unexpected explorations

a meandering exploration of our future

[unexpected-explorations-blog]

Concept Kitchen 2025: A Table for Living from IDEO on Vimeo.

After spending part of Thanksgiving week in New York City, I’ve been thinking a lot about the future of food and food waste. The quote in the post below is the one that IKEA asked as part of the IKEA Concept Kitchen 2025.

IKEA basically decided to put into practice the concept of futuring and see where they end up. It’s a bit like our Newhouse Trendspotting class but with a focused design aspect to it. Considering design consulting firm, IDEO was a partner that makes sense. IKEA and IDEO enlisted the help of some design students from the School of Industrial Design at the Ingvar Kamprad Design Centre at Lund University, and the Industrial Design department at Eindhoven University of Technology to physically envision that future.

One of the winning ideas was this living table that is a multifunctional surface. It offers everything from play to prep to plate. One of my classmates is focused on the development of the camera from something for professionals to a more automated approach that takes some of the professionalism away and lets mechanics take over. This surface (because it’s more than a table), uses a camera and exhibits some of those features albeit in a kitchen focused vein. The mechanics of this camera allow it to understand what it is “seeing” on the table and adapt accordingly.

The Living Table truly is a prediction of what’s possible in the next few years.

[unexpected-explorations-blog]

Holograms for...? Pt. 2

We have been fascinated by the potential use and development of hologram technology for a long time. Holograms present a clean and simple way of receiving information, something we can conjure up at a moments notice and flatten away into miniature.

Sci-fi is replete with references to all the fantastic innovations that holograms will help us with. One of the most prolific writers sci fi writers is Philip K. Dick. If you don’t know his name you definitely know some of his works. Many of Mr. Dick’s short stories and novels have been adapted into successful Hollywood movies. For example, Ridley Scott’s masterpiece Blade Runner, is based on Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report is taken from a story of the same name.

In the Minority Report future, biometrics are king. Your eye scans provide everything the law enforcement needs to know about you. Except, it’s not just law enforcement. The scene above features Tom Cruise’s character, John Anderton, walking through a subway station and we see how the ads address him by name how they know specific details about his purchasing behaviour, such as when he became an Amex customer, and adapt to his preferences.

Hologram advertising is almost here. Perhaps not in the same way that is shown in Minority Report but we’re getting close. All my Newhouse classes are starting to dovetail together in some fun ways. For our Advertising Leadership class, we started exploring the future of advertising. One of our books to explore the potential future of advertising was Beyond Advertising. In Beyond Advertising, advertising executive Bruce Neve comments that in the future “The Ads that [rise] from the ether as I looked out the window were personalized and obviously behaviourally driven with time and place considered.”

We’re almost there and IBM is one of the companies attempting to pave the way.

[unexpected-explorations-blog]

Ten years in the future, the world will be a very different place. What does that mean for us, for the design of kitchens, and the people who make them – and how will we be able to live a sustainable life at home?

http://www.conceptkitchen2025.com/

[unexpected-explorations-blog]

Push to Cart

Image via Fast Company

I’ve already written about Amazon’s Echo in a few different posts. One of the benefits of Professor Sean Branagan’s Trendspotting class at Newhouse is that it’s given me the chance to start noticing innovations that I would never have thought about before. It’s as if the entire class has started rewiring my neurons to look for new innovations and what’s on the edge in ways that I would never have considered before. I’m now a loyal subscriber of both Wired Magazine and Fast Company. It would be disingenuous if I didn’t confide that they have $5 student deals, which I am taking full advantage of.

So back to the Echo.

Amazon’s Echo has access to Skills. According to Amazon, “Skills add even more capabilities like ordering a pizza from Domino's, requesting a ride from Uber, opening your garage with Garageio, and more.” Skills are basically Amazon’s answer to apps, giving the Echo and Alexa power to do more and get one step closer to being an intelligent assistant.

The Campbell’s Kitchen skill give a Top 5 list of recipes ideas. According to Amazon and Campbell’s Kitchen, the recipes are “matched to your taste and time preferences, so you can make meals without all of the hassle.” It’s great that you can get recipe recommendations. Given that Amazon also has the Dash button, it would be great to take this recipe recommendation one step further and convert users into customers.

In class, we’re always being asked to think 10 years from now. I’m about to offer a far closer prediction. Given that Amazon has Amazon Fresh in some markets, I think something that can and should be piloted soon is using skills like Campbell’s Kitchen to ask Alexa Whats for dinner. From there, Alexa can push to your Amazon Fresh cart the ingredients you’ll need to make dinner and have them delivered to your doorstep. This is taking AI from something we fear destroying us to fulfilling that aspect of intelligence.

