We have moved office. Joe, Alex, James, Timo, and Nick are on holiday this week. Kari, Denise, Andy, Jones and I are taking holiday for some of the week.
Our new office is so big that all-hands now requires people to move to the same space, acting under an unspoken consensus about where that should be. In our old space I could participate in a conversation with anyone without having to move at all.
As I started taking notes for weeknotes, the tiny human that Kari is currently carrying started kicking her in the ribs. Maybe he wanted to be included in weeknotes too.
There is a list of snags for the new space on the whiteboard. It includes things like “EXTRA COAT OF PAINT ON FOOD AREA PROJECTION WALL” and “LIGHT SW. MEETING ROOM SWITCH DOWN TO TURN ON (REVERSE STATE)”. Simon is managing the snags list this week, along with his usual schtick of chivvying projects and people. Andy is putting up lights and hanging shelves, as well as tidying up the old space and returning keys. He has also taken to bringing bacon sandwiches from the Shepherdess for people who want them, which we’re all very pleased about.
Matt Jones is finishing some work for Uinta. Kari is showing Berg 9 to people who might want to make it their own. She is also training Helen, pushing various bits of accounting admin, and doing something that I have written down only as ‘printers’. This could mean anything, really, do I mean SVK printers? Little Printers? the office printers? I should have taken better notes.
Jack is working on the industrial design for Little Printer this week. He has a seemingly bottomless collection of tops in subdued colours with zips, and today he has brought out a grey knit one that I have not seen before.
Matt Webb is fighting off a sickness that he caught from an Australian and taking Jack out for cake.
These weeknotes are coming live from somewhere between Gatwick Airport and Haywards Heath, travelling at about 37mph. Joe and I are on our way to see Future Platforms who are doing some development work with us, and our fortnightly review and planning meetings are quite animated.
340 is the number of words that Betsy the Border Collie from Austria can understand. James Darling has hitch-hiked along the A340 near Aldermaston in Berkshire.
At the end of this week we are migrating to our new studio space. Co-ordinating the move of thirteen people from two locations in short time has been a bit of a challenge, and has involved much hard work from people with larger muscles than I. Here’s a little teaser of how our new space looks and how it’s changed over the last two weeks.
In the midst of packing up, we are still very busy on all projects. Timo, Alex and Matt Jones have been moving around Shoreditch by night filming for Uinta, stopping occasionally to watch footage and talk excitedly about what to shoot next over pizza and cola.
Work on Little Printer and BERG Cloud continues on many fronts. James D, Andy, Denise, Alice and Nick are variously looking at IA, infrastructure, manufacture plans, communications, whilst keeping up with the queries and comments we’ve been receiving via bergcloud.com, which have been super. They’ve have been keeping me, Matt W, increasingly-pregnant Kari and Denise busy in particular. If we haven’t quite got to your email yet we apologise, we’re doing our very best!
In January, Matt W (who you can hear on yesterday’s Radio Roundabout) will be clocking up at least 13,090 miles in the air en-route to a Uinta workshop, before dropping in on CES and meeting people to talk about Little Printer across the US. His itinerary is here if you’d like to catch him. Matt J and Joe will be attending at least the first part of this adventure.
This is a mere fly-by of what we’re up to, as usual, but I must now disappear to pack more things into crates.
Tonight, we are having a traditional Christmas dinner and a thimble of sherry to celebrate a year of good work (which I’ve been lucky enough to be part of for the past 7 months or so). I’ve been informed Matt Jones is bringing party games and Joe Malia may do a dance. I’m bracing myself.
A couple of our favourite clients are in the US, but the time I spend in the country is always filled with workshops. (BERG is based in London, UK, and we travel for product invention workshops.) So I don’t get to spend enough time meeting new folks. It’s time to sort that out!
I’m spending a few weeks travelling next month to meet new BERG clients, and new partners and opportunities for Little Printer.
My itinerary, all in the first weeks of January 2012:
Portland, OR: Wednesday 4th – Monday 9th. The daytimes of Wed-Fri are full already.
CES: Afternoon Tuesday 10th – afternoon Wednesday 11th. I’ve never been to CES before and we don’t have a stand, so if you’d like to meet then please suggest how we do it!
