13 lessons for a new era

13 lessons for a new era

We’re living amidst a new renaissance in design: Call it Silicon Modern—a moment made possible by cheap processors, new software, digital manufacturing, and novel approaches to problem solving. To ring in this era, WIRED collected 13 exemplars that encompass everything from big ideas to novel forms of expression.

Introduction

The Rise of Silicon Modern

3_D Printed Chair | The cells in Joris Laarman’s chair can be packed closer together or farther apart depending on where they fall in the 3-D-printed structure. His cellular approach to design upends traditional production, which relies on assembling premade parts. “You can introduce all these different variables, and your machine can do that in one go,” Laarman says.

Introduction

Introduction

The Rise of Silicon Modern

In 1941, Charles and Ray Eames began chasing a radical vision: mass-produced plywood furniture that curved like a flowing sand dune. In an extra bedroom, the husband-and-wife team rigged up a system to bind together thin layers of wood veneer, which they'd stack into a curvy mold studded with clamps. But the glue required hours to set, making the process unworkable.

And then a friend who knew of the Eameses' experiments told them about a problem facing injured GIs: Their metal splints didn't fit well, causing them to crack. So the Eameses pitched the idea of a curvy wooden splint to the Navy and won a contract. The deal gave them access to top-secret materials, including a new fast-drying glue. The splints were a success, and when the Army declassified

Erik And Petra Hesmerg

the glue after the war ended, the Eameses finally had what they needed. Their LCW and DCW—Lounge Chair Wood and Dining Chair Wood—became instant classics, heralding the start of what people now refer to as midcentury modern.

In fact, many of the signature products of that school were made possible by a postwar technological bounty. When the Eameses wanted to make fiberglass chairs, they scrounged their prototype materials from military surplus stores and contracted with a manufacturer that had been making radar domes. Designers George Nelson and Harry Bertoia adapted once-obscure manufacturing techniques to create, respectively, their Swag Leg table and Diamond Chair. The conditions that allowed midcentury modern to flourish arose from surplus tech innovations that took on new life in a designer's hands.

We're living in an eerily similar time. Thanks to 40 years of increasingly cheap and tiny processors, new software, cheap sensors, and digital manufacturing, people can build products that would have seemed impossible a decade ago. The iPod—arguably the Eames chair of this new era—became feasible only when Apple's head of hardware engineering, Jon Rubinstein, found a hard drive so tiny and capacious that its own inventors didn't know what to do with it. Sensor technology created to track cattle and nuclear materials now enhance experiences like Disney World, where new MagicBands guide wearers through the park. Joris Laarman let algorithms make crucial design decisions for his 3-D-printed chair (right). It is, in fact, another golden age: the era of Silicon Modern.

This new age will only get more exciting. When technical wizardry becomes commonplace, design becomes a competitive advantage. Yet design is so easy to copy that designers must constantly improve upon their work. The result is a fevered pace of innovation. As companies compete to retain their edge, they create a virtuous circle that produces better and better products.

On the following page, we’ve collected 13 great exemplars of the current movement. They encompass big ideas, inspiring projects, and new forms of expression. Silicon Modern is here, and it's only going to get better. —Cliff Kuang

Lesson 1

Unite the Digital and Physical

Adam Voorhes

Lesson 1 Unite the Digital and Physical

Lesson 1 | Unite the Digital and Physical

A Bike With Buzz

Some rules of the road never change, even when you’re on a bike. Like: Don’t use your phone. But what if you’re in an unfamiliar part of town and need to take a quick peek for directions?

The Solid bike was developed with just such a situation in mind. Developed by a Portland, Oregon, design shop called Industry and bike builders Ti Cycles, the prototype ride features a muscular titanium frame that hides some high tech guts—it connects to your phone via Bluetooth and uses haptic feedback to provide turn-by-turn directions. As you near, say, a right turn, the right side of the handlebars vibrates. Go too far and both sides buzz. The whole point, says Oved Valadez, Industry’s creative director and cofounder, is for you to put your phone away and actually enjoy the ride. “We really wanted to empower people to look up,” he says. “The goal is to have the bike guide you. Or, when you choose, you guide it.” Now it just needs to learn how to fix its own flats.—LIZ STINSON

1 | Titanium Frame

3-D-printed and welded titanium provides an optimal mix of strength, stiffness, and light weight.

