Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Graduated Hyper Island students Juho Parviainen (Crew 9) and Robert Lenne (Crew 7) work at innovation and design firm IDEO in London. Having lectured at Hyper Island previously, the two came back and held a workshop at the end of last year with Hyper Island's Interactive Art Director students.
Why did you decide to come back to lecture at Hyper Island again?
Hyper Island courses always have an interesting group of students with mix of different backgrounds and goals. This makes for an interesting and inspiring trip for us as well.
What do you see in the current students that inspires you?
We were especially impressed by the way students tackled one of the exercises (maximize profits selling mulled wine) in a mere day with the help of YouTube and social networking tools. This shows you can come up with a concept and prototype it in a real and tangible way very rapidly. We were also impressed by the presentations on Friday, which really showed the how students embraced the power of rapid prototyping through role playing and storytelling.
Photo: Linda Gavin
What kind of competences is IDEO looking for right now?
We're always looking for talented people who share a passion for creating human centric products and services. IDEO often hires people rather than skills. What we mean by that is that we care at least as much about the cultural fit and personality as we do about the skills around a specific discipline. Projects at IDEO are heavy on collaboration and team work, so we naturally look for people who are good collaborators and good at sharing their skills with the rest of the community. We look for people who are passionate about something and have drive to get things done. For specific list of skill sets and disciplines that we're hiring it's best to look at IDEO website where we always post our openings.
What type of courses do you think will be needed to fulfill the competence needs of the future?
With technologies becoming easier to use and deploy they are losing the edge as a competitive advantage. It's not enough to have the most features anymore, it's about having the right features. Consumers are moving beyond spec sheets especially when it comes to consumer technology products. As products and brands are moving beyond just individual products to delivering broader user experiences a new kind of designers are needed: Designers with skills to understand people, learn fast, imagine, visualize and prototype variety of different touch points, ranging from in store experience to mobile applications. This requires a lot of collaboration between different disciplines. So the future needs versatile, empathic and collaborative designers who are not only great at what they do best, but also have understanding and empathy to go beyond their own comfort zone.
In terms of technology, are there any kinds of currently used languages you think we'll move away from? Or, are languages no longer part of it, but rather the thinking?
We don't often look for people who know a specific programming language or not. We look for good thinkers and tinkerers. What is important is to know about variety of technologies and to be able to understand their benefits and possibilities when it comes to design. Skill that is most useful is being able to adapt and learn new things alongside normal project work.
The part where actual programming languages such as Ajax or Action Scripting come to play is when we do prototyping. We often try to prototype products and services as early as possible and this is where skills in programming languages become useful. So even if we don't specifically hire based on those skills the more you can build the more versatile you can be. Good interaction prototypers at IDEO generally know many different prototyping tools (programming, producing video, storytelling, storyboarding etc), but are also quick at learning new ones. However, it is good to remember that programming something is often not to best way to prototype an experience. Often times it is more valuable to do a video, act it out, or even do paper prototype.
What recommendations do you have for the students?
Learn and experiment as much as you can. Don't try to do things the same way all the time. Put yourself in situations where you don't necessarily feel comfortable and try things you've never tried before, this is a great way to grow. Then, once you enter work life, don't forget to keep doing all this all the time.
Thank you, Juho and Robert!
Friday, May 25, 2007
Since graduating from Hyper Island, Linda Gavin (Leow during the time at Hyper Island) has made choices that might be unconventional for a successful designer. Linda tells us more about what her life is like, running her own company, cunsulting and living in Berlin.
- Since my style is so particular, I have chosen to broaden the area I work in so that I can do fun things all the time. If I had chosen to do what most Hyper Island students do and worked my way up in a company, then jump from company to company doing the same thing, I would have never have ended up doing what I really want to do. This way I've been able to make packaging design, magazine covers, the Twitter logo, game covers for EA games, a Nike campaign and a promotion game pushing for cellphone Flash games for Adobe. Mostly I work with web projects, but I see design as design independent of which media it's for.
- I want to live a fun life and be able to spend a lot of time with my hobbies and want to work with fun projects. Therefore I've chosen to work by myself. It's important for me to work in a creative environment where I have full control of my life. When I step into an office the feeling of control and creativity disappears. The sterile environment and hierarchies makes me very unhappy. I want to live in my own bubble and have fun. If I didn't, my life would be meaningless.
- Eventually I'd like to move in to a studio where friends could gather and work on projects. I'm not interested in starting partnerships with anybody but would like to have friends around for more stimulation. Being able grab lunch, play console games together, grab a beer after work and dream about bigger, more fun projects with othes. Kind of like we did during my time at Hyper Island. I really miss that sometimes.
- Berlin is the perfect city for me. Time passes slower here and I feel that this is the only city where I can be myself. Everything is non-pretentious and there are an endless number of chill-out places to hang out at. The low pulse and the filthy charm makes the city inspiring for me. Things that's so important in Sweden like careers, an awesome flat and being fit, healthy and beautiful are of no importance in my Berlin. The life here is more about living the life to the fullest and be happy.
- I love my life, my job and my city and I know it's going to get even better with time. This is how it feels to be happy and I'm grateful that I get to experience it.
- One hobby, a side project of mine is running an online-shop FakeBlondie.com and I make doll clothtes for Asian doll collectors. It's very new so all I have so far are clothes for Blythe and tiny Bjd's, but I'll extend the line to MSD-sized dolls in a near future.
- I was asked to think of something to say to future students. I think you should embrace the feeling of your first weeks of the education and preserv that positive energy. That will take you far! Work hard and have fun while doing it!
Thank you Linda!