The Bay Area (based in San Francisco): Thursday 12th – Monday 16th. Tuesday will be a travel day.
NYC: Wednesday 17th – late Saturday 21st.
My flights are flexible but that’s basically it.
If you’d like to meet to talk about work or Little Printer or whatever, do drop a line to info@berglondon.com and we’ll get something sorted! Please add a note about what you’d like to chat about and where your office is.
(And, friends in various cities, I can’t wait to see you — let’s make plans!)
After weeks of breathless hyperfunction, the studio has finally decompressed into a state of relative quiescence. This momentary intermission has witnessed a dispersal of people like dandelion seeds riding a collective sigh of relief. Did I really just write that? Jack can be found scaling the spectacular mountains of South Africa while Alice is shrouded in the shadows of York’s historic architecture. Denise spent the early week relaxing amongst the vineyards of Southern France and Nick chose to recuperate in Balham. In front of Battlefield 3 no doubt.
Back in the studio, the Little Printer announcement triggered a wave of public attention that quickly grew to a towering tsunami of electronic enquiries. Zendesk is fast becoming Application Of The Week and customer service is faster becoming a widely held expertise.
Simon has continued to display superhuman project management prowess until today when he conceded the fragility of a mortal shell and bowed out early with an unpleasant sounding cold. He has been involved heavily in pretty much all studio work and continues to be an organisational epicentre from home.
Kari spent the afternoon concurrently introducing Helen to the studio systems and pushing LP emails under the appropriate eyeballs.
Matt Jones is working hard to steer multiple projects for Uinta with one hand while orchestrating proposals and ‘sales’ with the other. It’s like watching Fantasia but with robots and rockets where enchanted brooms once stood.
Alex shifted his attention from creating nicely thought through visual design for Little Printer to nicely thought through visual design for Uinta. He continues to stick rigidly to ‘New Health Century’ when most have failed. Namely, myself.
Denise lends an assured lilt to customer service and continues to carefully broaden Little Printer’s personality.
When not wrapped up in paper suppliers, Andy is working closely with Uri on manufacture and with Durrell and Tom on “the Bridge”. He also attached some LEDs to a pair of gloves which looks well glam and most people thought was proper ace.
Timo has been joined by Alex in Berg 9 this week. It is said that is you listen carefully, at quiet moments in Shoreditch, you can hear the sound of Drum ‘n’ Bass emanating from their lofty tower. I think I saw Alex drag a sub-woofer up there the other day. I hope they’re ok. Timo is working on a proposal for Silverton while editing footage for Uinta and guiding UI thinking.
Matt W is working tirelessly to transform short emails into long phone calls and casting telescopic thoughts into the future to create the roadmap for Little Printer. He is also working on accounts.
James can be found scouting for ways to improve the LP IA. He returns with answers to questions we didn’t know we had. He briefly wore a snood like a sweatband and still looked cool.
Nick has returned from Balham and is now working closely with Tim Bacon to draw a vector between video, data and 3D software to mind bending effect. I just had a glance some work in progress. It’s difficult to comprehend what it all means but it looks incredible.
Lots will change next week. The mounting anticipation is hotter than a … you get the idea.
BERG Cloud & its first product, Little Printer were announced. We’ve been overwhelmed by the response – it’s been amazing.
As a result, our weeknotes are very, very late.
Schulze was on duty, and before he departed for Africa, he left me these scribblings from our weekly ‘all-hands’ meeting on Tuesday morning (2hrs before we pushed the button on BERG Cloud!):
AJ: final designs on Uinta, working on some Little Printer stuff too
DW: Little Printer! Little Printer! Little Printer!
JM: Uinta, working with Tim Bacon on 3D and also a little on other Uinta brief w Alex and timo. Very husky. Design wookie.
MJ: Working on Uinta projects, teaching at the RCA.
NL: working on Berg Cloud – on radio telemetry and reception testing.
JD: Berg Cloud timezones and being a fashion maverick
AB: finishing the Berg Cloud website, also dev on some final-stage BBC Dimensions work
TA: Finishing the Little Printer film. Uinta material exploration and video prototyping.
MW: Internet provocateur Anne Galloway is sleeping on his couch. He is in Athens for TEDxAthens and working with Schulze to tie down the wild stallion that is Little Printer.
