Anti-digital design & a manifesto for the experience punk

That’s all folks. The digital to physical debate is over.

We recently gave a talk about designing for the seams between digital & physical. And here’s what is going down:

We are blowing the shit out of the seams.

It’s time for emergency orange.

Enough is enough.

From the ashes we are raising a toast to those who want to celebrate what matters in the world of user first innovation.

The experience.

It’s not the product. It’s not the interface. It’s not the customer journey. It’s all of these things.

And when it’s done properly: none of them at the same time.

A mindset that powers an approach to put the user first & design for the space between worlds. That’s the place that fires the imagination.

Product. Service. Experience. What are these things really today? Do users care? I doubt it. They have become ways for oversized, slow moving design consultants to classify ‘offering’ towards clients.

This needs to change.

As an industry: aren’t we better & more holistic than this?

A more responsible approach

The planet also needs our help. From the country of Greta Thunberg I’m super proud to join a team that will make a difference to the environment & is driving thought leadership in the sustainable design space.

The team here at Above have recently put together a course for the students at CIID — a first on sustainable user experience design & it’s clear that they are serious about using industrial, mechanical & digital design to solve some of the biggest challenges facing us as a species.

I can sign up for that.

Anti-Disciplinary & Anti-Digital

There’s something primal at work here. Something elemental. Something that will save the design industry from the consultants. Something that a friend described as ‘putting an angry crease in the starched shirts of the design mafia’.

It’s time to celebrate independent creativity & the unique conditions that this needs in order to unlock what’s truly possible. These opportunities are cross-functional & cross organisational. Without ‘seams’.

And it’s why our approach to digital at Above is discipline agnostic. It’s anti-digital.

A new perspective & purpose

Few companies around the design in tech scene here in Sweden can have contributed as much in a short space of time: the izettle reader, the cake bike, the radinn wakeboard, blue air purifiers, the in car experience for a music streaming giant — this is the bleeding edge of a new frontier where hardware, software & experience collide.

The brave will follow us because mediocrity isn’t a survival skill.

Quality is the only thing that matters to these people.

I’m not saying design should create strategy by itself — we think design should be a co-creation between digital/physical disciplines, engineering, and the business.

But, to look at the business challenges our clients want us to solve we need to pioneer a top down, holistic point of view. A new perspective in this hyper-connected world.

From Above.

The conditions for designing the right things

Our approach unlocks the one thing in our process that differentiates us from the parade of cheap suits talking about cheaper design thinking.

Creativity.

When you blend digital ux, front end creative technologists that don’t even think about digital or physical, digital visual artists, prototype specialists together with industrial, mechanical & electrical engineers: something special happens.

This mirror ball is able to spin above the problem & reflect back new opportunity to help bold teams unlock what’s really possible.

And enables creativity from new design perspectives to percolate together with your own.

Speculative design x crafting

It’s here you can lift a client into a new space, a new future not by talking but by crafting, by doing. It’s what we call Strategic Making.

Take SHFT: a new type of AI powered running coach designed to solve the problem that wrist worn GPS units do not capture all the right data to make you a better runner. Solution: a digital physical product that you wear on your shoe, connect to an app & then the machine learning / coach will provide performance feedback. And of course, in the material design we think not just how the product goes together but how you take it apart again.

We’re with you.

We’ve done this for some of the Unicorns shaping the Design in Tech Scene in Europes Tech Capital. But it’s not just Silicon Valhalla that we serve.

We’re just as comfortable in Palo Alto & can count the largest players in the world as trusted partners.

From holistic products that combine connected digital services, to the digital layers in physical spaces, to companion experiences on the web, apps or mixed reality experiences: we are always pushing what’s possible at the frontiers of emerging tech & design.

Designing things right (not just the right things).

Design is at the top of the transformation agenda. It’s everywhere. Even a simple room booking app can be a creative exercise to change behaviour— no frame is too small.

Enter a grown up design agency with the behaviours of a creatively agnostic start up.

I’m proud to be with experience punks where the only secret recipe is creativity + iteration = innovation

We don’t believe in left brain or right brain thinking. But more of the right brains from the right disciplines to design & build things the right way.

Tomorrow will be a more sustainable & more digital world than today.

It’s time to save design from a boring death by powerpoint. And maybe, just maybe make a difference in saving the planet as well.

It’s time to take responsibility for responsible design.

It’s time to unleash the inner experience punk. And take an anti-digital approach.

Because if we inspire the right minds we will drive change in a digital first world.