The Committee for digitisation is working to implement the Digital Agenda for Sweden. Sofia will be part of a diverse group of twelve people who will support the committee towards the goal to make Sweden the number one digital country in the world. While the first meeting is still to be held, Sofia is looking forward to put a focus on the user experience of digital services, or the experience of lack of services and how to get the insights needed in order to create meaningful interactions that bring value to all stakeholders.

 

English page on the Digital Agenda: http://www.government.se/sb/d/2156/a/163994

Digitaliseringskommissionen: https://digitaliseringskommissionen.se/

 

 

Det är i slutet av 70-talet, jag har smugit upp ur sängen och sitter bakom ett hörn och smygtittar på TV’n. Det är något skrämmande men åh så fascinerande mamma och pappa tittar på. Jag förstår att det är hemskt, i alla fall för en 6-åring, men jag kan inte slita mig. Framför mig på TV’n ser jag en liten, liten ubåt, med små, små vetenskapsmän som åker runt i en människas kropp. De står upp mot monster, slåss mot bakterier och virus och färdas genom fantastiska landskap. Scenerna biter sig fast, jag glömmer dem inte.

Långt senare förstår jag att jag tittat på Fantastic Voyage från 1966.  Då var detta science fiction, men faktum är att med Internet of Things kommer vi inom en hyfsat snar framtid att kunna spela upp vår egen Fantastic Voyage på vår egen mobilskärm.

Idag mäter vi oftast mer avancerad kroppsdata när vi går till doktorn, och vi får ett snapshot över hur vi mår och fungerar ett par gånger per år, men med hjälp av internet, biochip och ny sensorteknik kan vi samla och sända data när som helst. Människokroppen är helt enkelt en av världens mest fiffiga och avancerade mobila sensorer. Ett möjligt framtidsscenario kan handla om en man 79 år, vi kan kalla honom Gösta. Gösta har någon form av hjärtsjukdom som inte är akut men som kräver medicin varje dag och besök hos doktorn varje vecka för att mäta vissa värden. Med ”internet of things” kommer han bli mer fri och rörlig, han kan åka på den där semestern som han länge drömt om, för hans kropp mäter och sänder data, inte bara till hans egen mobil där han får kontroll och kan ta medansvar för sin egen hälsa, utan även till doktorn som kan höra av sig om någon siffra verkar avvikande på ett negativt sätt.

”Internet of things” kan revolutionera vård och hälsosektorn, med vi får aldrig, aldrig glömma, att vi måste skapa meningsfulla tjänster, kommunicera de meningsfulla aspekterna med teknik och nya produkter. Vi måste utgå från människan och hennes behov, visa att vi vill göra henne smartare, inte prylarna, inte hemmet, eller bilen. Då kanske de tar kontroll över våra liv?! Om vi inte låter meningsfullhet, kontroll och säkerhet vara ledord i den här utvecklingen, kan det leda till… Ja, ni kommer ihåg IB-affären, det är möjligt att vi kommer få se Sensoraffären på löpsedlarna i framtiden, om vi inte sköter den här utvecklingen rätt.

Bilden är ett montage.

While a large part of the world was creating memes of a galloping Gangnam Style, K-pop dude, a smaller part was attending absolutely fabulous ‘The Conference’, listening to Kate Miltner explaining what a meme actually is and why it arises. The charming, smart Kate, with a dissertation on LOLCats (!) from the London School of Economics was all tuned-in. 

The Conference, arranged by Media Evolution in Sweden’s third city, Malmö, sported a dandy line-up of speakers from all over the world, Ocean Observations being one of the grateful contributors to this inspirational squad.

The Conference was opened by brainy Johanna Koljonen, a great choice of moderator, and followed by the first keynote speaker Ben Hammersley, editor at large at Wired UK. Ben’s talk on how the nerds have won http://mediaevolution.23video.com/video/6909079/ben-hammersley-keynote-on caused both consents and objections, one of the more elaborated and interesting ones coming from media strategist Brit Stakston (Swedish post, please add a touch of Google translate) http://www.jmw.se/2012/08/24/samhallsutveckling-endast-for-nordar/  where she states that revenge, of the nerds, “is an extremely lousy and dangerous force for social development.”  The conference continued with “The city says hi” curated by luminary Maria Popova of Brainpickings.org (if you only follow one Twitter account, it should be hers, you’ll get such a sensational brew of the world) and vitalized by Jake Barton, founder of Local Projects http://mediaevolution.23video.com/video/6908233/jake-barton-the-city-says-hi  Wearable design technologist Kate Hartman’s keynote on new technology was a liberation including expressive hats and the visualisation of how important it is with tactile feedback in interaction with technology, http://mediaevolution.23video.com/video/6909224/kate-hartman-keynote-on-new

