ing type of drive. Releasing air in the bladder provides enhanced feedback, more appropriate for performance driving.
Another important aspect of the design was temperature sensing and regulation. Coolmax is a material that already has this ability, so we leveraged the fabric for the back of the glove.
This project benefited from inside/out design in several ways. Instead of brainstorming a new driving-glove concept, this allowed the designers to focus on manageable interactions required by the product. The flow of thinking is controllable because of the stage-gate approach to innovating on speci-ficities. It generates more ideas on targeted problems.
May + June 2008
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interactions
“This is my butterfly,” Monica said as she described her painting. “How so?” I asked her. She smiled to herself, put down her paintbrush, and replied, “Epilepsy is like a caterpillar, but this bracelet would be my butterfly.” This was a woman who had dislocated her shoulders nine times in epileptic fits and had no recollection of any one of those incidents, whose very life, and the safety of her three-year-old son, depended on medical identification. Her painting, and more important, its interpretation, told me what designers long to hear— our design had achieved a true emotional connection.
Monica was one of 18 people we brought in to emotionally evaluate five medical-identifi-cation concepts our team had designed. Metaphorically, I knew what we hoped our design would convey. Each of our concepts
were designed and chosen as an embodiment of two inner yet conflicting emotions at the core of medical identification—people yearned for an invisible product that hid in plain sight but was also immediately recognizable. Our research, including participatory design, resoundingly supported this conclusion.
By using inside/out design we hoped to approach the challenge, particularly the conflicting emotions, from a fresh yet focused perspective, which would generate a solution that satisfied the identified needs. In addition to addressing the feeling of invisibility and recognition, it needed to embody vital information and be personally expressive.
The concept that inspired such a connection for Monica was a design that suggested a literal and metaphorical inside/out design, and perhaps that was its greatest strength. The bracelet was designed using clear silicone material with a circular raised medical symbol on the band.
Innocuous to the untrained eye in its simple design, vital information was housed inside the bracelet. Only a push on the medical symbol “button” would cause the chemical reaction inside the bracelet to reveal the wearer’s information, much like an allegorical day-glo stick from childhood. Inside and out, the design met the emotional and functional user requirements.
ity to change the very definition of the Precious. We are in powerful positions to influence our clients’ perceptions of the types of connections to forge with their customers. Through design research, we have that uncanny ability to see what lies ahead when others do not. Ultimately, we are curators, forecasters, and distributors of tomorrow’s experience, of tomorrow’s products. Inside/out design is a philosophy that designs to the heart of the matter—the meaningful interactions at the core of great product design. We can only hope that consumers echo Gollum when he says, “So bright... so beautiful... my precious.” When a design provides a personal benefit, it becomes a possession worthy of a consumer’s loyalty. There is no room for the “tricksy” and “false” in that kind of equation—it’s a true experience in every way imagined.
“They do not see what lies ahead, when Sun has failed and Moon is dead.”
—Gollum, Lord of the Rings
ABOUT THE AUTHOR As director of design strategy and research for M3 and a five-year veteran of frog design, Laura Richardson specializes in innovative thinking, research methodologies, and strategic solutions for a wide array of projects encompassing consumer, industrial, and healthcare applications and form factors. Laura has played critical roles in developing solutions for companies like Ford, AMD, Alltel, Motorola, GE, HP, Microsoft, and Sun. As a research specialist in her field, Laura’s expertise is in emotional, sensorial, and participatory design with particular emphasis and focus on pushing the boundaries of design research—both human and machine. “Deeper, wider, and through differently colored lenses” is her approach. Laura most recently spoke at the 2007 IDSA World Congress on The Art and Science of Measuring Emotion (in product design). She has also written for the gadget blog, Gizmodo.com, and frog’s Design Mind.
As designers we have the abil-
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