2 | Electronics

Panel on handlebar stem gives access to wires and cables.

3 | Navigation App

Discover My City app is designed for both iOS and Android.

4 | Carbon Belt Drive

Quiet, smooth, clean, and almost maintenance-free.

5 | Haptic Feedback

Handlebars vibrate to tell you when to turn.

6 | Electronic Shifters

Change the gears at the touch of a button.

7 | Dynamo

Generator in front hub produces energy for onboard electronics.

Lesson 2

Build A Journey—Not Just A Destination

Lesson 2 Build A Journey—Not Just A Destination

Joe Pugliese

Lesson 2 | Build A Journey—Not Just A Destination

The Redesign of Airbnb

Airbnb didn't come to be worth some $10 billion just by making it dead easy to share a stranger's house. The company got to 11 digits because it does that job elegantly—as you'd expect from a service built by two designers and an engineer. But to keep growing, Airbnb has to become even more appealing. To that end, the founders recently unveiled a dramatic redesign of their app, site, and even their logo—which reminded some wags of a certain female body part. Katie Dill, the company's head of experience design, is ready to explain all those changes. —Cliff Kuang

The photos on the site used to be of amazing apartments. Now they're homey vignettes: people shopping, playing guitar. Why the shift?

That experience—of being home wherever you are—is unique to Airbnb. So the product has to be about experiences, not just properties. When you think about taking a trip, you might think about the trees you saw or the sounds of a café or the vines in the wind at a winery. We want to evoke that with imagery.

How do details like that tie to Airbnb's broader goals?

When a guest and host interact with each other through the app, they have to feel like they are part of the same thing. Design consistency gives you that peace of mind and the sense that this is a stable place to build a relationship. Whenever an app is buggy, the grid doesn't line up, or the type treatment is off, you start to question a company and wonder where else they're slipping. What about my money? Are they going to protect me? You can fix that by caring about the details.

So what new products lie in Airbnb's future?

One day Airbnb will be able to have an impact on all aspects of a trip—we want to help you find interesting things to see and better ways to remember them. To do that, we have to think about every step of the experience. But as I've found in my career, few organizations make that effort, because teams are siloed. Users can sense that disconnect. Our aim is to create flow from one point to the next. For example, we've found that every trip has hero moments—the best parts of the journey, whether it's a meal you had or a street you walked. We want to use those moments to help you craft a story. So we now have a place on the site, create.Airbnb.com, where travelers can log their memories and share them. We'll see if that makes sense to incorporate as a core part of the listings.

But eventually users go offline and talk face-to-face. How does Airbnb foster positive interactions?

With the right cues—for both the host and the guest. I can't talk about everything we're working on, but part of it is host training. We've revamped reviews to offer more relevant pieces of information to hosts, such as private feedback about their guest's stay. We also do simultaneous reviews—you can't see your reviews unless you give one yourself. That's a powerful tool that reinforces the community's values. And we're looking at ways we can better inform users—for example, with search results in our app geared to your location.

What did you think when people said the new logo looked kind of … personal?

My favorite response on Twitter was something like “If you see that in the mirror, you should see a doctor.” This is a symbol that communicates several things—belonging, a sense of place—and it's simple enough to draw in the sand with your toe. That's amazing! People have fun writing about the negative things, but the positives are what will make it live on.

The photos on the site used to be of amazing apartments. Now they're homey vignettes: people shopping, playing guitar. Why the shift?

Joe Pugliese

How do details like that tie to Airbnb's broader goals?

So what new products lie in Airbnb's future?

But eventually users go offline and talk face-to-face. How does Airbnb foster positive interactions?

What did you think when people said the new logo looked kind of … personal?

The number of Airbnb guests has skyrocketed.

