Athena & Noodl: Why building your own tools is essential
A quick recap of the Design Tools Network Meetup #02 in Berlin.
On Thursday May 3, we hosted another Design Tools Meetup at IXDS in Berlin. Two short talks about tools that were internally developed at an agency, solving a very specific need. One uses VR for prototyping for mobility, the other focused on prototyping connected hardware!
The talks
The first talk was by Matthias Flucke from Athena, a VR based prototyping tool developed internally at Goodpatch for prototyping autonomous driving experiences. It allows for rapid explorations in an area where a lot of challenges are faced. Lots of potential too, and that’s why this small agency decided to fill this need by large car manufacturers.
The second talk was by Roger Andersson Reimer, who is Head of Design at TOPP. He talks about how engrained building tools has became for their team in Malmö, Stockholm and SF, and why it is important to do this. They built Noodl, a node based visual prototyping tool that is flexible enough to face the challenges of the future by allowing to integrate with all sorts of devices and services.
Enjoy the recordings of the talks!
1. Prototyping Autonomous Driving Experiences (Goodpatch / Athena)
Matthias describes the challenges and opportunities for self driving cars and how this lead to building a new prototyping tool. He also gave a sneak peak into the tool and the VR setup. A short demonstration of the tool in use that makes immediately clear why this is a spot on solution for solving challenges in the field of mobility. Find out more on driveathena.com!
2. Creating Design Tools to Design a Design Culture (TOPP / Noodl)
Roger explained the history of tool making for them, and how this has worked out for others. TOPP is a design agency that builds and uses Noodl to prototype all sorts of connected hardware projects. The tool is freely available so go ahead an play around with it → getnoodl.com
Next meetup TBA!
If you want to present something at one of our meetups, get in touch via hello@designtoolsnetwork.com
