Design Insights 8.17

Design: 

• Design research that is truly representative is made difficult by the fact that much of human behavior remains hidden, even in deep research projects. 
• Apple is notorious for their painstaking design process that sweats the details-now they're making anyone who wants to sell in their stores follow specific guidelines.
• Desktop fabrication tools are branching out to more obscure manufacturing methods as low cost CNC and 3D printers become fairly saturated markets. The latest: Hydrographic Printing.

Making Technology Work for Us: 

• People are modifying the one-button-ordering Amazon Dash for other tasksaround the home.  
• A bit one of our founders wrote about having higher standards for the devices we use. 

Building things: 

• Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway spends a big $32 billion to acquire... a manufacturer. Those familiar with the (real) state of U.S. manufacturing are probably less surprised than most- while the business of widget building employs fewer people domestically than before, the value creation is still significant and many segments are growing at a healthy pace. 
• A rare non-bullshit article about 3D printing. Worth the time if you want to get a look at the real world complications and opportunities in the current state of additive manufacturing- particularly interesting to think about when you consider the Berkshire / Precision Castparts deal. Solving the boring, hard problems of precision fabrication through 3D printing (particularly for metal parts) will make some people very rich, we just don't know who they will be yet.   
• Foxconn, one of the few contract manufacturers with a household name, continues to make big moves to expand it's operations outside of China, this time in India. As wages in China keep climbing, more companies are looking to India as alternative, especially for less complex products. 

More next week. 

Design Insights 8.09

Design: 

• Occasionally, a big company decides to fix a big collectice pain point for customers and challenge their own established business models. This time it's Epson, betting on an alternative to all those little expensive ink cartridges we are all accustomed to hating. Unfortunately it sounds like designed obsolescence may still be on the table for the machine itself.  
• Soylent has unveiled their latest formulation, and is packaging it in some pretty dull bottles. But if you're that disinterested in solid foods, maybe you'll appreciate the simplicity. We think the future of food (with climate change and population growth) will look very different than it does now, particularly for Americans with protein sourced from big, resource intensive mammals- but we have our doubts that Soylent is going to be a big player in that future. Time will tell.
• Autodesk the CAD software company continues it's opaque and curious efforts to reinvent itself, place strategic bets on the future of digital everything, or both. Last we checked they had developed their own 3D printer, started incubator/accelerator/maker spaces in multiple U.S. cities, aquihired a handful of tech service businesses - this time it's their very own video game engine which they're calling Stingray, which seems to be targeting small(ish) game designers with low cost and easy integration with other Autodesk software. 

Roadmapping the future: 

• The big established 3D printing companies (3DSystems, Stratasys) are falling short of Wall Street expectations. We think this is a reflection of just how uncharted the 3D printing map truly is- with too much hype in some segments and outdated cynicism in others, makes it hard for even the experts to predict which companies stand to win or lose year to year. 
• Significant robotics investment continues at a good clip, this time it's  another round ($11 million) for Jibo, a domestic robot that has more in common with the Amazon Echo than your Roomba. As voice recognition + processing technology improves we may be getting close to a future where we are not tethered to little screens scattered across the home. 

Big Business: 

• We believe very few products really have any reason to involve gender designations. Apparently, customers are speaking out to the same tune and Target is listening, removing gender specific language from their toy department.
• Smartphone maker HTC is on the edge, with their stock prices way down for the year - analysts are pricing it effectively at the level of cash it has on hand, even disregarding assets like factories. It's a tough time to be selling smartphones and not be Apple. The article states that LG is making as little as 1.2 cents of profit per handset sold. Ouch. HTC is also known for being one of the companies on the earlier side of the tech company acquiring design firms trend, buying up San Francisco based One & Company in 2008. 

More next week. 

Design Insights 8.02

Design: 

• We largely have the wrong people envisioning the future for the rest of us, andthat's a problem. 
• Quirky has struggled to transition from a crowdsourced invention platform to a company helping big corporations develop and launch products in a more agile, user-led method, all while expanding its own brand of smart home products. Shaky finances led to laying off more than 100 employees, including a total shut down the innovative business strategy firm Undercurrent, which they had acquired a few months ago. A day later, Ben Kaufman stepped down from his role as CEO. 
• Acclaimed designer, probably best known for her literally iconic work for Apple has taken a product design lead role at Pinterest. We're looking forward to the results. 

Technology as a threat: 

• The police shut down a hologram. Absurd, funny, and intriguing. Activists of the future (who have used digital tools like twitter to great advantage) could use similar technology to literally project their messages into significant public spaces and amplify the message when conventional access is limited. In the shorter term, watch out for lousy, annoying hologram adverts. 
• Some consumer tech heavyweights and public science intellectuals have taken a big public stance against autonomous killer robots. Canadian robotics company Clearpath has been talking the talk and walking the walk for awhile now. 
• Margaret Atwood posted a beautiful and chilling piece on Medium ostensibly about climate change, but really about "everything change." Make some time to dim the distractions and give it a read (it's also maybe the most amazingly crafted Medium post we've seen that pushes the platform in a different direction than we've come to expect). 

Behavior: 

• Turns out we can manage our resources a lot better when there is a social pressure to do so, and conservation seen as both virtue + necessity: Californiacut it's water use by 27% for June. 
• When the world is all about getting you connected to everyone else, you might need a guide on how to dine alone, in public, because you want to.