[unexpected-explorations-blog]

Holograms for ...? Pt. 1

In 2014, Spain was going through some hard times. Well, hard times is putting it gently. Like other nations of the world, Spain was experiencing a high level of unemployment because of a recession. Unlike many other Western nations though, Spain’s unemployment rate was at an astonishing 26%, a record level even for Spain. On top of record unemployment, corruption scandals were plaguing politicians and the Catalans in the North were threatening to leave Spain. All in all, a pretty dismal situation for Spain. Citizens were angry with their government and were making good use of their constitutional right to freedom of expression to protest and show their disagreement with the way the country was run. The politicians felt as though they were losing control over their citizens. To attempt to counter this activity, the government introduced a law on public security that placed huge fines on protests in front of parliament (€30,000), utilities and transportation hubs (€600,000) and anything that was deemed  “unauthorized use” of images of law enforcement authorities or police (€30,000) which made it hard to document abuses. The law became known as  “ley mordaza” or “gag law” because it basically prevented citizens from freedom of expression. DDB Spain in work for No Somos Delito created an ingenious campaign to protest the gag law. *Spoiler Alert* As shown in the video, DDB developed a hologram protest using the images of real citizens and organized a protest to march in front of parliament, an action forbidden by the gag law. Except, there was no one to arrest, because you cannot arrest a hologram. The idea and the technology present a bold new way of thinking about current issues and how advertisers can play a positive and contributory role. I came across this campaign as part of a presentation for an advertising class at Newhouse where I was encouraged to focus on the consumerist implications  of this technology but I think the technological implications are really cool and I’ll get into those in Part 2.

[unexpected-explorations-blog]

These are the Nike HyperAdapt 1.0. If you watched the video, you know that you just watched a pair of shoes lace themselves. Marty McFly, Back to the Future style because Nike has made sci-fi a reality. In a March 2016 article for Wired, John Hoke, Nike’s vice president of design said:

When the wearer steps inside the shoe, sensors at the bottom register his or her weight and the position of the foot inside. “It reads if you’re heavy on your heel or heavy on your forefoot”

Let that sink in for a moment: these shoes know how much you weigh, where your foot is positioned and the biomechanics of your body. That’s incredible! More incredible perhaps is what this may mean for the future of footwear and how this self lacing technology will affect future shoe designs and the potential it unlocks. Nike hasn’t yet announced the price of the HyperAdapt but let’s assume it’s probably out of reach for a lot of people. Due to technological progress, in a year or two, this technology may become affordable enough that it is standard; so that an upper limb amputee may be able to afford a pair of shoes where they don’t have to worry about lacing it up. We are explorers in a world where self-lacing shoes are a reality. How can you not be excited by that?

[unexpected-explorations-blog]

We’re Already Back to the Future

Nike is an apparel company. That is what they do. For over 50 years, Nike has pioneered how we view apparel, specifically shoes. Over the last 20 years, through a series of endorsement agreements with high profile athletes such as Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, Lebron James and Kevin Durant, Nike has seen strong economic performance. They are the undisputed, worldwide market leader in the footwear category. Adidas is a far 2nd in sales.

In 2011, Nike released a special edition shoe from Back to the Future, The Mag. On October 4, 2016 they released a second version of The Mag with their brand new self lacing technology. We’ve made it guys, we’re back to the future. First of all those things look badass. Like cool af. If I was able to get my hands on one of those 89 pairs, I would. What’s even cooler about these shoes is the technology in those self lacing boots.  We’ve been exploring the evolution of media conglomerates in class and it got me thinking: Nike is no longer just an apparel company, they are an emerging technology company. If a tech company can be a media conglomerate, why can’t an apparel company be considered a tech company?

[unexpected-explorations-blog]

Alexa, is this the future?

The Echo Dot is the evolution of the Amazon Echo. In a mere 8 months, Amazon has gone from the Echo to the Echo Dot. This is the accelerated pace of development that Brynjolfsson and McAfee were referring to in The Second Machine Age. How “Progress on some of the oldest and toughest challenges associated with computers, robots, and other digital gear was gradual for a long time. Then in the past few years it became sudden; digital gear started racing ahead, accomplishing tasks it had always been lousy at and displaying skills it was not supposed to acquire anytime soon.” One of the skills that digital gear wasn’t supposed to acquire anytime soon was the idea of complex communication. Yes yes. Some people may argue that what the Echo Dot does isn’t complex in the way humans are complex but come on. This little marvel [(1.3" x 3.3" x 3.3" (32 mm x 84 mm x 84 mm), weighing 5.7 oz. (163 grams)] is now able to be used “as a smart alarm clock that can also turn off your lights. Or […] in the kitchen to easily set timers and shop tens of millions of Amazon products using just your voice.” That is complex considering in 2004 Siri was having a hard time understanding that asking “When is the next Halley’s Comet?” didn’t mean you were asking for when your next meeting with Halley’s Comet was. For advertisers, the Echo and the Dot present a great opportunity to meet the consumer at their point of need and build a two-way relationship. One of the ways that brands are taking advantage of the capabilities of the Echo is through its skills. Skills are basically apps. For example, with the Campbell’s Kitchen skill you can ask ‘What’s for dinner?’ and Alexa will serve up 3-5 options. There’s still a lot to figure out with how Alexa can be integrated with brands but it seems like brands are up for the challenge. How do you think brands can better connect with consumers through smart home products and IoT? Oh, if you want a Dot you can get one here. Even though I’m currently on a student budget at Newhouse, I’m seriously considering investing the $50 for a Dot. If you get one, let me know what you think!

