

Problem-reframing means getting to the root of why designers ask questions

During the project’s progress, one should always be mindful of the ‘problem’s resolution’ and check whether the problem appears to be clear and precise, or vague and uncertain. In the case of the latter, one should first work on shifting the emphasis from the solution back to the problem.

— Kinya Tagawa, Founder of Takram

While many problems can be solved by a trial and error process if KGIs and KPIs for the project can be benchmarked within & without the organisation, some problems cannot be treated as absolute and definitive. Encountering these scenarios in the course of our work resulted in a specific methodology to advance problems that cannot be solved by simply answering the question at hand.

In a previous instalment, we mentioned our work on the Shenu Hydrolemic System (see How Prototyping Can Be Used as a Critical Thinking Tool to Visualise Future Unknowns), which was to design the “ultimate water bottle” for a dilapidated future earth scenario where resources, including water, are scarce.

We initially approached this project from a design perspective, investigating new and potential new technologies, and designing to this future scenario and context. The resulting concepts were either reasonable and functional, if not particularly exciting, or outlandish and improbable, but lacking in spirit and uniqueness necessary to broach the gap between reality and imagination that such a premise demanded.

Needless to say, the approach of tackling an engineering problem from a design perspective is difficult to fulfil if one insists on working inside one discipline.

— Kinya Tagawa, Founder of Takram

In trying, but ultimately failing, to reconcile an advanced water bottle with a compelling future vision that included 100 years of technological progress, we had hit an impasse. While the methodologies of Prototyping and Storyweaving — the acts of thinking and making, and the oscillation between concrete and abstract — had allowed us to construct a relevant future context and design ‘advanced water bottles’, they were the resulting answers to the question posed in the brief. This realisation saw us begin to question the nature of the ‘problem’ as presented; is the ‘problem’ itself limiting our own creative endeavour?

By reframing the problem to approach it from a more abstract position, we were able to pose questions for which the answers had been taken for granted at the outset of the project; why does a human need a water bottle in the first place?

The resulting Shenu Hydrolemic System not only fulfilled the brief, but also gave us two important discoveries that have benefitted subsequent projects; the quality of a solution depends upon the quality of the problem, and problems as presented can themselves silently block the mind or cloud judgement. Being unaware of this limitation can stall the entire process, and being cognisant that the information presented will be limited, it is therefore worth spending the time and energy necessary to examine its precision; is the brief addressing the underlying challenge that the business and/or project seeks to overcome?

Problem-Reframing can only be strengthened by insights

As is the nature of our oscillating methodologies, Problem-Reframing, much like Prototyping and Storyweaving, is an ongoing process that is implemented continuously and repetitively to drive a project forward. However, while ‘story’ and ‘prototype’ are the resulting elements of a project, the ‘problem’ will always be the starting point for these iterative elements, and thus has the power to determine the directionality, and ultimately success, of a project.

Problem & solution are the polarities of Problem Reframing’s oscillating pendulum whereby we’re continually questioning the brief and the potential for contextual solutions to ensure the problem is precise, accurate, and well defined. Even if the problem has been decided upon, it never becomes absolute, but continues to be refined and adjusted as it remains in perpetual comparison to the quality of its solution.

When subsequently confronted with projects that are atypical or hard to base on previous experience, we have found value in Problem Reframing to ensure we explore the most relevant perspectives. Alongside our own exposure to the problem and its potential solutions, our conjectures are supplemented by further anecdotal information resulting from the interviews we conduct as part of our Storyweaving process. Performing interviews like these can generate large amounts of contextual information, which enables us to examine the consistencies and contradictions, while also uncovering constituent elements of the problem that can influence both the nature of the underlying challenge and the potential for robust problem solving.

By continuing to modify the problem, we modify the solution, and by considering the parameters of thought as flexible and limitless instead of established, as is typically the case when progressing on a linear problem to solution journey, we are able to think freely, which allows greater room for the breakthroughs necessary to deliver transformative innovations where there is no established benchmark for functionality or experience.

Problem-Reframing requires looking through multiple lenses

As touched upon in our introduction to Pendulum Thinking, the ability to confidently traverse different disciplines is an empathetic mindset of Takram members and the foundation upon which we approach problem-solving.

We term this ability “Trans-Shift”, which is achieved when a person is well-versed in numerous different fields and can perceive a challenge from a variety of different angles to generate a 3-dimensional or compound understanding of the problem. In essence, an answer or solution cannot be precise, comprehensive or robust if the problem is approached from a single perspective. When employing this technique however, one must be aware of the transcendental viewpoint versus the day-to-day reality of operational management. We address this with the term “Meta-Shift”, which is the ability to see the problem in its entirety (bottom up and top down).

Meta-Shift is the metacognition necessary to navigate internal politics, hierarchies, timelines, and responsibilities of an organisation to question the underlying thinking of a project brief, which ensures the project is asking (and answering) the RIGHT questions necessary to deliver the overarching ambitions of the business as opposed to any fragmented or incremental value.

Such compound problems & scenarios require compound individuals to manage the different pressures and considerations that naturally arise. Otherwise known as Design Engineers, Takram is built upon this behaviour.

Our Design Engineers are hybrid talents with the ability to view a problem from a design, engineering, business and user perspective, rapidly deconstruct a problem, achieve clarity in where potential solutions or directions might lie, and advance, pivot or entirely reframe the problem to the benefit of the overall project. This form of compound vision is achieved over the course of many years of project experience, and the exposure to conflicting situations where design ambitions and technological capabilities are often at odds. Many companies build teams to deliver such compound perspectives, whereas Takram strives to achieve this level of stereopsis within individual members.

Over the last 14 years, we have often encountered situations requiring us to engage neighbouring experts for their opinion, advice, and perspectives to effectively deconstruct and frame a problem, and project members benefit immensely from this input, particularly if their hypothesis is firmly grounded within their own specialism.

Of course, different experts will have a tendency to rely upon their own specialism to discuss a problem, typically including language and terminology specific to their field, thus Prototyping and Storyweaving facilitate the multi-faceted conversations around hypothesis or concept, and it is during this discourse that the moment of Problem-Reframing arrives. When one is able to establish the problem in a way that transcends different domains, responsibilities, and considerations involved in the project, it is in these instances that our methodologies come together to deliver creative problem solving unattainable in more cascading processes where potential frictions are not addressed effectively and in real time.

