POST DIGITAL

H3: Using Experience Design To Change Our World

Water.
Its refreshing and yet precious.
In 2009, I stood on the border of Israel and Syria and realized that it could end a war and create peace. Today it is what is desperately needed in California to save our fragile source of fresh produce in the Unites States.

So often we take for granted or forget how much water we use and how important it is to our holistic well being. So that led me to an important question. What if we could track our water consumption linking it our health and happiness?  Could that make us more aware of our consumption patterns and get us to become more conscious of how fragile our supply is? 

In a recent interview with Anouk Pappers from Cool Brands I was asked how I have used my craft in Experience Design to make the world a better place. 

Using Interface, Industrial and Graphic Design I have developed an experience meant to make people aware of their personal water consumption patterns.The H3 Experience has just gone from paper to prototype : https://www.behance.net/gallery/12893513/H3-Mobile-Platform-Water-Bottle-System 

This Mobile application is connected to the Internet of Things (#IoT) through a connected water bottle and now in progress an apple watch application which uses your physical activity as an indicator or when you need to rehydrate.

Related:

• Cool Brands / Cool People: http://www.coolbrandspeople.com/stories/joanna-pen%CC%83a-bickley-hydration-health-happiness/
• Around The World In 80 Brands: http://www.aroundtheworldin80brands.com/

 

#PowerWoman Shape The Face of Business, Art & Tech

Being an Activist, Artist and Feminist landed me on TheWrap's Power Women Breakfast.  Sitting amongst some of our most influential women in entertainment, media, technology and finance renewed my belief in the our ability to come together to promote the change we wish to see in the world. The discussion spanned many of the trends in the constantly shifting media and technology landscape to giving our daughters permission early and often to use art, media and tech to change our world.

Today technology is acting as the great equalizer. We must teach and empower women to use it for progress.

I believe it can serve us as a powerful platform with global reach for our ideas, talents and inventions. Now it's important for us to #ActWithConviction  as change agents with a message of equality for all.

Read more about it at: http://www.thewrap.com/helen-mirren-calls-hollywood-ageism-f-cking-outrageous-at-wraps-1st-power-women-breakfast-in-nyc/

http://www.thewrap.com/female-execs-decry-gender-bias-in-business-there-is-value-being-left-on-the-table/

#IBMiX: Are You Ready-To-Wear The Future?

While there has been much talked about over the last few years about the future of wearables, this year seems to be the year we go from novelty to necessity.  Whether you have the Apple watch on your wrist or Sensoria's smart sock on your feet, we have now entered an age where the internet of things, the quantified self and wearable tech is transforming the way we view design, digital and how we develop net new inventions for our customers.  This Ready-To-Wear The Future white paper put out by my team at IBM Interactive Experience helps you navigate how wearable technology is impacting finance, retail, entertainment, security and healthcare.  

Are you Ready-To-Wear the future?

IBMiX: Ready-To-Wear The Future from IBM Interactive Experience

 

#IBMiX: Ready-To-Wear The Future https://t.co/MHMDHGd3ka by @jojobickley @alittleseesay @afranks3 @adkrim #wearables #wearabletech #design

— Joanna Peña-Bickley (@jojobickley) May 19, 2015

The Internet of Things: Designing for Magical Moments of Truth

The Internet of Things: Designing for Magical Moments of Truth from IBM Interactive Experience

Five Things You Should Experience This Week: 1.5.2015

New Second Life planned for 2016

Calling all former Second lifers!  Interested in a third life? Linden Lab, the creator of Second Life, is preparing a second edition of the virtual reality world. It’s being built form the ground up, with 40-50 new employees. A beta version is expected in 2015, with the full release in 2016, alongside potential Oculus Rift integration.

 

Source: Next Web

Business Insider Intelligence produces Snapchat report

Business Insider Intelligence has produced a report about Snapchat, with some pretty impressive figures. The app has 82 million monthly active users globally, as of May 2014, of whom the majority are female. 70% are aged between 13 and 25, and two-fifths of 18-year-olds claim to use Snapchat ‘multiple times daily’.

 

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/a-primer-on-snapchat-and-its-demographics-2014-6

 

Future Of Wearable Tech

Sensors, Wearable tech, and personal eco-systems are all the rage, but the craze goes beyond connected eyewear such as Google Glass and smart timepieces such as Apple's rumored iWatch. Wearable technology is an undeniable trend and brands like Nike, Apple, Samsung and Google are all bringing out products to satisfy consumers growing awareness and demand for new products. 

Much has been written about smartwatches in particular due to the Samsung Galaxy Gear watch and the new Apple iWatch - What does this mean the future of wearable technology? Is it all about wrist based devices? Can wearable technology cross over from being an fashion accessory to being a functioning part of our everyday lives? What do you think will happen in the future of this industry?

PSFK Labs in collaboration with iQ by intel created this great report which covers how the latest trends are evolving.