[unexpected-explorations-blog]

10 Gadget Flops We Can Learn From

These products didn't connect, but they paved the way for tech we now take for granted.

Which of the products in the list surprised you the most? To me, one of the most interesting products in this list was the Nintendo Virtual Boy. Looking at how explosive the growth of Virtual Reality (VR) is right now it seems as though Nintendo was merely too far ahead of the technology and people were not ready for the Virtual Boy. Perhaps another important factor was that the visuals were not as developed as they are now. Considering the marketing mix as a factor, Nintendo may not have marketed the Virtual Boy as well as they could have. This may have been because explaining how the Virtual Boy worked to consumers could have been very difficult and therefore selling consumers on its value.

There’s a lesson to be learned for current VR makers in the flops of these devices. In his list of 7 lessons from great explorers, Edward Cornish says that learning from our predecessors is an important part of exploring the future and that we don’t have to make every mistake for ourselves. This is true whether you’re trying to market a new product, get consumers behind an idea or are attending class to understand how what’s happening now will impact our future. 

[unexpected-explorations-blog]

Hey, Alexa...

Amazon wanted to make a big deal of its Amazon Echo in February 2016 when they showcased the product in a celebrity filled Super Bowl 50 spot. Super Bowl is the biggest night in advertising. Although the draw is meant to be the game, viewers know that Super Bowl ads are going to be over the top because they need to be memorable. At $5 million for a 30 second spot, advertising agencies often throw creative Hail Mary passes to try and be the most memorable ad. The Amazon ad named #BaldwinBowl featured a slew of celebrities at Alec Baldwin’s Super Bowl bash but the star of the show was obviously meant to be Alexa, at the center of it all.  Alexa is the intelligent personal assistant at the heart of the Amazon Echo. As Baldwin highlights in the video above, Alexa can stream music, order things, find information and control the lights. She is a step up from Siri which was initially released on the iPhone 4S. Alexa is connected. She is part of the growing trend of the Internet of Things (IoT).  Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee in The Second Machine Age, mention how in 2004 a review of the last 50 years of research in automatic speech recognition started by saying that “Human-level speech recognition has proved to be an elusive goal”. Well, here we are. In 2016, we can ask Alexa how many Oscars Alec Baldwin has won and she’ll not only understand, she’ll respond. Alexa is part of the next inflection point, artificial intelligence is beginning to catch up to human intelligence.

For: http://newhouse.syr.edu

[unexpected-explorations-blog]

hello world

This Trendspotting course lets me explore what’s at the edge, what’s still to come. The rest of my courses are quite literal but this course allows me to step outside of a specific frame of mind and enter another. I would like to learn and explore ideas and concepts I may not typically consider within the context of my other courses or conversations. Trendspotting will hopefully push my boundaries and teach me how to see what’s coming next and actually be able to spot those trends.

I hail from the Great White North (i.e. Canada) but have transplanted myself to Syracuse, NY to get a master’s in advertising at Newhouse. I’ve loved advertising for longer than I realized: the creativity, the craziness and the change. My focus will be a combination of advertising and public relations. Syracuse isn’t exactly my cup of tea so this is all a bit of an adventure and I’m excited to learn and see what’s now, new and next. I’ve grown up on three different continents (Africa, Europe and North America), which makes me a third culture kid. I’m mostly a glass half full kind of person and see the world as a place full of people and possibility.

After spending a year working at the United Nations, I drank the kool aid and believe that a better world is possible through collaboration. What the future of collaboration will look like is still tbd which is why I’m interested in connectivity, digital media and the intersection of digital media in the developing world. What I’m really curious about is: how will developments like the internet of things (IoT) and other evolving connectivity revolutionize consumer communication specifically in the developing world?

Here’s to being intrepid explorers of the unknown. 🍻