Simon is busy, coordinating all our projects, the BERG Cloud launch, and our impending studio move. Kari is off on holiday and Schulze is on wings to Africa. Before he flies he is stretching versions of the world in his mind to line up a working process that causes molecules and radiation to synchronise into thousands of little printers.
Normal (whatever that is) service maybe resumed in week 339…
It’s week 337, which is a permutable prime. I imagine they’re pretty rare.
For our All Hands this week there were only 6 of us in the studio space, intended for 6. We could breathe. Jack, Timo and Denise were out filming our freshly returned Barry prototype. Nick was almost certainly with them, but he was on holiday so he ought not to have been. Joe and James were quarantined. Jones returned from a NESTA breakfast event where he was sparring with Usman Haque about the Internet of Things.
The remainder of the week was more of the same for the majority above, including the quarantine in Joe’s case. We’ve had just about enough of studio fever round here. Otherwise Alice, James and Alex are presently fighting the wall of todos in the run up to exciting things. Matthew is writing a talk and going over contracts.
There’s a new project with Uinta kicking off, while work on the existing briefs continues apace and new studio space preparations are high on the agenda. We’re excited about moving, but we’ve only got 5 days to have the space turned from an art gallery into a functioning studio with a meeting room and workshop which as yet, don’t exist. Plenty of site visits, photos, details and logistics filling up fair chunk of Simon, Kari and myself’s week.
Also taking up most of the week, from my perspective, was some longer-than-anticipated dental treatment. And due to these week notes being from my perspective, they reflect my week at BERG: quite short. Sorry.
This is a blog post about a type of work we find successful – namely, video prototyping – and why we think it’s valuable.
We’ve made quite a few films in the last couple of years, that have had some success – in how they describe products, technologies and contexts of their use in public.
We’re lucky enough to work with Timo Arnall, as creative director, who guides all of our film output and is central to the way that we’ve been able to use the moving image as part of our design process – more of which later.
Film is a great way to show things that have behaviour in them – and the software, services and systems that literally animate them.
A skilled film-maker can get across the nature of that behaviour in a split-second with film – which would take thousands of words or ultra-clear infographics.
They can do this along with the bonuses of embedding humour, emotional-resonance, context and a hundred other tacit things about the product.
Film is also an easy way to show things that don’t exist yet, or can’t exist yet – and make claims about them.
We’ve all seen videos by corporations and large design companies that are glossy and exciting illustrations of the new future products they’ll almost certainly never make.
Some are dire, some are intriguing-but-flawed, some are awesome-but-unbelievable.
This is fine!
More than fine!
Brilliant!
Ultimately they are communications – of brand and ambition – rather than legal promises.
Some of these communications though – have enormous purchase on our dreams and ambitions for years afterwards – for better, or for worse.
I’m thinking particularly of the Apple ‘Knowledge Navigator’ film of 1987, important in some of the invention it foreshadowed, even while some of the notions in it are now a little laughable.It was John Sculley‘s vision – not Jobs – and was quite controversial at the time.
Nevertheless, designers, technologists and businesses have pursued those ideas with greater and lesser success due to the hold that film had over the collective psyche of the technology industry for, say, 20 years.
“We began with as much research as we could do in a few days. We talked with Aaron Marcus and Paul Saffo. Stewart Brand’s book on the “Media Lab” was also a source—as well as earlier visits to the Architecture Machine Group. We also read William Gibson’s “Neuromancer” and Verber Vinge’s “True Names”.
Of course the company that authored it, Apple, I’d argue built it eventually to some extent with the iPhone.
The gravity well of the knowledge navigator was enormous, and fittingly, Apple punched out of it first with real product.
As Andy Baio and Jason Kottke has pointed out – their predicted time horizon for some of the concepts realised in the iPhone 4S and particularly Siri was uncannily accurate.
This ‘communications gravity’ – the sheer weight of the ‘microfuture’ portrayed shifts the discussion, shifts culture and it’s invention just a little bit toward it.
They are also commercial acts – perhaps with altruistic or collegiate motives woven in – but commercial all the same.
They illustrate a desirable microfuture wherein Brand-X’s product or services are central.
