Kidaptive’s ”Parent’s Pad,” an assessment tool designed to deliver the most comprehensive feedback on preschoolers’ learning, was launched on May, 13, 2013.

The UX Driven Business – Find Your Inner Startup, is the second in a series of groundbreaking events where we explore the wider impact that User Experience and design thinking has on your business.

This summer summit has a fantastic line-up of Silicon Valley trail blazers from LG, Oracle, Shutterfly, Accenture, Swisscom, Salesforce and many more (see schedule below).

Hope to see you there!

Register here: http://uxsummersummit.eventbrite.com/

Summit Schedule

UX Happy Hour starting at 5pm @ 411 Kipling street, Palo Alto
Join us!

We are currently looking for the following talent to join us in Palo Alto, CA:

Some years ago entrepreneur Jenni Lahti (right in the photo above) had invited friends over for a dinner. At the table the discussion turned to baby books. Guests included many mothers of young children who thought that with the disappearance of paper photos, the whole concept of baby books had become slightly dated. In fact, they found that these once so cherished books were nowadays often forgotten in the corner of the bookshelf, unfilled. The party was wondering why there was no easy solution online, just like there is for everything else.

The idea of a digital baby book fascinated Lahti. She herself had had relatives living far away with whom she wanted to share stories and pictures of her kids, but had not yet found a secure and easy way to do so.

Thus was born KiDMEMO, an interactive baby book online. KiDMEMO’s basic idea is very simple. Through the web service parents can fill in the details and stories of their baby. When the book is ready, parents can order a paper copy for themselves or their relatives. Relatives and friends can also be added to the profile, which enables them to access the baby book online.

The service is supported by iPhone and Android applications through which pictures and stories can be sent to the book from anywhere at anytime.

Jenni Lahti chose Idean as KiDMEMO’ s design partner after a recommendation by an entrepreneur friend. She has been extremely pleased with Idean’s designers’ work. ”The service’s functionality, ease-of-use and the whole concept are very well thought out. Nevertheless, the best thing about Idean’s work is the service’s incredibly beautiful design and illustrations by Idean’s Visual Designer Marjaana Huitila. They have already attracted a lot of attention and will definitely continue to do so”, says Lahti.

KiDMEMO is launched on April, 26, 2013, at the Child Fair, Helsinki Exposition Centre. To find out more visit their website: www.kidmemo.com

For more information about our design services, contact Jesse Maula, CEO, Idean, jesse.maula(at)idean.com

At Idean, we are passionate about our customers’ services. As the demand is growing rapidly especially in the USA, we are now looking for:

Senior level Front-End Developer

who will have an opportunity to work in Helsinki, Finland, as well as in Palo Alto, USA

Your role is to be a lead developer and a technical specialist of our user-centric concepts. You have great problem solving skills. You can work independently, as well as a part of our team. As a person you are social, creative and positive, also in a changing working environment and when facing deadlines. As your working language will be English, it is essential that you speak and write it fluently.

Required:

• Excellent JavaScript skills
• Especially advanced level in jQuery (plugin framework and widgets)
• Excellent xHTML/CSS skills
• CSS3/HTML5 skills
• Familiar with adaptive/responsive UI
• Good communication skills in English

Seen as an advantage:

• PHP or Python development skills
• Native iOS or Android development skills

Does working under the California sun sound tempting to you? Do not hesitate, but send us your CV and application with proven references and/or coding examples to our HR Director Niko: niko.frilander@idean.com, tel. +358 41 535 3283

Idean is a global design agency dedicated to delivering the best possible User Experience. Since 1999, we have helped thousands of clients around the world to maximize the value of their digital solutions. We have a strong multicultural experience, multidisciplinary team and easily the most diverse design portfolio covering various platforms for different devices from tablets to heavy-lifting industrial machinery. Our offices are in Palo Alto, USA and in Helsinki and Tampere, Finland.

We are very much looking forward to hearing from you!

