Blog Interpretations
By Elizabeth Roche and Rayna Wiles - August 25, 2011
It is tempting for an outside observer to conclude that people with extremely limited means are unable to plan ahead or to make sound financial decisions. When we first arrived in Cairo on a design research trip this year and talked to members of disenfranchised classes, we found ourselves precariously close to making such a mistake. We noticed puzzling behaviors that challenged our Western perspective and initially encouraged us to draw the wrong conclusion.
Blog Interpretations
By Jon Freach - May 31, 2011
Design can exist without "the research." But if we don't study the world, we don't always know how or what to create.
Blog Interpretations
By Ben McAllister - May 11, 2011
Design, like the world as a whole, is unpredictable and messy. If you think it boils down to "research," you're mistaken.
A job interview can be a pretty dry affair, but a few years ago, I had one that I'll never forget. I was talking to an advertising executive about one of his clients, a major telecommunications company that had recently renamed itself. At the end of the interview, he asked if I had any questions for him. "What do you think about your client's decision to change names?" I asked. It seemed to me that discussing the pros and cons of a decision like this would be one of the more interesting aspects of a job in advertising. But his response didn't inspire much of a dialogue.
Blog frogs on the road
By Elizabeth Roche - May 10, 2011
Social media amulets in Cairo
Aboard this Air Egypt flight from Cairo to Munich, I am grateful for five hours in limbo before being deposited back into Western life. After a week on the ground in Cairo with Jan Chipchase and other colleagues from frog design, I have a sharpened understanding of how little I know about this region. Anyone who has spent time talking to people on both sides of "the line" in Egypt is struck by the monumental gap between those found in the poor, illiterate corners of the city and the fountain-ringed office parks filled with the savvy Egyptian businessmen educated in the best schools the West has to offer. Our research traversed much of this continuum. While we were not in the poorest of poor areas (meaning, communities living in and mining garbage dumps), our interviewees ranged from the latte-sipping, shisha-smoking students wearing designer clothing to the tea peddlers in dusty, goat-filled alleys. When I asked, with the assistance of my translator, if they used Facebook, faces lit with a smile and a nod—even in the goat-inhabited corners.
Blog Future Perfect on design mind
By Jan Chipchase - April 11, 2011
In Cairo for a week of client research, workshops and keynotes. It's good to be back in this great country for my fourth visit here. I'm working out of a downtown hotel, with a team of six, plus three local guides, who we’ll sync with over breakfast, before hitting the streets. It’s good to have time to calibrate to the city – especially one that has gone through so much disruptive change. There’s freedom in the air and most people that I’ve spoken to recognise that the hard work in building what's next is yet to come. Tahrir Square is alive with the sounds of debate, face painted kids, and the detritus of protest.
Blog Interpretations
By Kate Canales - April 6, 2011
A trip to Zambia reminds a designer that the best solutions don't come from good tools. They come from good teams.
Blog Future Perfect on design mind
By Jan Chipchase - March 1, 2011
In the summer of 2010, I conducted field research in Afghanistan with generous support from the Institute for Money, Technology, and Financial Inclusion at the University of California at Irvine. My research partner Panthea Lee and I led a nimble local team to investigate how people use cell phones to do their banking—known in the industry as mobile money. The findings from the field study are now available for download, along with a number of images captured on the trip.
Blog frogs on the road
By Kristina Loring - February 8, 2011
In the summer of 2010, frog's Executive Creative Director for Global Insights Jan Chipchase conducted field research in Afghanistan with generous support from the Institute for Money, Technology and Financial Inclusion. He worked with his research partner Panthea Lee and a nimble local team to investigate how people use cell phones to do their banking—known in the industry as mobile money.
Blog designophile
By Michael DiTullo - January 7, 2011
The first thing I do after I go through my morning pile of email, is check out http://thesartorialist.blogspot.com . Those that know me would never call me a fashionista, I think "Geek Chic" was the closest I ever got to a compliment on my "look", but the work of Scott Schumann aka The Sartorialist has always fascinated me. The way he captures a culture through a moment. Possibly it connects to the very intuitive way I do my research. Not the official stuff with rigor, but the real stuff that inspires emotive and non conventional solutions. We don't tend to talk about it, because, well, its messy, non-linear, and it misses more than it hits, but the seeds of the most wonderful things tend to come from that kind of ether.
I think Intel captured that perfectly with their piece on Scott. It is worth celebrating this type of approach so we can start to build it in to our process, allow ourselves to wonder, to seek and discover, not as scientists, but as designers.
Blog frogs on the road
By Hannah Regier - December 21, 2010
On December 12 & 13 I joined a group of 10 speakers and 40 participants for the TEDx Kumaun conference. We met in a remote Himalayan village to discuss and share knowledge on the major social issues facing India today. The event was organized by CHIRAG (Central Himalayan Rural Action Group) and hosted at the Himalayan Village Sonapani. For a foreigner trying to absorb as much as I can about India, it was a crash course in politics and social programs. The conference focused on the tension between India's economic growth and the enormity of its problems relating to poverty, poor healthcare, low quality education, lack of food, pollution and rampant corruption.