The significance of Problem Reframing lies in finding a new problem by repeatedly shifting between problem and solution. In other words, it is the act of finding a new problem by layering the repetition of Trans-Shift over the repetition of Meta-Shift, and when they overlap, we bring in Prototype and Story to further augment the power of Problem-Reframing.

— Kinya Tagawa, Founder of Takram

All three methodologies grounded in Pendulum Thinking were developed in search for values that are yet discovered. Oftentimes, when one is unsure of what to create, how to create it, or what the solution might look like, there can be a tendency to avoid the underlying question entirely, but by reframing the question from a point of learned experience, any challenges or barriers can be confidently circumvented without losing sight of the overall ambitions of the project.

Though a mountain may be conquered from different paths, it is the goal of Takram to demonstrate our own unique direction, subsumed in the idea that Takram’s existence is itself a hypothesis and a prototype towards discovering and deploying new values.

— Kinya, Founder of Takram

By confronting these types of projects and breaking new ground with new thinking, we contribute not only to our own growth as individuals and as an agency, but to the growth of society as a whole.

Read the Takram Pendulum Thinking Series in full:

The Future of Now: Introducing Takram

Pendulum Thinking: How Reimagining Design Roles Can Transform the Product Development Process

How Prototyping Can Be Used as a Critical Thinking Tool to Visualize Future Unknowns

Storyweaving: How to Merge Prototyping with Storytelling to Develop Future-Proof Designs

Problem Reframing: Solutions Are Only as Good as the Problems They Solve

Problem Reframing: Solutions Are Only as Good as the Problems They Solve was originally published in Takram Stories on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Takram’s method rethinks the definition of “concept” to keep product development open and malleable from beginning to end

This article was originally published as part of a series for Core77.

Takram’s series for Core77 is an introduction to our global design innovation studio and the concept of Pendulum Thinking, which is the mental framework in which we deploy our creative methodologies; Prototyping, Storyweaving and Problem-Reframing.

While we may be introducing our methodologies in a linear series, it’s worth mentioning that they are not linear in deployment or process but are, themselves, oscillating within the creative mindset of Pendulum Thinking, working in perpetual unison to relentlessly consider product, service, experience or vision in its wider context.

By regarding our methodologies as a coherent group, we are able to base our approaches on a consistent ideology, in all levels of abstraction (prototype/concept/problem) within our projects.

— Kotaro Watanabe, Managing Partner & Context Designer at Takram. Author of Storyweaving.

The second of our methodologies is “Storyweaving”, which is a pendulum that swings between the concrete decisions of the project team and the more abstract requirements of engaging multiple perspectives into why a product, feature, or experience is valid and valuable. It prepares the stage for both conceptual prototyping and physical prototyping by allowing for the interplay between abstract and concrete aspects of a problem to stimulate further ideation and enhancements, or potentially redirecting the entire process based upon newly formulated narratives.

Why storytelling matters in the design thinking process

While prototyping is fundamental for design presentations, user testing and validation, it lacks an essential ability to communicate the essential question of ‘why’ a particular product or service is necessary. In situations where we need to facilitate a tacit and unarticulated understanding within — and without — the project team to leverage further value from our work, we turn to the tradition of storytelling to provide necessary context about the concept or prototype without losing sight of our overall objective.

A story supports the conceptual-side of a project, providing meaning and reason to its various constituents… A large organisation is made up of people from different backgrounds, responsibilities, concerns and interests. Naturally, these people also hold different thoughts, motivations, and perspectives towards a project.

— Kotaro Watanabe, Managing Partner & Context Designer at Takram. Author of Storyweaving.

Storyweaving is a process through which we continually refine the initial concept to achieve a better understanding. It arose following a number of occurrences where the interplay between abstract and concrete during prototyping enabled the project teams to identify new directions that challenged the typical notions of ‘concept’; that of either being a manifesto, theme or idea that remains consistent throughout the project process, or post-rationalisation after product creation to retrofit the final solution to a revised ‘initial’ concept.

Both manifesto-driven and post-rationalisations unwittingly limit the ability to realise the full value of a project because preconceptions can result in a concept rapidly becoming the one and only ‘answer’.

We started to recognise that the typical notion of ‘concept’ limited our potential or compromised the result, we began to speculate on improvements to the way ‘concept’ could be treated during the design process. We determined that, in order to arrive at a precise solution, we needed to consider the object or product in both its existing and future contexts

If the concept is finalised at the beginning of a project, it’s rare that the final solution corresponds word-for-word with the original concept. In many cases, the final product often fails to deliver against the ideals detailed at the outset. In others, a product or prototype that might have more potential will be constrained by conforming to the limits of the initial concept framework.

On the other hand, when post-rationalising a project, the unexpected consequences can be content that doesn’t correspond with actual events, or functionality that isn’t cohesive to the overall experience, while the lack of a clear direction that requires post-rationalisation often suggests that any apparent irregularities will more than likely be matched by those not immediately evident.

As we started to recognise that the typical notion of ‘concept’ limited our potential or compromised the result, we began to speculate on improvements to the way ‘concept’ could be treated during the design process. We determined that, in order to arrive at a precise solution, we needed to consider the object or product in both its existing and future contexts by constructing the abstract side of product development alongside the tangible representation of product creation (prototyping).

This investigation resulted in ‘Storyweaving’, which is the metaphysical framework through which we subsume the notion of ‘concept’ to that of ‘story’.

An introduction to “Storyweaving”

In large organisations with multiple stakeholders and different responsibilities, it’s hardly surprising that perspectives rarely, if ever, result in a common ideological platform everyone can agree on, whereas story engenders reason and significance to various elements that might constitute a project.

Storyweaving oscillates in much the same way around the idea of concept; it is possible — imperative, even — to keep ‘concept’ malleable to allow for the project as a whole to be progressively improved through each iteration of story and prototype.

Through Storyweaving, the initial concept is treated purely as a springboard, which can be as little as a collection of words, phrases or prosaic one-line sentences that reflect the potential of the project but aren’t necessarily enough to express the full scope of opportunities. The story originates from this springboard, and after subsequent modifications and iterations, materialises as a systemic and composed prose that extrapolates the ideological core of the project, product or object.