Software and hardware revolutions

The Windows 8 on desktops has had split receptions from the markets. On one hand it completely messes up the way we operate our PCs and on the other hand is neatly guides us to the post-PC era by providing something functional for the mouse and fingers to operate on. One thing that everyone should agree upon is that Windows 8 did one thing right: it revolutionized the way we operate our computers. Touch screens are becoming a standard feature on new laptops, ultrabooks and external monitors.

While Windows 8 is spearheading the software revolution, another kind of revolution is surfacing from the hardware side and it started with Microsoft’s Kinect. By default, the Kinect was engineered to recognize and interpret the posture and movements of the whole human body, but at the hands of individual hackers its possibilities were immediately expanded into digital sock puppetry and 3D modeling. At the same time a number of companies wanted to bring these gestures closer to the traditional laptop and desktop environments. It now seems that there’s a “floating” gesture-based technology invading our PCs, in addition to the touch screens.

With these new input models, we need to think what they are good for and where should we use them.

Big distances and big gestures

The trophy for innovating motion gestures into our everyday (gaming) lives goes to Nintendo. With their Wii game console and its ground-braking Wiimote controller, millions of people learned to hit the digital tennis ball with the swing of their arm. The technology also allowed for the more standard point’n'click user interfaces since there was a physical buttons to push. Sony fine-tuned this approach with their PS Move controller, which was way more accurate, but so far it hasn’t achieved the success of Nintendo’s system.

Microsoft also jumped in on the motion gaming bandwagon but their approach was different from the competition’s.  With Kinect, they threw away the controller and tracked the whole human body instead. They then lost the ability to support accurate point’n'click paradigms by going in this direction but they also enabled the system to be a more generic platform. It didn’t take too long for the hackers to use this technology for a wide range of imaginative uses.

This controller-less body motion detection relies on big gestures, which can be recognized far away from the screens. The lack of physical devices also allowed them to be used in various places by various users. This basically makes them ideal for controlling screens on public places. The big scale gestures can be quite easily used for basic navigation (back, forward, select) but the services and their interactions need to be simple, standard and easily understood. Complex inputs and long multi-step scenarios on the other hand are not suitable for for the big gestures due to the inaccuracy and fatigue of the user. Naturally these big gesture based interactions are quite public as it is hard to keep full arm movements hidden if somebody is watching.

Short range and accurate gestures

In the wake of Kinect’s groundbreaking technology, we’ve seen the rise of more accurate but smaller scale gesture recognition devices. The leader of this pack has been Leap Motion, which has promised accurate hand movement recognition in a form factor that fits into the casing of a standard laptop. Another newer company in this field is PMD Tec and their CamBoard Pico.

Both of these provide gesture based interactions for desktop environment where both the user and the screen are stationary or at least close to one another. This context allows users to be really accurate with their movements. The short range of the desktop environment is also a personal context where there’s only one user operating the system even though the gestures can be quite easily observed by an outside party.

These gesture recognition technologies are still in their infancies but the various demos have already shown that they can be used to replace or augment the standard touch screen interactions. The upside of this is that users don’t need to touch the screen and thus they see what they are selecting, pointing at and manipulating. The down side is that since there is no physical feedback, users are prone to make more errors. Without trying Leap or PDM’s solution first hand, I’d say that these short range gestures can be easily used for standard navigation, providing command shortcuts and even accurate object manipulation, especially in 3d environments.

Touch screens and direct manipulation

Apple has been the on the forefront of the finger based touch screen UIs with their iPhones, iPads and multitouch trackpads for the past 6 years. Their approach with finger friendly touch targets and multitouch gestures was a new thing compared to the previous stylus based touch screens and it was well suited to the context of mobile use. But the finger is not an accurate pointing device, blocking approximately 1cm x 1cm area from the screen when actually touching it.

Recognizing this, both Samsung (S-Pen) and Microsoft (Surface Pro) have reintroduced the stylus pens back into the mix and it seems that we are now reaping the benefits as our devices work fluently in mobile contexts and accurately in stationary contexts.

This direct manipulation method, where the user directly manipulates objects on the screen, is a very personal way of interacting with devices.