 

Fashion Forward: From The Runway to Ready-to-wear

Designers are creating apparel, accessories and fitness wear that can do everything from monitor your heart rate to charge your smartphone. For the Fashion Forward scene here are some of the latest players in the space:

• Charge It: Someday you may be able to charge your smartphone with your clothes. Flexible solar panels have inspired designers to come up with clothes and accessories that can power electronics. Start-up Wearable Solar is using the technology to make lightweight wired garments that enable the wearer to charge a smartphone up to 50 percent if worn in the sun for a full hour. And New York-based Voltaic Systems makes a collection of bags that can charge a variety of devices.
• Baubles and Bangles: In the future, our own personal air purifier may defend us from all that nasty air outside. Worn on the wrist, the Hand Tree design sucks up and filters polluted air, and recycles it back into the atmosphere. It was created by Alexandr Kostin, a semifinalist in the Electrolux Design Lab Competition. The purifier gas a refillable carbon filter, a rechargeable battery and an organic light-emitting diode screen.
• Rainbow Winters: Some sharp people want to make our clothing to, well,do more.  Amy Winters, the designer of the Rainbow Winters clothing line, makes garments that respond to their environment.  For example, the dress is made with holographic leather and reacts to sound. As volume increases, it begins to illuminate and make what Winters describes as "visual music." The bathing suit reacts to light, with the center panel turning into purple dots in the sun.
• Trackable Couture: Things can get lost pretty easily in those massive walk-in closets. In his fall 2013 collection, fashion designer Asher Levine included tracking chips that let items be located by the owner using a customized TrackR app. Levine, who has created looks for Lady GaGa and will.i.am., partnered with Bluetooth solutions company Phone Halo on the chip.
• Adafruit: City bike-sharing programs such as New York's Citi Bike may be great, but the stations may be a bit hard to find without a map. Adafruit, a company that sells DIY electronics and kits, has built a helmet to help make that process more efficient. It has a built-in navigation system that uses lights that flash on the left or right to let the rider know where to turn.  The interface is still a bit complicated, though: The user has to manually enter the coordinates of a destination, but it is still safer than trying to use a smartphone while riding.
• Ying Gao: Using eye-tracking technology, fashion designer Ying Gao has created a set of dresses that move when someone is looking at them. When the garment is gazed at for a time, tiny motors move parts of it in patterns. The dresses also glow. covered in photo-luminescent thread or featuring glow-in-the-dark threads that make up the base layer of fabric.
• Sounds That Carry: The merger of technology and high-end accessory design is a definite trend. Handbag designer Rebecca Minkoff has made four clutches that encase speakers for Stellé Audio Couture.
• A Sock With a Message: The start-up Heapsylon has a smart sock, Sensoria, that is paired with an anklet to automatically detect the type and level of activity based on pressure signals coming from the foot of the wearer. Sensors in the sock communicate data to the anklet, which then can relay the information to the user via an app. For example, it can track a runner's regular form and send an alert when he or she is making an injurious movement.
• Close to the Heart: Even more intimate than smart socks, intelligent sports bras can track users' performance. This NuMetrix sports bar, made by Textronics, has a small transmitter that snaps to the garment to tracks a user's heart rate.
• Light It Up: Berlin-based label Moon Berlin, which makes luxury clothing, focuses on using technology to enhance the look of its designs. Soft-circuit LEDs are integrated into the garments, connected to an electrical circuit attached to rubber-like materials that are integrated into fabrics.

 

The Issues and Questions

While some are creating products to enhance and expand your personal eco-system, others are quite skeptical about the trends because of the following:

1. Privacy. One thing is poking finger into a touch screen in a public place, the other is talking to the device. Wouldn't people look like lunatics talking to themselves all the time? 
2. Practicality. How practical is it? Compared to poking an icon, sending and processing a voice command seems to take a lot more time, even with the best processing speed and the best voice recognition accuracy.
3. Data Storage -  Who owns this data? How much of it belongs to the person and how much belongs to the brand? Where do you store all of your vitals?

 

Getting entrenched in the history

As computing moves from our desktops to our phones, we look into the future to see how technology will become increasingly ingrained in our movements and our active lives. Wearables have the possibility to make us more knowledgeable about ourselves and our surroundings, and connect us with each other in an uninterrupted, more intimate way. From DIY wearables to high-tech sensors and smart fabrics, the years ahead will show how integrated technology can impact our lives for the better. 

Any thoughts on this trend?

[Sources: PBS, PSFK, CNBC, CNN, Ted Talks]

The Future of Digital Television

Investment banker Terence Kawaja, founder and CEO of LUMA Partners, is a big-time player in the advertising technology field. His advisory firm, LUMA Partners, has worked to help companies like Google and Yahoo make multimillion-dollar acquisitions, and his industry knowledge makes him one of the tech world's most respected minds. Kawaja has built this presentation after talking to people in the digital media business as well as people in the traditional "linear" television industry. 

 

See a softer side of Kawaja in this four-minute music video Kawaja wrote and produced from the Cannes Lions advertising festival.

360 < 365

Business ideas from the least expected players will disrupt your brand faster than advertising can save it.  

The proof is clear no matter what industry you are in:  

1. AirBnB books more rooms that the W Hotels
2. ZipCar has more daily engagement than Hertz  

For each of these brands they have challenged common conventions and made the marketing shift from, 360 degrees of channel interruption and "integration" to creating ideas that deliver 365 days of customer connection. 