Analogous to the way representational prototyping makes possible the straightforward trial-and-error in design, Storyweaving as an abstract machination has similar significance in that it arises from the belief that an idea does not need to be perfect from the start. While prototyping serves to provide specifications for a real, working system and iterations subsequently refine, improve, polish and enrich its contents, Storyweaving oscillates in much the same way around the idea of concept; it is possible — imperative, even — to keep ‘concept’ malleable to allow for the project as a whole to be progressively improved through each iteration of story and prototype.
In Storyweaving, concept development happens simultaneously with product developmentundefined

Story cannot exist on its own as the “conceptual” result of product development. It is only discovered through reciprocity and parallel maturation with the process of prototyping — making ideas tangible alongside developing a mutual understanding among all those involved in a project.

To put it differently, the story itself is gradually cultivated in parallel to the evolution of prototypes, with the will “to make” and “to narrate” mutually forming to complement and elevate one another during the product development process.

As a complement to prototyping, Storyweaving ensures that different members within different departments understand the purpose and ambitions of both prototype and overall project by addressing key questions, such as:

“How might we convey the values and ideas that lie behind the experiences delivered through a single product?”

“How can we tell if a product is consistent with the company’s long-term management policy and philosophy?”

“What does this business represent and how does this product, service or experience fulfill that ambition?”

Thus, the question is how this reciprocity is catalysed within and without an organisation. In order to weave a story, we conduct top-down (Executive), bottom-up (on-site workers and day-to-day management) and key figure (industry thought-leaders, but generally external to the organisation) interviews to tap into the unspoken thoughts, ideas, knowledge that exist within and without the organisation. These are central to the substance of the story we craft around the prototype. In addition to interviews, we conduct multiple ideation workshops with the interviewees, repeating the process of divergence, convergence and abstraction necessary to distill the essence of an idea. A story begins to be woven as we move the project forward by combining these ideation sessions, workshops and other creative stimulus.

While prototyping and Storyweaving are intertwined in the development journey, the value of story extends beyond product to simplify the collaborative process with those engaged in creative tasks, such as planning, branding and marketing. Effective communication — of a brand, product or service — relies upon driving an emotional connection with the audience; Storyweaving extends the sales & marketing brief beyond features and benefits to develop a mutual understanding among all those involved in bringing a product, service, or vision to market.

Naturally, and as is typical of most creative processes, the concept of Storyweaving continues to be woven. From interweaving the concrete and the abstract elements within the project team and the confines of the organization, the propagating power of story has seeped into the consumer mindset. With the advent of the subscription economy, we are already witnessing the age where the sale of a product can no longer be considered the completion of the business cycle. Instead, consumers are in a position to influence the story, becoming co-authors that weave and edit the story for themselves.

Read the Takram Pendulum Thinking Series in full:

The Future of Now: Introducing Takram

Pendulum Thinking: How Reimagining Design Roles Can Transform the Product Development Process

How Prototyping Can Be Used as a Critical Thinking Tool to Visualize Future Unknowns

Storyweaving: How to Merge Prototyping with Storytelling to Develop Future-Proof Designs

Problem Reframing: Solutions Are Only as Good as the Problems They Solve

Storyweaving: How to Merge Prototyping with Storytelling to Develop Future-Proof Designs was originally published in Takram Stories on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This article was originally published as part of a series for Core77.

Very much like the action of a Pendulum in its continual motion, the methodologies of “Prototyping”, “Storyweaving” and “Problem-reframing” allow for context to constantly inform product innovation; without context informing product development, true value creation will always remain elusive.

— Kinya Tagawa, Founder of Takram

Oscillating within Takram’s Pendulum Thinking framework, Prototyping is a pendulum that swings between the concrete act of ‘making’ and the abstract of ‘thinking’.

Traditional manufacturing typically relies upon prototyping at the end of the design phase to check for flaws and review the manufacturing process, refining as necessary to benchmark deliverables before entering final production. It’s seen as a means to enhance quality and minimise risk by crystallising a proven, working design, the goal being to cascade through final production as efficiently as possible.

But as products and services become more complex and complicated, prototyping should increasingly be treated as a critical thinking tool within the creative process; not only as a means to test and validate features, but as a procedure to question hypotheses and pivot on insight, and to provide an opportunity to review aspects otherwise too difficult to quantify.

For Takram, prototyping enables different project stakeholders to discuss increasingly abstract ideas and concepts beyond the constraints of their own anecdotal experience and imagination. By presenting ideas and concepts physically instead of verbally, in tangible forms instead of graphic representations, and as early in the process as possible, we can communicate and align on a product’s value and appeal, not only within our own teams, but also with external stakeholders, such as clients and investors.

A picture is worth a thousand words, and an experience is worth a thousand pictures.

— Kinya Tagawa, Founder of Takram

An argument for a more open-ended prototyping process

Prototyping allows our project team to become the first actual users of a new product. By transcending their own reference to experience a product from a user’s standpoint, the team can engage their own specialties more efficiently to address new challenges or tasks, as physical iterations often reveal new insights, unforeseen frictions, or hidden opportunities. Such immediate user feedback also enables critical challenges to be nipped in the bud, which ultimately enhances the quality of our final product.

Although the term ‘design thinking’ (as referenced in Pendulum Thinking) might suggest a sort of brainstorming or ideation technique, its essence lies in prototyping and the interplay between abstract and concrete, ideation and physical manifestation.

Creative innovation emerges during this interplay, and methods like prototyping and brainstorming are merely catalysts. Rather than mistakenly viewing prototyping as a way to translate ideas into physical form, we recognise prototyping as a trigger for ideation and an opportunity to think beyond the initial hypothesis.

However, prototyping and ideation are not quite the same. Where they differ is in the feasibility that prototyping promises. Ideation is only constrained by imagination, whereas prototyping is a physical manifestation of an idea in as close approximation to the final experience as possible; if the idea appears unrealistic to the point where a prototype can’t be made, it might be discarded, but it’s in these moments where feasibility and imagination clash that seemingly unrealistic ideas can reveal new directions. By using prototyping within a broader ideation framework, we remain free from any fixed notions of feasibility to broaden our horizons to future possibilities that might have been discarded if we restricted ideas to only those that are immediately feasible.

One such example might be our recent work with Moovel Lab on a human mobility pod. To satisfy our increasing urban mobility needs, we were tasked with developing a system to take advantage of underutilised space on existing freight carriers and logistics providers. To answer the brief, we designed several personal mobility pod prototypes that incorporated many key features we deemed necessary to aid passenger comfort, answering questions, such as: How can I work? How do I know where I am? What happens in an emergency? How do I use the bathroom?

