(Journalist) Design is not just about how things look,
it's about how they act,
how you experience them
and whether you love them enough
to keep using them.
And that's increasingly true
when it comes to tech.
Astro Studios in San Francisco,
has brought great design
to lots of consumer products.
Its biggest hit though
is the gadget that arguably
launched the wearables category,
the Nike FuelBand.
(Brett Lovelady) Design is, you know -- we're the translators,
you know, we really are the people that take the conversation,
and turn it into tangible vision
and then that tangible vision,
commercialise it.
So as we sat there (check) on the fuel band,
we'd spent a lot of time with Nike,
exploring how do you motivate people to be active.
We used a lot of design skills,
models, prototyping, illustrations,
story-boarding.
Early on, for example,
we might do something that's more experimental.
This happens to be a hard 3D printed product.
We went and looked at this and say ok,
how am I going to interact with this differently,
than with, say, something that is more, you know, sleek and small.
What's the tradeoff?
In this case, we made room to put in the hard pieces
with the soft pieces that are more plieable.
Then they started to take on more form, over time
to eventually start to look and feel like the real thing.
We designed the clock for example, you know,
like how many different kinds of communication go into it.
You might mark it like a Fuel aesthetic, (check)
for example, like little fuel gauge.
And there was a whole bunch of things we wanted this product to do.
Through dialogue and experimentation and prototyping,
We whittled it down to being just a few things really well.
Over all, I think the Fuel Band captured one of things
that's great about successful products.
It's a blend of technology information,
fashion and personality. ////
Out of that, a lot of people
came in and said, Hey you know what;
the differentiator is design,
the perspective on who it is we're designing for.
As design gets more important,
it has to be part of any new company
from the ground up.
In Silicon Valley, that means
a venture capital fund
where the tech isn't everything.
Designer Fund is dedicated to helping
businesses grow with design
at their core.
One of the growing trends that we observed
is the number of billion dollar companies,
co-foundered by designers within the last 10 years,
including AirBNB,
Interests, Instagram,
Square, Kick Starter.
I think there's something really special
when,
design including technology in business
all come together.
Every little touch point
is an opportunity to delight someone,
to bring joy into their lives,
to enrich the families of friends.
So companies that understand how to do that,
will continue to really innovate
and grow in ways that
we haven't seen other companies before.
I've always believed that design should be
leading the conversation.
When you've got a lot of the same wires
and bits and plastics
and whatever the physical and tangible materials are,
design is what's going to put them
into a unique context that will either be
perfect for a certain user,
demographic, use
or brand.
Wearables are probably
the current best example of how physical design,
combined with a great experience,
can inspire loyalty
and even love.
And the companies,
who get that balance right, are the ones,
who are going to win. ( Music in background)
Watches and wearables
are moving to that same space
of shoes and purses and hats.
Not a lot of people have integrated
that with technology,
so I think we're a going to learn a lot
in the next few years, as to what really sticks
and what the churn of replacement
might be in this space.