From getting commuters to use the bus to convincing the board of a oil company to take drastic action to safeguard its future, trends have been used for competitive advantage in a wide range of sectors
Project: IF 4000 range of knives
Client: Harrison Fisher, Sheffield
Designer: Industrial Facility
Year: 2004-5
Context: Harrison Fisher, a small old family company, was faced by a trend that looks set to go on afflicting many UK manufacturers – the need to reassert its own product design strengths in the face of retailers obsessed with competition at the level of price.
Action: To design knives that would help build a long-term, word-of-mouth reputation for the manufacturer’s brand, Industrial Facility studied the complex manipulations that knives are actually put through in kitchens, as distinct from the simple ‘try-out’ ways of gripping that prospective purchasers use with knives at point of sale in shops.
Results: Drawing on Japanese kitchen practice and a new production process developed by a German steel forging company, Industrial Facility came up with a high, downward-curving blade that was less brittle than its predecessors, and had a join between its shank and the knife’s handle that was smoother to touch. The handle, made of a mixture of melamine and polyester drawn from medical products, has a low conductivity, and is thus cool in the hand in a way that hints at greater hygiene. The knife was launched in February 2005, price about £20.
Project: Streamium MC-i250 Broadband Internet Audio System
Client: Philips
Designer: Philips Design
Year: 2001-06
Context: With more intensive use of homes, a growing problem of wire management in the home, the spread of MP3 players and a desire on the part of youth to party anywhere, it became apparent to Philips that there was a need to play the music available from the Internet with higher quality speakers than those on PCs and in places away from the study-like environments in which home PCs are usually to be found.
Action: In 2002, Philips launched the Streamium MC-i200, a micro hifi system able to access multiple online music services delivered over the Internet. In 2003, it added a WiFi (802.11b) card to the device, allowing the MC-i250 to find and stream Internet radio from any PC in a wireless home network, or, outside the home, from any WiFi router. In 2004, Philips teamed up with Yahoo! to deliver on-demand music videos, movie trailers and photo services to TVs.
Results: In 2005, the European Imaging & Sound Association named the WACS700 wireless music centre system of the year. The 40 GB machine can store 750 audio CDs, convert them to MP3 files and stream them to up to five wireless receiving devices in different rooms in the home.
Project: Anticipating the rise in oil prices that occurred in 1973/74
Client: Shell
Designer: Pierre Wack and Shell Group Planning Division
Year: 1972
Context: Shell's early scenarios, which merely charted the consequences of changes in the oil price, were of little use. Another challenge facing Shell analysts was getting the company's leadership to believe that radical discontinuities in energy supply were probable.
Action: Shell's planners developed seven scenarios in 1972. 'Energy crisis' considered the effect of Western oil companies losing control of world oil supply. To convince Shell's board that a crisis was possible, the planners also presented scenarios containing no discontinuities at all.
Results: In 1973 the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) put an embargo on oil supplies to the West. Shell's leadership, already persuaded that a future free of discontinuities was in fact highly unlikely, was the only major oil company board prepared for the resulting rise in energy prices.
Project: Nokia 2110 GSM handset
Client: Nokia
Designer: Nokia designers; E N & D consultants, Finland; Seymour Powell, London; Design Works, California
Year: 1994
Context: In 1994, Europe could boast only three million mobile phone handsets. Many were expensive. Into this uncertain climate, Nokia launched the 2110, a digital technological flagship that reflected the company's forecasts - a global, more consumer-based usage for mobiles.
Action: The 2110 simplified the layout of alphanumeric keys into four rows, located function keys in a kind of flower or emblem above them, and topped the whole lot off with a display that was, by the standards of 1994, enormous.
Results: In 1995 the 2110 helped Nokia raise mobile phone sales from 6.3bn Finnish marks to 10.7bn. By 1996 mobile phones such as the 2110 were worth more to Nokia than all its other operations put together, even though they accounted for little more than a third of its staff.
Project: Ford Mustang
Client: Ford
Designer: Lee Iacocca and a styling team led by Joe Oros
Year: 1964
Context: Ford launched the Edsel, then the world's most market-researched car, in 1958. Production stopped, with a loss of $350m, in 1960, after only 76,000 models were sold.