Ever since I began writing this blog in June 2006 we have conversed about convergence of the digital and physical and Transmedia Brand Expereinces. Now that almost every marketer on the planet has a laser focus on the customer expereinces I think that it is safe to say that product, campaign and business ideas should be looked at and measured with the same lense. There is no dicernable difference between the brand idea and the action a brand takes to endear customers its business.  

Moreover when we look at our own customer/client landscape, we know that marketers are now resposnible for leading the C-suite to solve real business problems, not just communications problems.  

I think that its safe to say the world has convereged and the new equation for marketing and creative sucess is no longer 360 degrees of one channel idea - but an enduring idea that inspires 365 days of customer connection.  

 

 

When evaluating your ideas and models of marketing, which is greater? #brandbuilding #socialmedia #idealab pic.twitter.com/wVsSErQUKu

— Joanna Peña-Bickley (@jojobickley) May 27, 2014

KFC's #UniteThisXmas

Kentucky Fried Chicken has been running the TV ad below in the build up to Christmas. They’ve now released a second version with the winner selected through a Twitter competition.



Dubbed #UniteThisXmas, fans were asked to tweet about a conflict they want to resolve – the winner, Alpa Patel, appeared in a special version of the spot during the X-Factor.

Building A Brand For The Next Generation of Start Ups

One of the more rewarding experiences I recently had was sharing my brand building methodology with a group of woman leading the next generation of start ups at the Woman's Defense League.  

Q: How do you begin building a brand that people will care about?  
A: First and foremost its about understanding what a brand is, who it is for and what is the defining action your brand will take for your customers.

Brand Building - Creating Provocative Brands People Care About. from Joanna Pena-Bickley

Instagram's Mystery Press Event: Instagram Direct

Instagram is holding a mystery press event. In advance of the the event, the company sent out physical Instagram images printed on canvas. Instagram co-founder and CEO Kevin Systrom will be in attendance, which means the announcement should be big.

Live Blogging:

Instagram launches Instagram Direct, lets you share photos and videos privately with friends.  Rise of the private network?

Key Features: new messaging feature that lets users send text, video, and photo messages to each other privately.

"Communication is not about photography, necessarily. If we were about photography we're built into cameras, but we're not, we're built into phones." Instagram up to this point focused on photos and videos — "moments" — as Instagram calls them.

"Messaging adds a third dimension to the app that lets people communicate using words and to do so privately, if you'd like. Sometimes you want to be able to share not with everyone, but just with a specific group," 

 

 

 

Age-gating improvement for alcohol brands on twitter

One of the biggest challenges for alcohol brands is how they connect with an age-appropriate audience. To address this on Twitter, They have rolled out an improvement to the age-gating experience on Twitter.com, iOS, and Android devices. 

Here’s how it works:

 

 

 

Brands like Bud Light, Jim Beam, Knob Creek,Heineken, and Bacardi, have integrated the tool into their overall Twitter ad strategy. For example, Bud Light is using age-screened Promoted Accounts to reach people who are 21 and older and interested in the NFL during their#whatsyoursuperstition campaign, while Knob Creek is using it to launch their small batch bourbon brand on Twitter.

To set up this new form of age-gating, clients with account support can contact their teams directly; or thier agencies can set up the self-serve accounts by clicking here.

 

[Via @tarunkj]

Target's Smart Use of Vine

Creativity, fun and design are at the heart of the Target brand. Target Creative, the company’s in-house team, features a diverse group of art directors, designers, writers and producers who serve as brand experts. After launching a Vine account in July, the Target Creative team was inspired to create shareable content and compelling storytelling via this new six-second looping video format.  Here are some examples of what the team has put out. 

To kick off the football season, for example, Target had some fun with game day munchies.

It's a football smorgasbord this week on Vine. #WatchThis https://t.co/wHjjk52Xi6 #FootballSunday

— Target (@Target) September 29, 2013

 

This playful Lite Brite video took 10 people to produce and two weeks to prepare.

It's time to #SummerUp, everybody! #LiteBrite #magic https://t.co/af89LcoIvq

— Target (@Target) June 4, 2013

Target Creative used Vine’s continuous loop function to create this endless roller coaster ride.

Are you ready to roll? #SummerUp #rollercoaster https://t.co/M1Z2Ct1fYG

— Target (@Target) August 1, 2013

And this one illustrates how Target can make a summer day more enjoyable, as it takes advantage of the platform’s “touch-to-pause” feature.

Need ideas on what to do today? Tap to pause our #SummerUp decision maker for all sorts of fun. https://t.co/eQQrRep229

— Target (@Target) July 2, 2013

 A more recent production helped followers get into the Halloween spirit with a fun play on pumpkins:

Carve out some time for a new #Halloween tradition https://t.co/47PVOzZF6b

— Target (@Target) October 17, 2013

Eight City Target locations have a digital welcome wall that greets guests as they enter the store.

In addition to communicating weekly promotions and local information, they also offer the perfect place to showcase the most recent Vine videos.