Lesson 3

Customization for Everyone

Adam Voorhes Bryan Chrisite Design

Lesson 3 Customization for Everyone

Lesson 3 | Customization for Everyone

Personalizing Prosthetics

Microprocessor-powered knees! Cheetah blades! Today's prosthetic limbs are tricked out. But it's not fancy gadgetry that makes a prosthesis great—it's the socket. Traditional sockets are hard shells custom-tailored to fit a stump, but a leg's volume can fluctuate more than 10 percent over months of wear, making walking uncomfortable. The Infinite Socket from LIM Innovations looks to fix that problem by replacing the hard shell with an adjustable endoskeleton.

Using 3-D scans of a user's leg and stump, an engineer designs curved carbon-fiber struts and shapes them with a CNC router. Personalization is easy: If the struts aren't perfect the first time around, fitters can heat and reshape the special acrylic-based carbon fiber. Plus, exterior straps can loosen or tighten the whole structure. At last, next-generation bionics have a socket to stand on. —Kyle VanHemert

1 | Soft Seat

A height-adjustable saddle near the top of the rear of the prosthetic relieves some of the pressure from the end of the stump.

2 | Ratcheting Buckles

A working design borrows from snowboarding boots: Small adder-ratchet buckles encircle the struts, so users can adjust the fit with one hand.

3 | Carbon-Fiber Struts

Struts molded precisely to the contours of the wearer's leg give structure, and simple mods cut adjustment times from weeks to just a day.

4 | Comfort Padding

Wearers say they can walk all day, thanks in part to washable cushioning throughout the socket.

5 | Custom-Molded Cup

The cup that cradles the wearer's stump is a proprietary blend of thermoplastic materials; a vacuum seal suctions the limb into place, and the endoskeleton fits around the cup.

Brown Bird Design

Lesson 4

Performance is in the Details

Lesson 4 Performance is in the Details

Lesson 4 | Performance is in the Details

A Fast Read

Carl Crossgrove has created a masterpiece—but he doesn't want you to look at it. At least not for long. A senior designer at the famed type foundry Monotype, Crossgrove designed Burlingame (shown at right), a font that's uber-clear at low resolutions and small sizes, so it's legible with a split-second glance at a car dashboard display. And after 25 years studying type, Crossgrove had a hunch about the design specs that would work best.

Type designers can account for all kinds of little tricks our eyes play on us as we read—for instance, the crossbar on a capital H will look centered only if it's 2 to 3 percent higher than true center—but with Burlingame, Crossgrove had hard data to back up his ideas. In 2012, Monotype worked with MIT's AgeLab and a transportation research center on a typeface legibility test, which measured the “glance time” it took to recognize text on a simulated dash display. Several characteristics suggested faster reading: open spacing between letters, simple shapes, and large x-height (the height of the lowercase letters relative to capitals).

This proved what Crossgrove suspected, and he'd already built a videogame display font with loose spacing and a big x-height that he'd never used. He resurrected the font and refined it for optimized digital performance with tweaks like a curved foot on the lowercase l (ell) to distinguish it from a capital I. Extrawide apertures, or mouths, on letters like c and e help distinguish them instantly. These subtle details have a huge impact on digital interfaces, but if they're designed well, you'll never give them a second glance. —Sara Breselor

TYPEFACES WITH PURPOSE

Burlingame responds to the unique demands of reading in a screen-based world, but it's just the latest in a long line of typefaces designed for specialized use.

Roissy (1970): Charles de Gaulle Airport Signage

Adrian Frutiger designed Roissy to harmonize with the airport's architecture and be legible from any angle and distance. He turned it into a print typeface, Frutiger, which is still popular (it was refreshed in 2013).

Bell Centennial (1978): AT&T Phone Books

The cathode-ray typesetting machines once used to produce phone books worked by filling in pixels on a grid. Bell Centennial's “ink traps,” strategically placed notches on the letterforms, helped prevent clogging.

Retina (2002): Wall Street Journal Stock Listings

The width of Retina characters stays constant when they're set in boldface, so when a stock price requires a bold listing (indicating a change of more than 5 percent), the column width and layout don't change.

Clearview (2004): US Highway Signs

After 10 years of research, mixed-case letters began replacing all-cap styling for easier recognition. Plus, the shape of Clearview letters reduces halation—the blurry, haloed appearance of words on reflective signs.

