January 2011
1 post
Informed Design has moved!
Check out Pivot’s brand-spankin’ new site and blog at www.pivotdesigngroup.com
December 2010
2 posts
11 tags
Happy Holidays!
December brings the beginning of a busy holiday season and the end of a good year. This December we decided to celebrate the festivities and reflect on the past year with some of our favourite people by opening our doors on winter solstice for an intimate gathering. We popped pop corn, sipped on eggnog and enjoyed each other’s company with the Kinect and gestural play.
The Xbox Kinect is...
24 tags
Mobile Observation – King & Yonge
Why are we so distracted by our devices? What is so important that we can’t wait until we get to the office or home to retrieve our message? I am just as guilty as anyone to the amount of attention I give my iPhone 4. It spends more time in proximity to my body than my wife or children. So what gets me is how distracted we get in our day with our devices. Is it self-importance… a true...
November 2010
3 posts
28 tags
Oh what a night!
Pivot’s first event was a real success! On Tuesday, November 16th we hosted our first design mixer. We worked with Rob Curedale and the Design Foundation to round up designers in the greater toronto area to meet and discuss the topic of Design Research. We had designers from Architecture, Academia, Industrial Design, Graphic Design, UX, Social Media, and many other fields come out to join...
5 tags
Design & Trust – Research, Capabilities &...
We recently accepted an assignment from a client who wanted to rebrand and redesign a corporate website. As a first step, we began by researching the project —defining the customer base and conducting interviews to determine what users want in terms of site features, styles and emotions. The users said they wanted the new site to convey a sense of warmth and trustworthiness. As we sat down to...
8 tags
Repairing is recycling - fixing the planet
Who’d want to tear apart an industrial design thing of beauty like the new Apple MacBook Air? As it turns out, fixit.com does. In fact, fixit’s experts dismantle (and thus reconstruct) technology all the time, using a well documented step-by-step method. They’ve reverse engineered everything from Nokia phones to Xbox, cars, cameras and even toasters. Today, they dissected a...
September 2010
1 post
4 tags
Design Fiction - Creative play & imagining the...
“You never change things by fighting the existing model. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
— R. Buckminster Fuller
The pioneering American computer scientist Alan Kay observed, famously, that “the best way to predict the future is to invent it.” In that spirit, he devised the Dynabook, a tablet-like prototype of what would later...
August 2010
2 posts
10 tags
The Value of Design
A large Canadian institution retained us to design a new channel, which would serve as an umbrella for a series of smaller sub-applications. Our research indicated that a vibrant, multi-colored palette would allow their customers to relate to the institution on a more personal level, thus encouraging a stronger brand relationship with the institution. When we presented the concept to our key...
6 tags
Who are you designing for?
Design research emphasizes the user or customer as the source of inspiration for innovation. Only through that research can we discover who our customers are, what they do and what they want.
However, so many products and services lose their intended audience simply because the creators did not take the measures to act on that fundamental research concept. Instead, they become internally focused...
July 2010
1 post
June 2010
1 post
7 tags
Lipstick Traces
We all talk about focusing on our customers. But the reality is that most organizations have very few opportunities to actually see how real people interact with their products or services in the context of ordinary, day-to-day contexts.
“I wish I knew how people consume my product,” the president of a bottled water company mused when we first met him to discuss his firm’s marketing plans. His...
May 2010
3 posts
Mobile devices at work and at play
The distinction between “work” technology and personal technology is increasingly blurred as technological devices become more mobile, functional and popular. Today’s employees often use the same smart phone for both business and personal use, and a notebook computer can easily be used at the office, on the road or at home.
Developers who understand the specific actions or tasks that individuals...
ipad Canadian Countdown
The much-anticipated Apple iPad will be available to Canadian consumers on May 28th. We’re excited about the iPad’s design potential and we’re very interested to see how it will be received by customers.
Creating a new category
Larger than an iPhone but more portable than a notebook computer, Apple is betting that there is an untapped market between mobile phones and notebook computers, and...
