Little Springs Design. 2001 – 2010.

You’ll be seeing a new voice around here, as we have finally managed to bring on board Christopher Nemeth.

Chris comes to us from the web world, with skills from animation to sound to creative director. And, in general, he’s a great guy. We’ve got him working on a contract for the next few weeks, but you’ll start seeing his writing and other content pretty soon. In fact, we’re lining up a series of mobile design interviews that Chris is doing for us.

So be nice, and welcome aboard Chris. Or you can use his Pretentious Artist Name, Krysztof. He answers to that, as well.

So, I’m working for Little Springs Design now, and I’m surrounded by brainiacs. Seriously, some of the smartest people I’ve ever had the pleasure to be working with, and already I’m on task to start researching Africa. Africa, as in the hot topic of fast-emerging adaptation of mobile technology. Africa, as in understanding what “Designing the Mobile User Experience” is gonna flesh itself out as, as our company credo and tagline suggests.

As a designer, I love this stuff, of course; but even more so, one doesn’t design in a vacuum. Any assumptions of cultural differences, social relations, and general understanding of any and all design standards of both hardware and software will be tested at least, thrown out at most. So, time to start poking around and see what I can find – not only about the facts of the matter, but the inspiration of it as well.

Of course, part of my “experience” (the experience of discovering) is going after the ideas, current trends, observations that are already out there. There is “facts & figures” information such as Innovation Africa’s number-crunching of Africa’s phone market which shows it being the world’s fastest-growing. There’s this great blog by Dave Tait, a “design strategist interested in social and economic change through design and education” set ground-zero in Africa’s emerging market itself. We’ve got Nokia designing devices with sharing and personalization of technology in mind for the African Market, and we’ve got a great observation of how that same technology is applied in real-life through the creative lens of ICT4D members Martin Konzett and Anders Bolin in their film “Hello, Africa.”

The facts and inspiration i’ve gained the most from, however, came from reading Adaptive Path Design Researcher Natasha Sakina Alani, in her blog post about their Mobile Literacy project that focuses on “Using Respect & Instinct to Reach the Heart of Mobile Design Issues.” In her entry, Natasha recollects how she and her small team “went native” to learn, first hand, through a very close interaction with members of rural communities in India to develop an understanding of the people they were designing for, what their needs were as users, and ultimately, to enhance their lives in new ways and uplift their existences.

From Natasha’s post:

“To gather our information, we pushed out of our own comfort zones deep into theirs to get to the people that needed to be heard. Once there, our goal was to provide a safe space and to inspire confidence, allowing our participants to openly share their experiences. Conducting research with this mentality allowed us to get personal with the people we sought to understand and to hear their issues within a short time frame.”

It’s more than “developing personas,” here. She and her team got to not only talk to their inherently “foreign” customers face-to-face, but to live as they lived to really get the “experience” of being of that market. They had to develop trust amongst their host communities so that they’d be able to “actively engage with our participants and to become participants ourselves.”

It’s very inspiring. Imagine if we all had this opportunity to immerse ourselves completely in the worlds of the people we design for. Natasha suggests that we as designers should abide by the notion of “Do what feels true,” and by that to “research with boldness.” Attempting to delve into a market (such as the emerging one in Africa, for example) and to design for a culture so different than my own, I see this as an incredible challenge in the truest sense of the word; as not an impediment to my design abilities, but as something to strive and attain a higher standard of accomplishment towards.

It’s an obvious notion that any designer who is filled with the passion of their craft wants to change the world, to offer a product that enhances and enriches the lives of it’s users – but here’s where the real meat of the matter is in my mind. It’s one thing to design for an audience that can afford the high-end, luxury gadget, but it’s a much more noble goal to set one’s sights on uplifting the entire existences of those in parts of the world that are more than just “emerging markets,” but societies that crave empowerment; those who so want to be able to better themselves and their lives.

Being a new part of Little Springs Design, I’m very excited to be part of this as a designer, and even more so as a person.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 26th, 2009 at 3:49 pm and is filed under Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.