Lesson 5

Study the Old Masters

Lesson 6

Business Decisions Need Design

Lesson 7

Beauty is as Important as Utility

Bryan Christie Design

Lesson 7 Beauty is as Important as Utility

Lesson 7 | Beauty is as Important as Utility

Waterproofing Manhattan

Even before the floodwaters of 2012's superstorm Sandy had retreated from the coastal cities of the Atlantic seaboard, residents and policymakers understood that this wouldn't be the last time a changing climate threatened to submerge the region. They had to do something about it. That's where Bjarke Ingels came in. He and his Danish design firm were among 148 teams competing to devise some waterproofing for the still damp coastline. Their plan, dubbed the Big U—one of six federally funded projects—will transform Lower Manhattan. It's infrastructure with ambition and scope to rival the dreams of famed New York remodeler Robert Moses. But Ingels' project doesn't just protect against storm surges; it actually makes the city better.

What's going to change? On the Lower East Side, tens of thousands of old folks and people in low-cost housing—the least able to evacuate—will get better access to expanded riverside parks, which will slope up from the shore to provide up to 20 vertical feet of flood protection. On Wall Street new shops and High Line-like plazas will nestle under the elevated FDR highway. And the disused spaces of Manhattan's southern tip will blossom into a museum and public green. The team calls it social infrastructure. “Manhattan is really a child of industry and commerce, and the bulk of the mountain range that is its skyline is a product of that utilitarian approach,” Ingels says. “There's the need to protect the city and an opportunity to intervene in a part of Manhattan that could be richer and more lively. We're merely the midwives of an evolution.” Conversations with residents pushed Ingels' group into designing “compartments” that work in ways appropriate to the neighborhood they're protecting.

It won't come cheap. Construction on the first compartment, in the Lower East Side, will cost $335 million. (Though doing nothing would cost more: cleanup and recovery from Sandy in Manhattan alone has run well over $1 billion.) But the Big U might help New Yorkers worry a little less—and look forward to a city remade. —ADAM ROGERS

1 | Battery

In addition to new parks and berms, a museum will tell the story of the city—and feature an aquarium-like window into the harbor that will let visitors see the water level, from normal to Sandy to apocalypse.

2 | Lower East Side

Previously, a highway separated the area from a poorly maintained park. Now LES residents will get new paths to the river as well as new parks, pools, and play spaces when they get there.

3 | Chinatown

Surge walls will drop down from overhead during storms.

4 | Financial District

Under the elevated FDR highway, new spaces will accommodate shops on the “dry side” and pop-up markets and galleries on the “wet side.”

Lesson 8

Manage for Creativity

Lesson 8 Manage for Creativity

Joe Pugliese

Lesson 8 | Manage for Creativity

The Burberry Revolution

A decade ago sales at the Burberry fashion house were floundering. Together, CEO Angela Ahrendts and creative chief Christopher Bailey turned the company around, making Burberry an admired name in fashion and branching into China and the digital world with equal skill—which is probably why Apple poached Ahrendts last year to help build out its already formidable retail capabilities. Soon after, Burberry appointed Bailey its new CEO, an unusual track for a creative director. Here he talks about managing a design-driven business.—Scott Dadich

When I went from creative director to overall boss, I found that I had to juggle much more complex decisions. How has it been for you?

Remarkably smooth. Angela and I always worked in partnership, and our team is still here. I have always moved from one project to another, whether it be architecture, technology, or design. My new role just involves a broader audience—investors, analysts, and others. I took on this role because design and creativity are Burberry's soul. That's always been my approach.

Has your design vision changed as you've settled into the new role?

It's been a natural evolution, because design thinking is always at the heart of what we do. You either have the world as your canvas or you have a 1- by 1-inch screen. The important thing, regardless of format, is creating emotional reactions. Music, in particular, lets you do that very quickly. It can be exciting or melancholy—or it can drive you kind of crazy.

But people aren't just experiencing your branding. They're reacting to it on social media.

We started as a retail organization, having one-on-one conversations with customers. Digital platforms allow us to do that again, while also revealing trends that are useful for new products. For example, we often use our website Art of the Trench for design inspiration. It lets us see a trench coat translated zillions of different ways. Sometimes people say, “Wish you would do this kind of a coat.”