Not intended to be realised as a public offering, instead to feature as part of Moovel Lab’s ongoing research into new ideas, roles, contexts and approaches for the future of mobility, the prototypes helped us to address immediate opportunities by looking towards a more speculative future.

And that is where prototyping really comes into its own; speculating on an unknowable future, envisioning and guiding us towards possibilities that could happen. A metaphor we might apply to prototyping is that of a sonar; by constantly testing theories and hypothesising against the backdrop of user-experience, prototyping gradually reveals a new landscape, making questions more tangible and real, revealing new questions and allowing for these to be addressed in real-time.

How Speculative Design prototyping can activate radical design thinking

Fundamental for some of the emerging design disciplines, such as ‘Speculative Design’ where the goal of a project is to raise further questions rather than solve a defined or specific problem, prototyping delivers an accessible reference for further discussion, further ideation, redefining the problem, and helps to broaden the scope of design to tackle some of the biggest issues in society, such as climate change, financial crises or even global pandemics.

One such project is our work to create the Shenu: Hydrolemic System in answer to an exhibition brief to design a water bottle for a hypothetical, dilapidated earth environment one hundred years in the future.

We determined the idea of a ‘water bottle’ presumes an abundance of water necessary to fill it, which was certainly not the case in our future scenario, so pivoting from water storage to focus on water retention, we came to hypothesise that by minimising water lost through typical bodily functions, we could effectively minimise overall water consumption. Reframing the problem as such allowed us to reclassify the human body as the water container, which led to the concept of designing ‘artificial organs.’

Based upon the premise of the body as a water container, we used ‘cold’ mock-ups to imagine and provoke discussions on future technologies, which resulted in products including nasal cavity inserts, waste-water repurposing suppositories, heat transference and energy generation equipment, as well as a range of daily supplements to deliver the minimum necessary hydration, hormones and nutrients to survive our arid new world.

As mentioned, it’s important a prototype manifests an experience that’s as close to the realities of the final product or interface as possible, but as products become more advanced and complex, it’s becoming harder to solve problems through traditional approaches, like sketching and ‘dirty’ prototyping. While engineering-led businesses are often too serious and rigid in what they’re making, design-led firms sometimes lack the ability to create tangible prototypes that demonstrate the actual product experience, even if the rendering may ‘look’ suitably realistic. Takram’s ability to deploy expertise across many different fields without having to differentiate between software and hardware, design and engineering, digital and physical allows us to efficiently create all types of prototype, even integrating methodologies and techniques to better share the same experience and sensibility within the team and with other stakeholders.

A car navigation & management system we developed for Toyota’s concept car, the NS4 introduced at the 2012 Detroit Motor show, is a good example. Programmed using Flash and improvised with the latest (at the time) touchscreen technology (before we had ready access to advanced prototyping technology), the prototype experience was tailored to closely resemble the final mass-production model, to the point where show-goers could sit in the driver’s seat and experience the Head-Up Display (HUD) and user-interface.

While not as elaborate as a full concept car and using all sorts of ‘non’ Toyota technology, the value of such a prototype is in replicating the user experience rather than focusing on the finer details of hardware and software design.

Getting a minimum viable product into the market as quickly as possible is the typical ambition for many clients. But when we’re asked to speculate five, ten, fifty years into the future where there is no immediate market opportunity and technological advancements are that much harder to replicate in a physical form, we turn to storytelling to reflect upon possible futures. While it’s important to share the physical experience via a working prototype wherever and as much as possible, when the distance between prototype and final product becomes a barrier to sharing a mutual experience or vision, an accompanying story — a movie, supplementary film, a graphic storyboard — can act as a vehicle for some of the more complex aspects of the prototype or future context.

In this sense, prototyping is not simply a process for developing commercial products or services but is an opportunity to render visions of society’s future. A powerful tool for stakeholder engagement within the context of a known problem or vision, but when the question is as amorphous for the client as it is for us, we found that it lacks something fundamental; the ability to communicate the essential question of why a particular product or service is necessary.

In our next feature, we will introduce Takram’s second methodology, ‘Storyweaving’, which is the process of “prototyping for a concept” by aligning the values, ideas, ambition for a product or service with that of a company or organisation’s longterm management policy and philosophy.

Read the Takram Pendulum Thinking Series in full:

The Future of Now: Introducing Takram

Pendulum Thinking: How Reimagining Design Roles Can Transform the Product Development Process

How Prototyping Can Be Used as a Critical Thinking Tool to Visualize Future Unknowns

Storyweaving: How to Merge Prototyping with Storytelling to Develop Future-Proof Designs

Problem Reframing: Solutions Are Only as Good as the Problems They Solve

How Prototyping Can Be Used as a Critical Thinking Tool to Visualise Future Unknowns was originally published in Takram Stories on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

As we shift from analog products driving the global economy to digital experiences, product development requires a new breed of design thinker

This article was originally published as part of a series for Core77.

To put it simply: Pendulum Thinking overcomes the tension between design and engineering, speculative thinking and tangible concepts, future vision and real-world applications to result in robust, efficient, transformative product development.

Over the years, we’ve transitioned through five different ‘generations’ of product design — Hardware, Electronics, Software, Network, and Service — each resulting in effective and efficient development processes that become the benchmark or norm. But as we shift from analog products driving the global economy to digital experiences leveraging data as currency, product development requires a new breed of design thinker to overcome the inertia that can plague more established development processes.

Design thinking is a human-centered approach to innovation that draws from the designer’s toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success.

— Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO.

A solutions-based approach that follows a relatively linear trajectory via product and feature iterations to market-ready (market viable) solutions, design thinking stems from software, network and service design. While a solid platform for needs-based iterations, and increasingly embraced by the business world to unlock competitive advantage, transformative innovation requires the ability to simultaneously manage and consider all elements of product and experience design, including hardware, electronics, software, network, and service innovation to realize the full value of a project or initiative.

The merging of design thinking, and business strategy is typified by the convergence of management consultancies and design agencies. Paradoxically, acquisitions by the likes of Accenture and the launching of IBM “iX” and Deloitte Digital to leverage ‘design’ is matched by some of the largest and most well-regarded design consultancies, such as IDEO and Ogilvy, stepping back from the actual ‘doing’ of design to focus more on their consultancy work.

