Deals on your smartphone on-location | the DealChaat blog

“DEAL” has come to be a bad word. So we are told.

The culprit is aggregation. Why have a middle-man that provides no or negative value. The other culprit is designing the mobile experience using the web toolkit. Mobile phones are not just computers with smaller screens; they are personal belongings that can be personalized. And yet another culprit is that advertising, promotion and marketing, meant to be instant and real-time on location-based apps, are still produced the way agencies produced print ads in the eighties.

via Deals on your smartphone on-location | the DealChaat blog.

Designers w/o Borders

World Trade Centre, Rotterdam, 25th September 2009. Indo-Dutch collaboration summit focused on Industrial Design. Hmmm … (Design Crossover).

A view of the audience

That’s me on the right!

Raijmakers & Oberdorf

Why they invited me to speak is still somewhat of a mystery considering I dropped off the Industrial Design radar towards the end of the last millennium. I guess it could’ve been because my company, Ideafarms, has been able to maintain a growing relationship between India and Europe over the last 8 years through projects and partnerships with Dutch and German corporations.

I’ve never been a champion of networking – I’ve actually often criticised some of my friends for using networking to get ahead – but am quite overwhelmed having been in the midst of some of the most ‘conscious’ designers of today. Jeroen Raijmakers of Philips and Jos Oberdorf of NPK Design are inspiring to say the least. I’m grateful to Ruchita Puri for the opportunity to meet them at the event.

From whatever was presented, it looks like good design can be really good business. There’s a case to be made out for a design collaboration without borders. Couple of good reasons here …

1. European design reflects high quality, the idiom being minimalistic and functional. Whereas India’s design sensibilities are more embellished. Their combination will raise the aesthetic appeal without compromising design values.

2. Pure economic tenets come into play when we see the sheer number of people both on the supply side (design talent is plenty in India) and the demand side (India is emerging as one of the largest markets). Leveraging the ‘great Indian talent pool’ is an opportunity.

3. The life sensibilities of India’s cultural make-up have always been in the mould of sustainability, something the world has woken up to only recently. Add to this the rich craft-based traditions and you have a universal design paradigm that’s as powerful as Buddhism.

Jump into this conversation folks. You don’t want to be left out. Really!

Innovation 101: People vs. Money

In some earlier Innovation 101 posts, I tried to introduce my take on concepts like inversion, people focus, creative thinking, etc. I have also suggested that we consider turning things over on their heads. Here’s another provocation …

People don’t make money. Money just gets made.  Of course we don’t agree because we think money is the piece of coloured paper with somebody’s picture on it that gives us the power to buy things. In that sense, and we may actually be right, the printing guys at the government treasury approved presses are the ones that actually ‘make’ money. I’ve actually wondered what they do with the rejected material. They should sell them discounted to employees!

Innovation 101: People first (2)

As 2008 draws to a close, I am urged not to leave this unsaid. I’m following up on my post of 22nd December (Innovation 101: People first) where I tried to bring out human dimensions leading to innovative approaches for the new world.

One plausible approach in designing the future – especially for those of us who believe in the failure (amply evidenced by the current world crisis) of erstwhile business approaches - is to turn everything over on its head and hope it is not lost in translation (pun intended).

Innovation 101: Going forward into the past

One of the most striking examples I’ve seen of retrofuturist design is the present version Volkswagen Beetle. It simply ‘brings the emotional ‘iconic user connect’ back into our evolving cultural and aesthetic sensiblities using current state of technology’. 

Many argue that the comeback version of the VW Beetle is ’quasi plagiarism and that it insults the intelligence of the consumer’ or that it is merely a fad. And that one should not dilute the idea of ‘serious innovation’ by resorting to gimmicks like these.

Image via Wikipedia

There’s no argument. But I couldn’t agree less with such a contention.