How would you characterize your personal design philosophy?

My father was a carpenter, and my grandfather, an electrician, was a gadget fanatic who bought every new thing. They both shaped my worldview: quick-slow, quick-slow. For example, the making of a trench coat is very slow, involving lots of handicraft. But I also love the speed of what we do online. I'm proud of that approach: Not everything should be quick; not everything should be slow.

Doesn't new technology privilege the quick over the slow?

I don't see it as a problem. We've livestreamed a runway show, but it takes four to six months to get clothes into a store. So we developed Runway Made to Order, which will make you a piece in just six to eight weeks. That's a nightmare to do, because it changes our entire supply chain. But it's really important.

The tech giants are moving into wearables, which suggests a convergence between fashion and technology. Do you see that?

Apple succeeds because of beautiful product design, but wearing a product rather than putting it in your bag means that it's on show. It tells people about your character. Now, what happens if you put technology into fibers? What happens if you put chips into an accessory? We set up a group to puzzle through these issues—the What If Group.

But a trench coat might last a lifetime. Technology life cycles horten every day. How do you reconcile that?

People will always want a physical experience. These create the stories we tell digitally, so there isn't really a clear-cut division between those worlds. I like that.

When I went from creative director to overall boss, I found that I had to juggle much more complex decisions. How has it been for you?

Remarkably smooth. Angela and I always worked in partnership, and our team is still here. I have always moved from one project to another,

Joe Pugliese

whether it be architecture, technology, or design. My new role just involves a broader audience—investors, analysts, and others. I took on this role because design and creativity are Burberry's soul. That's always been my approach.

Has your design vision changed as you've settled into the new role?

But people aren't just experiencing your branding. They're reacting to it on social media.

How would you characterize your personal design philosophy?

Doesn't new technology privilege the quick over the slow?

The tech giants are moving into wearables, which suggests a convergence between fashion and technology. Do you see that?

But a trench coat might last a lifetime. Technology life cycles horten every day. How do you reconcile that?

People will always want a physical experience. These create the stories we tell digitally, so there isn't really a clear-cut division between those worlds. I like that.

Lesson 9

Orchestrate the Entire Experience

Adam Voorhes Bryan Chrisite Design

Lesson 9 Orchestrate the Entire Experience

Lesson 9 | Orchestrate the Entire Experience

Really Magic Kingdom

Your own Disney World memories likely summon the thrill of Space Mountain, the snow-globe-worthy Main Street—plus long lines, a jumbled wad of tickets, and the feeling of being just one more dollar sign in Mickey's eye. Disney knows this, which is why it worked for years on a $1 billion technology platform that aims to deliver an easier, personalized park experience (see “Like Magic,” issue 21.09). Just 16 months after its first public trial, some 50 percent of Disney World's visitors use its new MagicBand wearable device and the accompanying app to skip long lines, preorder food, and charge purchases to their Disney resort room. And it kind of feels … fun. “The things you want to do at the park all become the family's mission,” says Tom Staggs, Disney's chair of parks and resorts. “Being able to lock that mission in de-stresses your whole vacation.” Such a bespoke suite of experiences was once unimaginable in the Happiest Place on Earth. Now, tiny electronics and big data have made it possible. Here's a look at the band, the experience, and the future. —Cliff Kuang

1 | Short-Range RFID

An RFID chip lets resort guests swipe their bands to pay at any register in Disney World, access express lines, and unlock their hotel room. Readers throughout the park flash the wearer's name so that employees can give personal greetings.

2 | Long-Range Transceiver

RFID is fine for conscious, opt-in transactions like unlocking a door, but it's no use for being able to recognize how people move around attractions. That requires a long-range copper antenna. Sensors hidden in the Be My Guest restaurant and some rides can detect your presence from up to 40 feet away.

3 | Battery and Processor

The battery lasts for at least two years—but there's no power button and no plug. How's that work? The processor detects if the band leaves Disney World and puts itself to sleep. Once back in the park, it wakes up.

4 | Design

Disney wanted to simplify inventory and manufacturing, so every MagicBand fits almost any wrist, from linebackers to toddlers. How? A portion of the rubber band can tear away, leaving a smaller-diameter wristband.