Bubbling under

So here we are: Big, Mid and Small scale gestures and UIs. But we’re not done yet with our post-PC era’s novelties. There are also other “new” interaction methods trying to catch wind. Voice recognition is proceeding quickly- every tech expo has new and more accurate ways to use eye tracking as an input, Myo skips the whole camera/sensor setup by attaching the gesture recognizers directly to the body and these are just the tip of the iceberg. With all these emerging technologies, we need to remember the mouse-trackpad-keyboard combination which has faithfully served us for the past 30 years.

Harri Lehmuskallio
Lead UX Designer
Idean, Palo Alto

Helsingin Energia is one of Finland’s largest energy companies. It provides electric energy to about 400 000 customers. Its external web service Helen.fi is a busy portal used by hundreds of thousands of customers and several hundred of Helsingin Energia’s employees. In June 2012 Helsingin Energia began a renewal project, which aims to significantly improve the user experience of the Helen.fi web service. Following the tender organized in summer 2012, Idean was chosen as Helsingin Energia’s partner in redesigning the service’s UX concept and strategy.

“Idean’s designers emphasized that our web service should serve as a meeting point for our business’ and our customers’ needs. The user experience should be clear and intuitive to all users equally. It’s not necessarily easy to be enthusiastic about a large utility company, but Idean’s designers’ iterative work was top quality”, says Jukka Helin, Project Manager from Helsingin Energia.

”First we did a comprehensive mapping of the needs of different customer groups and of Helsingin Energia’s internal units. This gave an excellent basis for designing. When the needs were known it was easy to start building the concept.  We then defined the cornerstones of the concept, meaning how the concept should support the known needs. During the iterative project we compared the outcomes to these cornerstones to make sure that all needs were answered to. Our Designer Heikki Sarkkinen gave a lot of thought to the navigation to ensure that all user groups would find their own sections as easily as possible”, comments Idean’s Lead Designer Elina Uusimäki.

The redesigned service will be launched in late 2013.

More information:

Maria Kuosa, Business & Experience Designer, Idean
Tel. +358 400 775 408, maria.kuosa(at)idean.com

If you are a Digital Activist with a passion for the future of digital services and with a fresh diploma in your hands, you are invited to apply for Idean’s UX trainee program!

Idean is a global design agency dedicated to delivering the best possible User Experience. We create world-leading applications and platforms for web, mobile and integrated industry systems.

We are now to hiring 3-6 junior designers to form a trainee team and to become a part of our community of 60+ designers. The trainees will work under the guidance of Idean’s designers and team leaders, in a group as well as individually. The trainee program takes place at our Helsinki office, and runs from September 2013 until May 2014. We hope that in addition to fluent English, you are able to speak, write and understand the Finnish language fluently.

As a Trainee, you will:

• Be a part of the project team working on real customer cases
• Get hands-on experience in visual design, interaction design, front-end development, sales, project management and consultancy
• Benefit from one-to-one mentorship from Idean’s senior designers
• Get a nine-month paid trainee contract, with a trainee salary of 1500€ per month
• Have an opportunity to be a part of Idean’s crew in the future, with a possibility to work also in Palo Alto, USA

You can apply if you:

• Have a relevant degree (graduation latest summer 2013)
• Are motivated, inspired by digital design and ready for new challenges!
• Are ready to take part in our design assignment as a part of the selection process

To apply, please send your CV and a free-form application (it does not need to be a long one) by email to: trainees@idean.com, by April, 10, 2013. We will send a design assignment by email to the chosen candidates soon after Easter, with detailed instructions on how to proceed. The final selections to the trainee program will be made during April.

Start-ups’ have a high need for all kinds of publicity and media coverage but they generally avoid paid advertising channels. Instead they focus on their own and earned channels. This is no surprise considering typical start-ups’ limited marketing budgets. Conversely, they still value traditional media coverage, especially newspaper coverage.The infographic findings are based on a summary of six case studies of start-up companies’ media purchasing patterns. Idean prepared the study with Project Manager and Doctoral candidate Timo Ketonen from Åbo Akademi University.

In addition to the advertising spending, the infographic looked at the total marketing and communication mix. A typical mix included newsletters, company blogs, press releases, SEO, seminar presentations, social networks as well as coverage on newspapers, magazines, online news and video sharing services. We found that search engine marketing and display advertising stood out from paid channels, although the company’s focus was still on own and earned channels.