So, what does this mean for clients? Are they engaging a management consultancy or a design agency? Are these ‘hybrid’ agencies solving problems or communicating solutions? Meaning is becoming more important than function, so it might make sense to bring consultancy and communications together, but where does this leave the actual ‘doing’ of design?

Today, the creative process requires the organic integration of multiple specialties and expertise, calling for us to cross the boundaries of various disciplines. Instead of handling the elements separately, we must consider them as an integrated whole, and connect and weave them together to tackle complexity without simplification.

— Kinya Tagawa, Founder of Takram

The issue with convergence is the more complicated the problems hybrid agencies are tasked with solving, the more departments, stakeholders, and egos typically become involved, which is not so much ‘a problem shared’ but more justifying an agency or department fee. As projects have become more abstract or complex and stakeholder priorities diverge the further downstream the development journey, projects can become mired in office politics, resulting in inertia and a potentially compromised final product.

We’re no longer living in an age where success can be achieved merely by fulfilling tangible needs and solving obvious problems. We frequently find ourselves confronting ‘insoluble problems’… We must recognize the inherent risks in presuming that the once-established problems and projects are irreversible, and to blindly advance the project through a ‘waterfall’ sequence”

— Kinya Tagawa, Founder of Takram

Modern innovation requires a different mindset to meet the challenges of today. While the internet has allowed for digital services to remain in a perpetual beta state, products are no longer measured purely by look or specifications, as would befit a ‘waterfall’ approach, but by user-experience that relies upon an integrated and holistic approach to design and engineering and experience that a cascading sequence of activities cannot effectively manage.

And therein lies the rub of applying more traditional development processes, even that of traditional ‘design thinking’, to transformative innovation; when the journey isn’t solutions-based, linear or one-dimensional, product development necessitates a different mindset to navigate the interconnected and divergent requirements of design and engineering, abstract and concrete, speculative and grounded, thinking and making. Such compound problems require a unique expertise to oscillate comfortably between the different requirements of a project while deftly navigating the complexities of an organisation.

We call this ability, Pendulum Thinking, which is an empathetic mindset enabling Takram members to engage multiple different perspectives, departments and disciplines in the course of a project, constantly switching between the role of designer, engineer, and user to facilitate and streamline the development journey.

Effective business leaders will have a similar ability, able to view the panorama of an organisation (from the top down) while navigating the micro-challenges of a department or division (from the bottom up). By approaching a problem from multiple different angles and benefitting from the input of different perspectives, they generate a compound understanding of the wider issues without losing sight of the day-to-day realities.

In a similar fashion, by engaging multiple specialists in the course of our work, each bringing a deep and nuanced understanding and expertise, the exposure to challenges and disciplines beyond our own personal experience gives Takram members the opportunity to continually advance, grow and evolve as design practitioners and, by actively sharing, teaching and dispersing knowledge across the studios, the collective benefits in subsequent projects, which enhances Takram’s capabilities as an agency of transformation.

This is the very essence of Takram and Pendulum Thinking. Able to navigate complex product development challenges, Pendulum Thinking imbues the unique ability to rapidly analyse and deconstruct a problem, considering hardware, electronics, software, network and service implications to generate a multi-faceted understanding and, by extension, possible solutions or workarounds. A hybrid mindset, oscillating between that of vision-maker and problem solver; designer and technical engineer; hypothesising and prototyping rapidly generates a sense of direction in a project when problems (and solutions) are unknown.

Every project is different, and our approach bespoke, but rather than haphazard or random, Pendulum Thinking is the ability to constantly change and re-evaluate, remaining free from any preconceived or fixed notions to deliver a carefully constructed investigation that relies not only on the ebb and flow of personal discourse within the individual, but also on a set of methodologies that facilitate the convoluted journey from problem to solution.

The methodologies that facilitate this journey, “Prototyping”, “Storyweaving” and “Problem-reframing” follow the same mental oscillation between think and make, concrete and abstract, problem and solution.

In the next edition in our series, we will introduce Prototyping and the valuable intelligence we gain from being able to rapidly develop, test and validate ideas, concepts and use-cases in parallel with design and experience to streamline product development.

Read the Takram Pendulum Thinking Series in full:

The Future of Now: Introducing Takram

Pendulum Thinking: How Reimagining Design Roles Can Transform the Product Development Process

How Prototyping Can Be Used as a Critical Thinking Tool to Visualize Future Unknowns

Storyweaving: How to Merge Prototyping with Storytelling to Develop Future-Proof Designs

Problem Reframing: Solutions Are Only as Good as the Problems They Solve

Pendulum Thinking: How Reimagining Design Roles Can Transform the Product Development Process was originally published in Takram Stories on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

By Yosuke Ushigome

Earlier this year, I had an honour of being chosen as Designers of the Future 2018, an award programme by Swarovski. Together with the team at Takram, I presented Home Shrine, a piece that investigates an alternative vision of how we can interact with voice-interactive digital assistants during Design Miami/ Basel. I discussed some of the thoughts and challenges I experienced through the making of it in this month’s Takram Cast.

Home Shrine proposes a more spiritual and subjective interaction with digital assistants

Designers of the Future is an annual award programme by Swarovski where three young designers are chosen to work on the given brief in collaboration with the company. The final pieces not only use the crystal but are inspired by the technology of Swarovski and the cultures that are associated with the crystal itself.

For this year, Frank Kolkman, Study O Portable and I were chosen with the theme Smart Home — a theme that aims to explore the role of crystals within the home, a place that is rapidly transforming into a very technological environment.

I displayed the final project, Home Shrine, at Design Miami/ Basel. The work portrayed my alternative vision of how we might be able to communicate with digital assistants such as Amazon Alexa, Google Home or Siri. In contrast to these existing digital assistants, with Home Shrine, I proposed a more spiritual and subjective interaction, rather than the data-heavy and objective prediction output that digital assistants currently make, through an interactive prototype of the shrine, crystal and animation that narrated my idea behind the installation.

With the interactive prototype, the visitor would be able to stand in front of the crystal, reach their hands to it and enquire for their future such as “What’s my future this Tuesday looking like?”. The crystal in response would say something like, “I can see you swimming in the River Rhine on Tuesday”, implying that it will be sunny on Tuesday. The prediction is based on weather forecasting data, but the data is transformed to a prophecy or future gazing crystal nuanced response, making it sound more subjective. Concurrently, the response also suggests that whether this future becomes true or not is dependent on the user and not the crystal — transferring the responsibility of the prediction result to its users.

