Slides from the talk I gave at +Studio Digital Fashion -event in Helsinki 12.4.2013.

1. Visit us at Köydenpunojankatu 2 aD,00180 Helsinki,Finland
See our work at www.nordkapp.fi.We’re onTwitter,too @Nordkapp
RIGHTHERE,
RIGHTNOW
Hello, my name is Sami and I’m here to talk about how interaction design and fashion are converging.

2. Websites
Concept
Design
Advanced
Product
Design
Digital driven
products & services,
business design, etc
1997 Now
Branding
Mobile
Urban
Informatics
etc
First, briefly about myself —My background is in all things web since 1990s. I got introduced to this thing called the
internet while doing the Finnish military service. I’ve been building things professionally for the browser since 1997.
I’ve worked on digital music since 1999, in 2000 I worked on one of the first mobile portals in the world. I’ve been
practicing interaction design since 2004, working on my own, for small studios and also Nokia Design’s advanced
design group Insight & Innovation from 2005 to 2007. We started Nordkapp in 2007 and here I am.

3. HELSINKI
http://ixda.org http://grafia.fi
I also founded the local Interaction design association IXDA chapter in 2008, and am the board member of Grafia, the
Finnish visual communication designers’ association.

4. At Nordkapp we design strategy, business, products and services for web, mobile, tablets and internet of things. We
work for both multinational corporations and startups alike.

5. In our work we try to discover the right questions and related insights, and then design accordingly. Things we’ve
worked on include how to make Finnish legislative process more visual and transparent, how airline passengers
relate to tablets on air, data visualisation and dashboards for 3G/LTE network administration, responsive digital
service design for a hospital and optimal in-browser reading experience.

6. IxD?
So, on to todays’ topic. What is this thing called interaction design
then? It is about a lot of things
- it is a tool to create, change and better businesses. However, today
I’m talking about the more personal, wearable side of things. Let’s start
with a video which explains this a bit further.

7. http://vimeo.com/50626032
(Acronym FW 2013 -video)

8. IxD = “Design for somebody using something”
Put roughly, interaction design —IxD for short— is about design for
somebody using something. It’s all a bit fluffy and there is no one
definition what IxD is.
It is about the creation of a dialogue between a person and a product,
service or system, about designing “things” and “stuff” that have an
effect how people behave.

9. artek.fi,nest.com
IxD challenges the old perception of design as a process of tangible
form giving. Instead the end result can be a whole new kind of
business, business model, built around a new product venture such as
the smart thermostat Nest here.

10. People + Design + Technology = Magic
Very often IxD involves a technological component of some sort. Then the
designer’s goal is to design things that work so well the technology fades
cognitively to the background and people can focus on the essential. For
example, think of a physical door handle or a calculator app on your iPhone.
When you use them you don’t really have to think about how they work.

11. There is a reason for why IxD is needed so badly right now. As our
world is becoming increasingly complex, so good design is more and
more important on making sense and clarifying the world. We don’t
really need any more swiss pocket knives which do a bit of everything
and nothing properly.

12. IxD Fashion ?+
So, what does this all have to do with fashion then? Quite a lot, actually.

13. NorwegianRain,MissionWorkshop,Outlier
There’s this macro level shift happening at the fringes at the moment
which involves a lot of young designers w/ digital background making
clothing. Outlier, Mission Workshop, Norwegian Rain… And what these
people do is they naturally bring technical garments and to the city
streets mainstream. A waterproof garment doesn’t have to look it
belongs to backcountry anymore.

14. And even things like nano technology are starting to pop up in fairly
casual places. You can now buy a made-to-measure, nano coated suit
online.

15. }
When we look at the bigger picture, as consumers, we’re now here.
Moore’s Law states the exponential growth of processing power over
time. This means also things are getting smaller, and increasingly
digital eats away the physical. Simple things like the calculator, notepad
and the camera are now apps on your smartphone.

16. 1)SydMead’sconceptartforBladeRunner,1980
2)TeslaAutomotive,2012
1980 2012
A lot of the things science fiction predicted have come to us, they are almost everyday
objects all around us. The world is becoming more and more connected. Sensors and
programmed behaviours are popping up everywhere. The question here is — what happens
when this goes on and on, and the computers disappear? Syd Mead’s car of the future from
Blade Runner is nearly here, but then what does it really mean?

17. Fixed computing Mobile computing Diffused computing
At the same time, the physical computers are getting smaller and
smaller. Desktops become laptops, laptops become tablets, mobile
phones and so on. Computing becomes diffused. There are really no
more mainframes but networked mesh computing. Instead of software,
there’s everyware.

18. “Internet of Things”
There’s this big emerging thing called IOT, Internet of things.
Computers disappear into the fabric of everyday life and mostly
everything becomes connected.

19. We’re seeing this all around us already. Wearable things like Nike
Fuelband are tiny computers in our wrists, creeping slowly into
mainstream. Wearable technology is probably the hottest emerging
tech market right now.

20. artek.fi,nest.com
This happens inside your home, too. Everything is getting connected.
The internet is creeping up on you everywhere. In your home, in the
city… and on you.

21. When everything becomes connected, it can be measured. There’s this
emerging trend called Quantified self: everything becomes measurable.
Sports equipment manufacturer Under Armour makes sensor-equipped
compression shirts that measure an athlete’s performance, including
heart rate, metabolism, body position, and lung capacity. Nokia and
Burton ventured into this thing called Push Snowboarding two years ago
already— what they found was by measuring things like galvanic skin
response, heartrate, rotation, speed/gps, etc you can reveal a lot of
things the athlete feels like.