Dubberly, in his piece about Knowledge Navigator points out the importance of this – the influence the film had on the corporate imagination of the company, and of competitors:
“What is surprising is that the piece took on a life of its own. It spawned half a dozen or more sequels within Apple, and several other companies made similar pieces. These pieces were marketing materials. They supported the sale of computers by suggesting that a company making them has a plan for the future.
…
One effect of the video was engendering a discussion (both inside Apple and outside) about what computers should be like. On another level, the videos became a sort of management tool.
They suggested that Apple had a vision of the future, and they prompted a popular internal myth that the company was “inventing the future.”
Very recently, we’ve seen the rise of two other sub-genres of concept video.
It’s very early days for both, but both are remarkable for the ‘communications gravity’ they generate for very different commercial endeavours.
First of all – what Bruce Sterling has called the ‘vernacular video’ – often of products in use – created for startups and small companies.
Adam Lisagor has been hailed as the leader in this genre by Fast Company – and his short films for the like of Flipboard, Square and Jawbone have in many ways been defining of the vernacular in that space. They are short, and understated – and very clear about the central benefit of the product or service. Perfect for the sharing and re-sharing. Timo’s written about Adam’s work previously on his personal blog, and I’d agree with him when he says “He’s good at surfacing the joy and pleasure in some of the smallest interactions”. They serve as extraordinarily elegant pitches for products and services that are ‘real’ i.e. has usually already been made.
They are often very personal and emotive, but mix in somewhat of a documentary approach to making and construction around prototypes. They serve as invitations to support a journey.
So far, so what?
Video is a well-known way of communicating new or future products & services that reaches the mainstream – and we are seeing a boom in the amount of great short communication about design, invention and making with ever-higher production value as the tools of creation fall in cost, and the techniques of using them become available to small, nimble groups of creators.
Well, we think that’s just half of the potential of using video.
There is a great deal of potential in using video as a medium for design itself – not just communicating what’s been designed, or imagined.
Jack and Timo drew this for me a couple of months ago when we were discussing an upcoming project.
We were talking about the overlap between invention and storytelling that occurs when we make films, and how and why that seems to happen.
On the right is the ‘communications gravity’ that I’ve already talked about above – but the left-hand circle of the Venn is ‘product invention’.
During a project like Mag+ we used video prototyping throughout – in order to find what was believable, what seemed valuable, and how it might normalise into a mainstream product of worth.
In the initial workshopping stages we made very quick sketches with cut-up magazines, pasted together and filmed with an iPhone – but then played back on an iPhone to understand the quality of the layout and interaction on a small screen.
From these early animatics to discuss with our client at Bonnier R&D, we moved to the video prototype of the chosen route.
There were many iterations of the ‘material quality’ of the interface – we call it the ‘rulespace’ – the physics of the interactions, the responsiveness of the media – tuned in the animation and video until we had something that felt right – and that could communicate it’s ‘rightness’ in film.
You find what is literally self-evident.
You are faking everything except this ‘rulespace’ – it’s a block of wood, with green paper on it. But as we’ve written before, that gets you to intuitions about use and gesture – what will make you tired, what will feel awkward in public places, how it sits on the breakfast table.
Finding the rulespace is the thing that is the real work – and that is product invention through making a simulation.
We are making a model of how a product is, to the degree that we can in video. We subject it to as much rigour as we can in terms of the material and technological capabilities we think can be built.
It must not be magic, or else it won’t feel real.
I guess I’m saying sufficiently-advanced technology should be distinguishable from magic.
Some of that is about context – we try and illustrate a “universe-next-door” where the new product is the only novelty. Where there is still tea, and the traffic is still miserable.
This increases belief in our possible microfuture to be sure – but it also serves a purpose in our process of design and invention.
The context itself is a rulespace – that the surface and behaviour of the product must believably fit into for it to be successful. It becomes part of the material you explore. There are phenomena you discover that present obstacles and opportunities.
That leads me to the final, overlapping area of the Venn diagram above – “New Grammar”
In it, Arthur frames the realtionship between ‘natural phenomena’ as discovered and understood by science, and how technology is that which ‘programs phenomena to our use’.
“That a technology relies on some effect is general. A technology is always based on some phenomenon or truism of nature that can be exploited and used to a purpose. I say “always” for the simple reason that a technology that exploited nothing could achieve nothing.”