For the exhibition, I went further to imagine who might have such digital assistant installed in their homes in the future. Who would be equivalent to such future persona in the modern times? And then I thought audiophiles, people who are obsessed with getting the best quality audio setup, might be interesting to look into. Audiophiles use gold plated cables to connect all their devices, raise their cable off the floor using a tiny plastic stand and do anything to get the best audio quality. With a crystal digital assistant that predicts the future, would it not be natural to have people who are obsessed with maintaining the crystal at its best condition, just as the audiophiles do with their audio equipment?

Thus, we situated the crystal inside a very minimalistic structure that looked like a shelf and placed items such as pile of batteries, white cloth and sanitiser dispenser on other shelves beneath it, imagining the crystal’s user to be giving a regular polishing and offerings of batteries for the crystal — although it clearly does not use batteries.

Culturally mediating between tech and us at home

At Takram, we usually work with people who have some sort of understanding in technology, so working with Swarovski, a company that operates in home decor, jewellery and fashion industry, was interesting yet challenging. When I first started the discussion around the interests I had around UI and UX for digital assistants, we struggled to find a common language or ideas, so we tried to find a conversational ground with them at the early stage of the project. Through a series of discussions with them, we were quite interested in thinking of Swarovski as a potential mediator between technology companies like Google and people who use them, using their various cultural assets. We also liked the idea of bringing in playful aesthetics to familiarise their assets more. And after we found this common ground, the art direction, product design and the interaction design went quite smoothly.

One of the interesting findings I had during the exhibition was that many people were intrigued by the project, but from a very different perspective than what I had intended. With this project, I was interested in having an alternative to “No UI is the best UI” vision where interfaces have all disappeared either within our bodies or to the environment. In such a world, it is likely that we would be doing weird gestures in front of glass walls or talking to ourselves in order to interact with these hidden technologies. However, what the visitors enjoyed from Home Shrine was quite different — they felt that Home Shrine was more humane and warm compared to the existing digital assistants.

With the call for “No UI” world, many of the smart home technologies around us are designed to fade into the background, with often minimal physical and colour features: few examples being the Amazon Alexa with a black cylindrical shape or HomePod by Apple with a black rounded shape. Because of this, one can also see it as being cold — functional but inhumane. Home Shrine was the complete opposite of this — although the response is functional, it has a strong taste to it and the chunky crystal draws attention rather than fading into the background. However, Google is also looking at a very similar direction as Home Shrine with their Google Home products: they are covered in fabric and some with very bright colours, not completely diminishing their existence but rather trying to create its own space within our homes rather than disappear into our furnishing.

In the age of AI, rather than diminishing all interfaces behind the curtain or designing interfaces that show all the technical behind-the-scenes of the system, finding the adequate representation for them is crucial for people who are not familiar with technology — which is a both exciting and challenging responsibility for designers.

This article is edited from our podcast series Takram Cast, which can be heard on Soundcloud, iTunes and other Podcasting services.

Home Shrine Credit

Client: Swarovski
Direction, Concept, Interaction Design: Yosuke Ushigome (Takram)
Product Design: Lukas Franciszkiewicz (Takram)
Prototyping: Jonathan Nesci (Takram)
Animation Collaborator: Mute Animation Studio

About myself

I’m a creative technologist based in London, working as Director at Takram. I make prototypes to facilitate in-depth understanding of the implication of emerging technologies, and encourage better-informed decision-making on our future.

To know more, visit my website.

Designing more relatable AI voice assistants was originally published in Takram Stories on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

By Yosuke Ushigome

I’m scrolling more on the Twitter timeline than I used to.

I felt this in one morning in 2017 when I was browsing the Twitter timeline as usual in the bed, waiting for my brain to wake up (or until I start hating myself for spending so long on Twitter). Though I don’t track how many pixels my finger swipes, this strange feeling of increased scrolling seemed real. It wasn’t like this before. I’m definitely scrolling more on the timeline. I started wondering why. And this is the summary.

I begin with analysing the basic user behaviour in browsing the Twitter timeline by using a habit-forming interaction design model, and then look into recent changes Twitter made in their timeline UI, aiming to reveal what (or who?) is causing this strange feeling.

The Hook Model in Browsing the Twitter Timeline

Why am I so habitually browsing the Twitter timeline in the first place? I signed up in 2008 which is 10 years ago, and I’m still logging in, scrolling the timeline, every single day, multiple times a day. There is literally nothing else that I can think of me doing so such a long time. How am I hooked into this?

The Hook Model introduced by Nir Eyal explains it well. In his book Hooked from 2013, he details how popular digital services use this habit-forming user interaction model. The model illustrates how a user of a digital service forms a habit in using it, in other words, how a user starts using the service with little or no conscious thought. It’s summarised in the diagram below.

The point of this model is in creating a self-reinforcing interaction between a product and a user. Once the user goes through a sufficient number of cycles in a sufficient frequency, the brain forms a circuit between their internal desire and the reward given when the product fulfils the desire. There is no need for £££ advertising. Users spontaneously come back to the product simply by following their internal trigger. Zero-cost retention gain.

Twitter as a service appears many times in the book. The focus here, however, is a micro interaction of scrolling its timeline that I want to analyse through this Hook Model.

Trigger

Trigger is the first step of the Hook Model. It directs the user’s desire towards the solution provided by the product. There is external one and internal one. For potential users or users who are new to the product, external triggers such as advert, notification, and word of month can be considered. On the other hand for ones who have already formed a habitual usage of the product, internal triggers suffice.

Me: moving finger to Twitter’s app icon even before consciously thinking “I don’t want to wake up just yet. Let’s see what’s happened while I was asleep”

Here the vaguest feeling of not wanting to wake up just yet is linked to the following action.

Action

Action is a step done by a user in anticipation of receiving a reward. Launching an app or a browser to see a social media feed, tapping some buttons, scrolling the feed, etc, are all Actions. What’s important here is that the user interface for the required Action is carefully designed in order not to demotivate or distract the user’s desire. UI design techniques such as simple and unmistakable buttons and gesture manners following UI guidelines, are all to shine here.