22. http://vimeo.com/60342038
Where this gets really interesting for fashion designers is that this new
technology enables new interactions.
Here’s a short video about Myo, a wearable controller shipping soon.

23. http://xslabs.net/karma-chameleon/site/prototypes.php
Also worth noting that everything will become a display. This is a real,
interactive electronic garment prototype display by Karma Chameleon
of Montreal, Canada. What they are looking is to harness human
generated energy for the “displays”. And this is only the beginning.
http://xslabs.net/karma-chameleon/site/introduction.php

24. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1uyQZNg2vE
And it gets even more personal: here’s a short clip about Google’s new
wearable display Glass. Obviously, these guys seem to lead fairly
interesting lives. Reality is a lot duller. But what it does it enables
sharing very personal and intimate experiences on the fly, from a very
different perspective.

25. http://www.google.com/glass/
Only problem is it kind of makes you look like a douchebag. I would say
this is kind of Hello World of wearable tech. Not quite there yet, not
quite that sexy yet. We’re right now at the version 0.1 of this. it will get
better and smaller over time.

26. Another example, from Sweden.
Hövding is a CE-approved inflatable bicycle helmet. This is a real thing,
in stores since last year. It is based on motion sensing the sudden
movement of impact.

27. http://vimeo.com/21699682
Here’s a thing called Adidas Megalizer. It’s basicallly an ad for shoe
brand, but the product is “real” and fairly interesting, especially the
playful behaviour it enables.

28. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/machina/midi-controller-jacket-v01
This can be taken even further, here are a few guys from Mexico City
actually building a playable jacket, a MIDI controller funded through
Kickstarter of course.

29. utopia dystopia
These examples are all nice, and sort of techno-optimistic. But it is
really important to understand every utopia always has an explicit
dystopia.

30. http://www.lorenzpotthast.de/deceleratorhelmet/description/
This is obviously visible in various art experiments.
In case you feel stressed, feel no fear, The Decelerator Helmet allows
the user a perception of the world in slow motion with its cameras on
the outside and displays on the inside.

31. For one, the military is obviously very keen on wearable technology and
things it enables.

32. “Bits on places”
Your mom on Facebook is just the beginning. This Internet of things
breaks the world and makes things behave weirdly. We need
collaboration between all kinds of designers to make the world a bit
more sensible.

33. Connected things
When everything goes digital we create new digital maps of the world.
So what we are beginning to see is this physical manifestation of the
digital in the city, on us and all around.
Coldplay gave away 100 000 radio controlled wristbands on their tour
last year. Chris Martin has a stake in the technology. Heineken
introduced a blinking, “interactive beer bottle” that reacts to drinkers
behaviour such as toasting of dancing in Milan yesterday.

34. When everything is connected, it creates new contexts.Things know where they are and can tell you how long does it
take to get somewhere?

35. Paimiio chair (left) , designed for the Paimio Sanatorium(right) by Alvar Aalto.
Images by Artek and Wikipedia
When working with complex design problems, I always come back to architect Eliel Saarinen's principle of designing
things to the next largest context — chair in a room, room in the building, etc—which connects to this quite nicely.
We're essentially talking about micro- and macroscale here. When adding digital bits together with physical things,
we have to go both ways — the next smaller, human context is quite important too.
What comes to designing new things, I think this is quite important:

36. HowardSIlverman,Opele&Places2009:
http://www.peopleandplace.net/media_library/image/2008/12/19/pace_layering
There’s a theory in architecture called pace layering which suggests that buildings can be
divided into different “layers,” each defined by the speed by which it changes: while the
structure, for instance, changes very slowly, the skin, or exterior surface, changes more
rapidly, and the interior layout and the position of furniture change more rapidly.

37. http://www.gizmag.com/bracelet-uses-social-network-to-protect-civil-rights-activists/26954/
Now here’s the thing: Design is inherently political: Here’s a prototype of a GPS and SMS enabled protective wristband for
protesters. How could you do something that makes a splash?

38. Anti
Patterns
http://www.primitivelondon.co.uk/exhibition-adam-harvey-stealth-wear-new-designs-for-counter-surveillance-
presented-by-primitive-london-and-tank-magazine/
This is an opportunity as well. This is a piece of work called “new counter surveillance fashions from New York-based artist
Adam Harvey.”
When every camera has the capability to ID your facial features, is there such thing as hiding anymore?
When we go beyond designing blueprints means we’re dealing with a whole new level of unknown unknowns, dark matter in
between the interactions. There will always be seams and things will break down.

39. “ as a service”
When everything becomes connected, everything will become a service. This poses huge
opportunities to rethink existing business models.
Zara can design a new product and have finished goods in its stores in four to five weeks; it
can modify existing items in as little as two weeks. Could you beat this with internet and
software?
So what this means is a whole new world for design and designers.

40. “The strongest impacts of an emergent
technology are always unanticipated. You can’t
know what people are going to do until they get
their hands on it and start using it on a daily
basis, using it to make a buck and using it for
criminal purpose and all the di≠erent things
that people do.” william gibson on the art of fiction at the Paris Review
http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/6089/the-art-of-fiction-no-211-william-gibson
—
Internet has the power to bring down governments, it changes the world. I would like to end
with this quote from science fiction author William Gibson. He articulates very well the
problematic with new things and technology — you can’t really know what people do with
your thing until you put it out there for people to use and misuse. I believe right time to do
this is right here, right now. I would love to talk about this with you guys.

41. Visit us at Köydenpunojankatu 2 aD,00180 Helsinki,Finland
See our work at www.nordkapp.fi.We’re onTwitter,too @Nordkapp
@samin + sami@nordkapp.fi
Let’s talk.
Thanks for listening. I am on twitter @samin, and you can email me as well.