App

Visitors can preselect three rides for which they can enter express lines. Taking into account ride availability and proximity, the app plots those choices into itinerary options. The app also offers updates on wait times for every ride.

Entry Gates

A problem with the old turnstiles was that everyone had to enter one by one—very slow. So Disney researched 26 different MagicBand-enabled entrances, finally settling on V-shaped gates that allow visitors to walk side by side, speeding entry by as much as 25 percent.

Restaurants

Visitors can use the app to reserve a table and select a meal at Be Our Guest. When you (and your MagicBand) cross the bridge to the restaurant, a host greets you by name and the kitchen is alerted to prepare your food. Sensors in the tables let the servers know where you are.

Rides

New for fall: You can star in a Disney film. Sensors detect where you're sitting on the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, and high-speed cameras capture your ride. The footage is stitched into a downloadable movie featuring the dwarves. It's just 15 seconds long—perfect for Instagram.

What's Next

The app might track and respond to negative experiences. The victim of a hellish wait might get an offer for free ice cream. Or if parts of Disney are crowded, visitors might get a chance to skip a line elsewhere, keeping them from feeling too grumpy.

Lesson 10

Big Change Can Start Small

Adam Voorhes

Lesson 10 Big Change Can Start Small

Lesson 10 | Big Change Can Start Small

Flying Economy

Virgin Atlantic has recently spent more than $5 million to redesign its economy cabin service. The goal: less work for flight attendants and a leaner, greener airline. Design firms MAP and Giraffe Innovation, along with Virgin's own team, used 3-D modeling and rapid prototyping to rework everything down to the spoons, reducing each plane's load by about 280 pounds. Across its fleet of 38 planes, those tweaks (and others in first class) make for an estimated savings of $15 million a year and a 2,600-ton cut in carbon emissions. We'll expect the same from Virgin Galactic's spacecrafts—if they ever launch. —Joseph Flaherty

1 | Tinier Trays

Designers shrank the serving tray by a third, squeezing more meals onto the heavy food carts so fewer are needed on board. Attendants deliver the main dishes from the trolley, then they serve ice cream from lightweight “usherette” trays.

2 | Built-In Place Mat

MAP tested more than 20 combinations of materials and textures to find the perfect rubbery coating for the surface of the tray. The result is fewer slips and spills—and no wasteful paper liner.

3 | Hooked Edge

Shrinking the tray meant the last one in the trolley might be out of reach, so the designers molded a hook into the edge of each one that queues up the next in line for the attendant.

4 | A Top-Notch Teapot

The widened spout cuts pouring time per cup to just over two seconds, and a new angle for the handle improves control over the faster flow.

5 | Super-Light Cutlery

Virgin replaced its drab utensils with mod purple ones. Reduced weight and updated materials ratchet down the carbon footprint.

Lesson 11

Reuse Proven Technology

Adam Voorhes Bryan Chrisite Design

Lesson 11 Reuse Proven Technology

Lesson 11 | Reuse Proven Technology

Nike Looms Large

Nike is great at applying the latest technology to shoes, but for the new Air Jordan XX9, the company looked to a 200-year-old weaving technique. To make its unibody upper, sneaker legend Tinker Hatfield and his team enlisted Avery Dennison, a niche manufacturer of clothing labels. Hatfield had created color-coded diagrams for the XX9's complex 3-D surfaces; Avery Dennison had master weavers and Jacquard looms, able to interpret the diagrams into warp and weft. The resulting $225 kicks are more svelte and 8 percent lighter than the Air Jordan XX8—making them more comfortable but also easier to manufacture and better suited to street wear, which helps their crossover appeal. “That's a sophisticated way to make a shoe,” Hatfield says. “It's slimmer and sexier, since there's only one layer.” All thanks to technology from the early 1800s. —Liz Stinson

1 | Singular Design

Traditional sneakers are usually made of many layers glued together. The Air Jordan XX9's upper is fashioned from a single woven piece. By tuning the tightness of wefts—the threads running left to right in a weave—the designers could assign precise tensions to specific zones on the shoe, creating its curving topography.