During the second day, Korean artist and engineer Hojun Song gave rise to the largest applauses during the conference after his entertaining speech on how to launch a satellite as an individual, http://mediaevolution.23video.com/video/6912675/hojun-song-keynote-on-make Later on Jeremy Fisher spoke on collaborative innovation and how to utilise users’ needs to accomplish and finalise things when designing different mechanisms in a digital service, check! Another inspiring session was the one on the origins of creativity where psychiatrist Simon Kyaga from KI spoke about the relation between genius and madness and Chief Happiness Officer Alexander Kjerulf taught us how to strive for a creative, happy working environment. It’s great to be reminded of the fact how much it means to be greeted with a sincere ‘Good Morning’ when one arrives at the office in the morning, and how that can affect the rest of the day, in a positive way, http://mediaevolution.23video.com/video/6913634/alexander-kjerulf-origins-of

Our Sofia Svanteson spoke about the future of interaction design in her speech ‘From Chernobyl to Terminator, an odyssey in interaction design and an appeal for change’. She addressed the importance of comprehensible digital, computerised systems and how we interact with services and systems in the future is up to us, not Steven Spielberg, even though he is great at spreading the techniques. There are so many different visions, and it is our choice which one to follow, and it is our choice to decide how well we want these systems to work, and how easily we want to interact with them. Technology doesn’t just happen. http://mediaevolution.23video.com/video/6910455/sofia-svanteson-the-future

All presentations can be found here:

http://mediaevolution.23video.com/channel/6908160/the-conference-2012

Sayonara!

Together with Clive Grinyer, Director of Customer Experience at Cisco, our Sofia will talk about the future of interaction design at the mighty conference, The Conference, in Malmö in August.

Sofia has called her session: From Chernobyl to Terminator – The disasters and wonders of interaction design and what we’re heading towards which will include a short retrospective, a quick stop in the current landscape and then off towards the future. What interactions can we expect in the wake of Internet of Things? Meaningful interaction design is our saviour from a complex future. And it’s beyond decoration!

The Conference also features engaging speakers such as Maria Popova from Brainpickings, Ben Hammersley from Wired, Caroline McCarthy from Google, Lauren Anderson from Collaborative Consumption and writer Johanna Koljonen. Get your tickets here.

Hope to see you in Malmö in August!

With a deep fascination for Japanese culture and society we discovered several resemblances to the Japanese in our own company culture. And there was a word for it, Kaizen.

Kaizen is Japanese for “improvement”, or “change for the better” and refers to a philosophy or practice that focus upon small creative investments that continually solve large numbers of small problems. This means that when everybody at a company makes small contributions daily the overall result will improve.

Kaizen is also about powerful teamwork, advocating appreciation and respect for each member. It promotes creative criticism and encouragement. By embracing this philosophy, we utilize all creative minds in all internal and client processes, constantly striving to improve our performance, as everybody’s goal and responsibility. We encourage our clients to also adopt this way of thinking, to include their co-workers and customers in the relentless pursuit of products and services people love to use.

Vår Sofia lockar förhoppningsvis studenter till KTH med sina berättelser om entreprenörskap och spännande utmaningar på okänd mark:

Inför KTH Öppet hus 18-19 mars 2012
Intervju med Sofia Svanteson, grundare och styrelseordförande, Ocean Observations.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XyVorWSGpI

Our Teresa Tanisawa speaks at MobiCamp in Switzerland and points out that today’s consumers are empowered and in charge. You have to listen to them. And you need to transform your findings into services, features and functions, which they will love. But how, and into what? In this talk Teresa shares Ocean Observations¹ and her experiences from turning consumer dialogue into design strategies and engaging services discussing:

Watch our 3D movie for ABB’s hugely popular control system 800xA! This cool system is used worldwide to control advanced industrial productions. Special thanks to our 3D animator Emil.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ko960AQzgb0

At the Nordic Mobile Developer Symposium Sofia will tell the story of how Ocean Observations created a future service concept to better support a more efficient experience during workout. While apps like Runkeeper and pulse watches focus more on the after workout experience, we wanted to come up with a solution that supports us while we are sweating it. The speech is also a manifesto for empathy towards the end-user and the importance of stepping into the shoes of the ones we design for.

Sofia Svanteson berättar på Valtech User Experience Meet om hur hon “upptäckte” Japan för drygt 10 år sedan och hur målsättningen alltid varit att jobba på den japanska marknaden. Det är både gråt och skratt som lett fram till att vi idag utvecklar koncept, interaktionsdesign och grafik för landets näst största operatör. Ni får följa med på resan som spänner över kulturkrockar, nattarbete, misslyckanden, innovationer och tunga, tunga dokument. Sofia berättar om de viktigaste utmaningarna när man ska leverera design till Japanska kunder och erfarenheterna som gjort Ocean till en kunnig, exotisk och rättfram uppstickare bland designbolagen i Tokyo.