We also asked which channels had the strongest influence on each company’s success. The start-ups were most united on their own company websites and newspaper coverage’s impact on their success. If the companies would have the power, money and time then they would typically focus more on newspaper coverage, company blogs and seminar presentations.

All in all, this is again bad news for the traditional media sales executives. If and when these currently young and small companies are one day the wealthy engines of our economy then traditional advertising will not be among the first options in their channel mix.

Download the infographic (pdf)

Kalle Snellman
Senior Strategist – Idean

Timo Ketonen
Project Manager and Doctoral candidate – Åbo Akademi University

When I first heard about the “Open Space Technology” theory, I was quite skeptical about it working. The whole philosophy of a self-organizing seminar without any predefined presentations sounded like too big of a risk to take. My thinking was that if you invite people to a seminar, it is certainly your responsibility to be sure that the seminar is successful. And theoretically, the more you plan and prepare then the better the seminar will be, right?

On the other hand, I do agree with Harrison Owen, the founder of the method, as he stated (funnily enough) that often the most inspirational parts of a seminar are the discussions with other participants during coffee and lunch breaks.

Soon after, I had an opportunity to take part in one such Open Space seminar that was organized by Nokia Siemens Networks with the theme being set very loosely on Agile SW development. The event had a couple of hundred participants and took place in a big conference center. To my astonishment the seminar was a success and you could really sense the flow of energy and excitement among the participants.

A few years later, I was in a meeting where we were planning the agenda for Idean’s bi-annual team building day. We were already thinking of some presentation ideas when I recalled my experiences from the Open Space seminar. The team decided to give the method a try and do it by the book as much as we could. We also named the event SoapBox, referring to Hyde Park in London where everyone has a chance to step up and shout out loud whatever they have to say. However, we still had to plan a loose structure for the event.

To begin, we gathered all of the participants together and gave a short welcoming speech. We went through the open space rules, as it was something dramatically different from what we had done on previous similar occasions.

We then invited all participants to identify the topics they wanted to discuss. There was not any agenda, but rather a general theme of improving Idean’s ways of working.

Volunteers then stepped up, wrote down their topics and placed them on the schedule frame that had been prepared. Each session had a slot of 45 minutes with 15 minutes breaks in between sessions. There were four locations where sessions were held, meaning that we had four parallel sessions running at all times. The participants also had the freedom to book new sessions during the course of the day.

We asked that the volunteers who booked a session be responsible for facilitating it, writing down notes for discussions and at the end of the day presenting a wrap-up. We had prepared a general form to be filled in after each session, having some guiding questions, such as:

“What were the challenges?” or ”What needs to be done next?”

While the presenters were hosting their sessions, all of the other participants were given a few rules to follow:

• The law of two feet: if you feel that you are not learning or contributing to a session, go to another session… or go for a walk.
• Whatever happens is supposed to happen. Pay attention to the moment; do not worry what might follow or where the discussion will lead.
• Whenever it starts is the right time. This emphasized that we do not want unnecessary schedules or structures to limit our creativity and innovation.
• When it is over, it is over. When there is nothing more to say, close the session and join another one.

After a hard working day it was time to make some conclusions from the point-of-view of the organizers. For starters, it was nice for us to notice that our colleagues picked up on the idea very quickly after their initial bewilderment. Also, all of the time-slots were eventually filled in during the course of the day.

One thing that we learned needed to change for future SoapBox events was that the 45-minute sessions proved to be too short. Lively discussions were still going on after 60 minutes when the next sessions were supposed to start. We also noticed that the management has to be prepared to take responsibility for some of the session’s findings in order to transform the improvement ideas into operative actions.

Overall, it proved to be a thrill to follow the flow of creativity that arises when you set up a delicate balance between control and chaos and let passionate people loose.

In the words of Harrison Owen, “Open Space works because it harnesses and acknowledges the power of self-organization, which is substantially aligned with the deepest process of life itself.”

Harri Klemetti · CX Design Lead
Idean, Tampere