2 | Support Cable

To stabilize the midfoot during a sprint or jump, the Jordan team wove a series of 12 pockets into the upper. A thin cable threads through the channels, distributing tension from the laces: When you pull on them, the entire upper contracts around the foot like a corset.

3 | Variable Weave

In areas where the foot needs more support (around the outside near the pinkie toe), the yarn gets a tighter weave; at the top of the foot the yarn is looser for breathability. The different zones give the shoe a customized, glovelike feel—and beautiful, intricate patterning.

4 | Digital Model

Hatfield sent his raw designs—in the form of a marked-up upper and iPad sketches—directly to Avery Dennison. The company's weavers then translated these into a yarn arrangement and an Adobe Illustrator file their looms could understand. Finally, the weavers uploaded them and pressed Start. Ordinarily, assembling a shoe prototype would have taken days; the XX9 went from sketch to sample in hours.

Lesson 12

Abandon Your Assumptions

Joe Pugliese

Lesson 12 Abandon Your Assumptions

Lesson 12 | Abandon Your Assumptions

Prototyping the Future

Alexis Lloyd's office, strewn with drones and screens full of code, looks more like a startup than a journalism outfit. Which is weird, because it's on the 28th floor of the headquarters of The New York Times. As creative director of the Times' R&D Lab, Lloyd has a tough job. She's supposed to figure out new approaches to media consumption at what's arguably the stodgiest institution in the business—they don't call it the Grey Lady for nothing. But while the Times can't predict the future, it can hire a bunch of wicked smart designers to prototype it.

Lloyd's main insight so far concerns one trend in particular: the compulsion to record. People now use social media to post all their pictures, report the details of their daily exercise, and share their most fleeting thoughts. Companies (and probably the government too) hoover it all up. But recording isn't understanding. “We've fallen into assuming that if we just get enough data and process it in enough ways, we'll cross this threshold from knowledge to wisdom,” Lloyd says. “We've been quantifying what can easily be quantified, but it misses all the ideas and concepts we encounter throughout the day.”

So what's the solution? A move from recording to listening. Lately, Lloyd's lab has been trying to create objects that don't just catalog the world but actively process and respond to what's going on around them. One early experiment, Blush, is an LED brooch that lights up when real-life conversations touch on topics the wearer has recently explored online. The idea is that people around you will see your Blush glowing and know that you know something about what they're talking about. A newer approach is a table with touch-sensitive pads in the surface. When you hear something interesting at a meeting, you tap the pad. At the end of the meeting, the table emails a digest of the conversation to everyone who attended, with a transcript of the moments they personally flagged.

Of course, the Times won't be getting into the jewelry or furniture business anytime soon. But Lloyd says the listening table and other speculative projects like it are meant to help the organization think about how connectivity might change people's relationship with media. That's her specialty—at the R&D Lab, Lloyd also cocreated News.me, a web app that creates personalized news digests using Twitter data. In 2010 the Times sold it to Bit.ly, the link-shortening company.

So while Lloyd acknowledges that an always-on, wearable listening device like Blush might sound creepy, the concept behind it—a product that links digital content with face-to-face interactions—seems inevitable. A similar gadget might, for instance, automatically add articles to your reading list when a friend mentions them in conversation. Likewise, an ecosystem of objects such as the listening table could create novel delivery routes for news.

That's the point of the lab: to make the future less abstract and the possibilities for the Times a bit more concrete. “It's one thing to talk about these things,” Lloyd says. “It's another to actually try to build them.” You can understand why a 163-year-old information business might be interested in the challenge.—Kyle VanHemert

Lesson 13 Be Wrong

Lesson 13 | Be Wrong

What happens next, after we’ve mastered the challenge of making technology that is merely useful or beautiful? Then it’s time for us to create the next wave of technology. It’s time for us to be wrong.

The Rise of Silicon Modern

A Bike With Buzz

The Redesign of Airbnb

Personalizing Prosthetics

A Fast Read

New Looks, Classic Ideals

Elegant Capitalism

Waterproofing Manhattan

The Burberry Revolution

Really Magic Kingdom

Flying Economy

Nike Looms Large

Prototyping the Future