Me: scrolling the Twitter timeline looking for interesting tweets, images, articles, threads, people etc…

Variable Reward

Variable Reward is a widely used technique in gambling. It’s based on researches done in early 20th century which showed that the frequency of a particular action becomes significantly higher when the probability of a reward given for the action varies than when the reward is given every time the action takes place.

Me: one tweet appears after another from the bottom of the screen. Some are interesting but mostly boring, which nudges me for another action of scrolling…

Investment

Investment is done by a user after receiving the reward, to reinforce the user’s engagement to the service. Typical investments include liking a social media tweets, completing the user profile, and curating the following list. Successful investments increase the value of the product as well as nudge the user to overvalue the product, ultimately closing the circuit between their internal desire and the product fulfilling it.

Me: Liking and retweeting interesting ones and following newly found interesting people, expecting the whole new tweets I will see in the timeline tomorrow (or an hour later)

…well, this shows how happily I am hooked!

Why Am I Scrolling More Recently?

What has changed?

Well, I changed…

My behaviour in internet in general has certainly changed. In the last couple of years I experienced some big changes both at work and at home. How I use Twitter must have been affected by the surrounding environment at any given time. I’m following English-speaking accounts more, tweeting and replying less, browsing more; less personal tweets and more work-related tweets. However, these trends have been persistent since the time before I started feeling the increase in scrolling on the timeline.

But Twitter Changed More

The user interface of Twitter changed significantly. There are many more but here are the ones that I can think of potentially influencing my scrolling behaviour.

• Twitter Cards got expanded in the timeline.
• Max number of characters one can put in a tweet became 280.
• The order of tweets in the timeline became un-chronological.

Through The Hook Model, we can understand how each of these changes affect our behaviour at a very micro level.

Twitter Cards in the Timeline

Twitter Cards is a graphical element included within a tweet which often contains an image, title, excerpt of the webpage linked from the tweet. Example of Twitter Cards is shown below.

Happy 3rd anniversary #TBT! See how "Throwback Thursday" cemented its status as a weekly Twitter tradition: https://t.co/IhGdmShWH6

This used be only expanded and visible when we click a tweet to show its detail. However, sometime in 2016, this started showing in the general timeline too. This change, of course, increases the area that one tweet occupies. Now if I open my Twitter timeline on my 15-inch laptop, I can only see three tweets at a time. Although now I can make decision of whether a page linked from a tweet is worth clicking by simply looking at images and titles, this naturally increases the amount and time of scrolling required to encounter an interesting tweet. In the Hook Model’s cycle, the amount of Actions got bigger to received the Reward.

280 Characters in One Tweet

Twitter has been restricting the number of letters people can input in one tweet with the maximum of 140 characters since the beginning of the service. However they recently doubled it up to 280 characters to enable everyone to “express themselves easily in a Tweet”. Japanese, Korean, and Chinese remain to have the 140 characters cap for their dense writing semantics, but users following English-speaking accounts are affected by this change — another increase in the area that a tweet occupies. Even though this doesn’t mean that every single tweet becomes twice as long as they used to be as their research tells, it’s still an increase. Especially for people like me who doesn’t speak English as their first language but has their timeline filled with English, small increase in the volume does matter. Here again, the Action required to reach the Reward became slightly more difficult to execute.

Non-chronological Timeline

Before, the Twitter timeline was listing every post in reverse-chronological order (new one comes on top of older ones). In 2016, Twitter abandoned this and made the algorithm-based timeline as the default setting. Although they still provide a chance to opt out by unticking “Show the best Tweets first” setting, the number of users who do this must be very small.

Around the same time, a series of replies to one tweet became a combined ‘thread’, pushing the original tweet, which is sometimes days-old, up to the top of the timeline as soon as someone reply to it. Moreover, Likes done by people you’re following are now flowing into the follower’s timeline. Combined with the retweet function, now many many tweets that are not necessarily happening now are shown in my timeline, even though I do opt out from the algorithm-based timeline.

If we apply The Hook Model to this one, it’s the variability of the Reward that’s increased. In a chronological timeline, the probability of one tweet being rewarding decreases as you scroll down to the past, and reaches zero as soon as you hit the tweet you’ve already read. On the other hand with the algorithm-based timeline, or non-chronological timeline with a lot of interrupt, your scrolling Action never stops because you cannot know when to stop and how interesting the next tweet will be.

In short, these three changes are influencing our scrolling behaviour in the following ways:

• Increased amount of Action required to gain a Reward
• Increased Variability in Reward that triggers further Actions

This seems like a set of changes that make one behaviour easier while another more difficult and somehow cancel each other out. But there is one parameter that will be boosted with the combination of them — the time spent on the timeline.

For users like me who have already formed the timeline-browsing habit, there is a set amount of stimulus that the brain needs to be fed with before closing the app. These changes increase the labour required to gain a small part of that stimulus, and at the same time, encourage further labour even if the labour doesn’t result in a success. It is obvious that the time and amount spent for the labour are made greater by these changes. I am forced to scroll more and more, and this influence is happening at a very micro, tacit, and unconscious level of interaction.

Why is Twitter doing this?

Although this influence may well be a byproduct of some changes intended to improve some other parts of the service, there is a clear benefit for Twitter to do this — the more people scroll the timeline, the more likely they see ads.

The 280-characters change mentioned above was symbolic in that Twitter now officially regards users who tweet and express as their primary users. Before, the experience of tweeting was different depending on the language you speak in, as Edward Snowden also pointed out. The 280 characters cap evens out the difference and provides with a universal tweeting experience. Twitter want people to tweet more rather than just browsing and doing nothing. But this should not mean that they can neglect, or worse, exploit users who are browsing the timeline, especially when that behaviour is habitual and difficult to quit.

One of the chapters in Hooked suggests designers to keep the application of The Hook Model within a situation where users have the sense of ownership and don’t feel manipulated by the service. Once people start pausing in the middle of the mindless scrolling and questioning if they’re forced to do so, they can be easily unhooked. Though I don’t have a plan to quit Twitter anytime soon, I hope that this habit is a healthy one.

About myself

I’m a creative technologist based in London, currently working at Takram.
I demystify emerging technologies through prototyping.

To know more, visit my website.

Is Twitter Forcing Me To Scroll More And More? was originally published in Prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

By Yosuke Ushigome

Last week Google has announced various new products — Google Home Max, a home speaker with Google Assistant in; its accompanying device Google Home Mini; Pixelbook, a Chome OS laptop/tablet computer; Pixel 2/XL, the second generation of Google-branded smartphone; Google Clip, an always-on AI-equipped mobile camera that keeps storing best shots of your family (!); and, Google Pixel Buds, their Bluetooth headset with a real-time translation functionality.