Action: The failure of the Edsel forced a drastic rethink. Lee Iacocca, appointed general manager in 1960, decided to segment the company's future car buyers not by income group, as had been done previously, but by lifestyle. Iacocca recognised that the post-war baby boom was due to peak in the 1960s, and targeted sporty two-seaters at them.
Results: The Mustang, launched in April 1964 with sales projected at 240,000 a year, became Ford's best-selling post-war car. By March 1966 it had sold a million.
Project: V-Rambo system
Client: Israeli military
Designer: Elisra Group, Israel
Year: 2004-5
Context: Like armed forces elsewhere, the Israeli military has collected video from unmanned vehicles for two decades – but typically images had to be sent to a central location before they could be disseminated to ground troops or pilots. The technology needed to send information direct to individual soldiers or units wasn’t cheap or rugged enough for military use, and was too costly. Whatever the merits and demerits of tomorrow’s wars, they will be fought with flying drones sending near-instant video feeds to individual fighters.
Action: Elisra Group developed hardened for a $50,000 three-inch, wrist-mounted LCD screen, rechargeable battery and flexible antenna that enables ground troops and pilots to view real-time video images taken by unmanned planes.
Results: Information goes directly to soldiers in the field, reducing reaction times in some cases from 10 minutes to a few seconds. Instead of coordinating by voice with central command, soldiers can see behind hills and round corners, receiving images over digital radio bands using a unit that weighs two pounds and can be carried in just a jacket pouch or vest pocket. While reading data on the wrist, the soldier’s hands are free to fire. Elisra hopes to reduce the overall weight of V-Rambo to about 1.5 pounds in the near future.
Project: Maps, timetables, bus station signs, posters, portable local guides, boards for major interchanges; 17,000 bus stops
Client: London Transport Buses
Designer: Fitch
Year: 1991-97
Context: People who didn't use London's buses had little idea of where they went. Bus use was declining. A possible shift from route privatisation to outright network deregulation looked confusing.
Action: Fitch and LT gained the views of both growing constituencies, such as female commuters, and of non-users such as motorists. They decided to strip information down and present only that needed by the customer. To cater for the flux they also anticipated in transport planning, Fitch and LT built an open, modular kit of common visual parts.
Results: Bus use increased. Passengers tended to view London's buses as a more credible system. LT was positioned with politicians as the continued 'best choice' body to oversee the complete bus network.
Project: the Fly Pen
Client: Leapfrog Enterprises Inc
Designer: Leapfrog
Year: 2005-6
Context: LeapFrog, a $300m firm founded in 1995 and based in Emeryville, California, has developed technology platforms to support more than 100 interactive software titles, covering a variety of subjects in the education of 0-16 year olds. It won the first of the US Toy Industry Association’s toy of the year awards in 2000, with its LeapPad, and went on to win several more Association awards in subsequent years.
Action: To sustain its reputation for innovative new products and to stay ahead in the growing market for learning that’s assisted by IT-based games, Leapfrog took advantage of the latest digital camera technology and licensed a character recognition system from Anoto, a Swedish firm. The system relies on printing small dots on an invisible grid on light grey paper; when the $100 Fly Pen writes on this, pressure activates a small camera aimed along the ballpoint tip, and the camera records pen-strokes as vector information. Helped by an AAA battery and a clever processor, the pen allows 8-to-13-year-olds to write words, or to draw a calculator, diary, piano or drums, and hear their handiwork over earbuds or a small loudspeaker. Extra cartridges are available, at $25-35 each, to help with spelling, maths and Spanish.
Results: Launched in October 2005, the Fly Pen was selected by the Toy Industry Association for no fewer than three awards in February 2006. A similar pen-based system, unrelated to Leapfrog but again based on Anoto technology, is now in use among social services care staff employed by Leeds City Council: with the use of Bluetooth, mobile phones and GPRS servers, it already handles 3400 forms a day – and much more efficiently than traditional methods based on normal pens and forms, scanning and keyboard entry.