“Phenomena are the indispensable source from which all technologies arise. All technologies, no matter how simple or sophisticated, are dressed-up versions of the use of some effect—or more usually, of several effects.”
“Phenomena rarely can be used in raw form. They may have to be coaxed and tuned to operate satisfactorily, and they may work only in a narrow range of conditions. So the right combination of supporting means to set them up for the purpose intended must be found.”
“A technology is a phenomenon captured and put to use. Or more accurately I should say it is a collection of phenomena captured and put to use. I use the word “captured” here, but many other words would do as well. I could say the phenomenon is harnessed, seized, secured, used, employed, taken advantage of, or exploited for some purpose. To my mind though, “captured and put to use” states what I mean the best.”
“…technology is more than a mere means. It is a programming of phenomena for a purpose. A technology is an orchestration of phenomena to our use.”
This leads me to another use of film we find valuable – as documentary evidence and experimental probe. What Schulze calls ‘science on science’.
The work that he and Timo did on RFID exploring it’s ‘material’ qualities through film is a good example of this I think.
It’s almost a nature documentary in a way, pointing and poking at a phenomena in order to capture new (often visual) language to understand it.
Back to W.Brian Arthur:
“…phenomena used in technology now work at a scale and a range that casual observation and common sense have no access to.”
I think this is what Jack and Timo are trying to address with work such as ‘Immaterials’, and reffering to in the centre of their Venn – creating new grammar is an important part of both design investigation, and communication. It is an act of synthesis that can happen within and be expressed through the film-making process.
Arthur’s book goes on to underline the importance of such activities in invention:
“A new device or method is put together from the available components—the available vocabulary—of a domain. In this sense a domain forms a language; and a new technological artifact constructed from components of the domain is an utterance in the domain’s language. This makes technology as a whole a collection of several languages, because each new artifact may draw from several domains. And it means that the key activity in technology—engineering design—is a form of composition. It is expression within a language (or several).”
He goes on to quote Paul Klee on the the importance of increasing the grammar we have access to:
“…even adepts can never fully keep up with all the principles of combination in their domain. One result of this heavy investment in a domain is that a designer rarely puts a technology together from considerations of all domains available. The artist adapts himself, Paul Klee said, to the contents of his paintbox. “The painter… does not fit the paints to the world. He fits himself to the paint.” As in art, so in technology. Designers construct from the domains they know.”
I think one of the biggest rewards of this sort of work is finding new grammar from other domains. Or what Arthur calls the importance of ‘redomaining’ in invention.
“The reason… redomainings are powerful is not just that they provide a wholly new and more efficient way to carry out a purpose. They allow new possibilities.”
“A change in domain is the main way in which technology progresses.”
“…a single practitioner’s new projects typically contain little that is novel. But many different designers acting in parallel produce novel solutions: in the concepts used to achieve particular purposes; in the choice of domains; in component combinations; in materials, architectures, and manufacturing techniques. All these cumulate to push an existing technology and its domain forward.”
“At the creative heart of invention lies appropriation, some sort of mental borrowing that comes in the form of a half-conscious suggestion.”
“…associates a problem with a solution by reaching into his store of functionalities and imagining what will happen when certain ones are combined.”
“Invention at its core is mental association.”
It’s not necessarily an end product we are after – that comes through more thinking through making. And it also comes from a collegiate conversation using new grammars that work unearths.
But to get a new language, a map, even if it’s just a pirate map, just a confident sketch in an emerging territory – is invaluable in order to provoke the mental association Arthur refers to.
We’re going to continue to experiment with video as a medium for research, design and communication.
Recent efforts like ‘Clocks for Robots‘ are us trying to find something like a sketch, where we start a conversation about new grammar through video…
About a decade ago – I saw Oliver Sacks speak at the Rockerfeller Institute in NYC, talk about his work.
A phrase from his address has always stuck with me since. He said of what he did – his studies and then the writing of books aimed at popular understanding of his studies that ‘…sometimes the stories are the science’.
Sometimes our film work is the design work.
Again this is a commercial act, and we are a commercial design studio.
But it’s also something that we hope unpacks the near-future – or at least the near-microfutures – into a public where we can all talk about them.