Google Pixel Buds is like Apple’s AirPods in a way that they both work with your smartphone via Bluetooth and enable you to talk to the smartphone’s AI assistant which is Siri if you’re in the Apple world, or Google Assistant if you choose to use this new headset with an Android phone. But what brought an applause in the announcement of Pixel Buds was not its Google Assistant demo, but its real-time translation demo. The video below shows how it works (the translation part starts from around 1:00):

To the left you see a woman who wears Pixel Buds and speaks Swedish, and to the right a man who doesn’t wear Pixel Buds and speaks English. When she speaks to him in Swedish, or to Pixel Buds, the Pixel 2 phone in her hand plays back the English translation of what she just said in Swedish. After the man listens to the English, he answers to it in English. Pixel 2 phone captures his speech, automatically translates into Swedish, and plays back the result through Pixel Buds to the woman. The translation part is, of course, handled by Google’s AI-backed translation engine.

On the stage, this function was advertised as “letting you connect with the world around you in a more natural way” and, as you can see in the video, the audience at the event welcomed it. Having supporting 40 languages including Japanese, my Twitter timeline seemed to be welcoming, too.

Well, while it may be a step closer to the universal translation device which many have been dreaming about, I have a problem in how this product works and being advertised.

It’s about the absence of visible translator.

Let’s start with the situation where we have a human interpreter.

Here we have a Swedish speaker (S), an English speaker (E) and an interpreter who speaks both. Obviously the conversation between S and the interpreter is in Swedish and one between E and the interpreter is in English. With the interpreter in between, S and E are positioned symmetrically. Whenever either of them has a concern about a potential misunderstanding, they can talk to the interpreter in their own language and try to resolve it. All communication that happens here is bilateral.

Today you may witness a situation where the interpreter is replaced with the Google Translator app running on a smartphone. The accuracy of its AI-backed translation is simply impressive (though it has an inherently complex issue within its quality and biases). S and E would put the smartphone on a table between them and keep swapping the app’s target language, or prepare two smartphones for two target languages. They can both see and hear their speech get recognised, translated, and spoken in a machine voice, which is getting more and more natural recently. It’s still a bilateral communication in that both can have an equal access to the interpreter, which is in this case a smartphone app.

Let’s introduce Pixel Buds. S wears Pixel Buds and E doesn’t. In between them there is S’s smartphone, Pixel 2. S can still see and hear her speech get recognised, translated, and spoken, just as you saw in the demo video. But what about E?

In the demo, they played back the English-to-Swedish translation result from loud speakers for the event audience. Thanks to that, we all know exactly when the translation happens and when the playback ends. But this isn’t supposed to happen in real-world situations. The English-to-Swedish translation result can only be heard by S who wears Pixel Buds, and the Pixel 2, which would presumably be showing the voice recognition result of E’s English speech, is in S’s hand and not visible to E. E, and all of us who don’t wear Pixel Buds, can never know when, or if at all, our own speech is recognised, translated, and played back. You see the other person wear Pixel Buds but cannot know if it hears you. Here the communication becomes unilateral. This non-wearer’s experience is problematic.

There isn’t such a problem in situations where communication is bilateral, like with a human interpreter, or with a translator app on a table. The two people can equally see and hear how their speech gets precessed, as well as modify the quality of the translation. However, Pixel Buds non-wearers can have no visibility to this translator — in fact, they have no means to verify the existence of such translator.

Non-wearer’s experience is crucial in communication.

Speaking from my personal experience, in cross-language communication, the moment when you find out the other isn’t understanding what you mean is the most communicative moment. You have to cope with the misunderstanding. And the way it resolves or doesn’t resolve often gives you an idea of how much you and the other understand the language, how focused both are, and sometimes even how respectful both are in the conversation.

In Pixel Buds-enabled communication, this kind of insights cannot be gained by the non-wearer. It is because the non-wearer has no access to the translator which plays an huge role in the most part of the process from one’s speech to the other’s understanding. Moreover, this disparity in accessibility automatically occurs when a Pixel Buds wearer starts talking to a non-wearer. The non-wearer is then forced to have a conversation where a door to understanding the other’s language and his or her cultural background is shut (and might also have to pronounce a voice-recognition-friendly, machine-like language). It might feel like talking to a machine, just like it actually is. This seems to have little regard for non-wearers.

If you limit the scope of the application to the mere exchange of the meaning of speeches, Pixel Buds might well do the job. However, I can’t imagine a situation where I don’t have to care the other in face-to-face, cross-language communication. You can’t make friends with people by depriving them of a chance to understand you — same applies to workplace communication like one with oversea clients. Ordering food in a restaurant or talking to a cab driver in a foreign country, a tourist asking you a question on the street… I tend to believe this type of mundane conversations often gives you a glimpse into another culture. But I also understand that there is a need for real-time translation in such situations, among those who think they’re just annoyances.

Pixel Buds can be a very pragmatic tool in such specific occasions. But is it really “letting you connect with the world around you in a more natural way,” let alone being something that liberates you from learning foreign languages, which is often heard when people talk about the dream of a perfect universal translation machine? What is “natural” about a conversation where you don’t have any clue to how you are understood?

Interestingly, there is another Google product that preceded in spurring a similar discussion around the non-wearers experience. It was Google Glass. Though it was obviously a product whose face-to-face interactions such as aesthetics and privacy concern are crucial, the non-wearer’s experience was entirely neglected. You saw them wear Glass but could never know if it captured you. Eventually those Glassholes disappeared and its consumer-facing project is now shelved.

Pixel Buds and Glass have a lot in common when it comes to non-wearer’s experience design, despite their difference in the type of captured data. In fact, Pixel Buds should consider non-wearer’s experience even more if its real-time translation function claims to be helpful in face-to-face communication, in which non-wearers inevitably play an important role.

At the end of the day, we need to wait until Pixel Buds come out and people start using it before giving any judgement in how useful it becomes or if it will spread widely or not. In the meantime, I hope its UX design team realises that the word user doesn’t only refers to the owner of a product, but also people around it.

About myself

I’m a creative technologist based in London, currently working at Takram.
I demystify emerging technologies through prototyping.

To know more, visit my website.