User-Generated Creative Designer 3: Peter Petrulo

Peter transitioned the talk from how to get the future to what’s already on the way. Peter focused on four interactive experiences—Scion, Nike iD, Timbuk2, and Moto Colors —that depend on personalization. Product personalization has opened a door to consumers, allowing them to get exactly what they want, and feel like it’s unique to them. Although it’s becoming more common, these companies had to spend a great deal to create their revolutionary customization systems. And it’s paying off.

But an interesting point Peter was making is that the other side of the coin is adding to the success of these experiences: they put constraints on the users’ creativity. Although you want to achieve uniqueness and total customization, you need to balance that with good design. Instead, meet the consumer with your experience in hand: your design sense, your materials, your product engineering.

So a designer’s role is starting to become, rather than a dictator, a kind of referee: you can play around in the field, kids—but if it gets out of hand, I’ll blow the whistle.

Free-format Interactivity Designer 4: Jarrod Riddle

Picking up on Shawn’s thoughts of redefining spaces, ACD Jarrod Riddle finished up the discussion with viZoo’s “free-format” interactivity.

What they do is holographic displays. And if you see the videos on their site, you can see them literally realizing what Shawn spoke of earlier: a mixing of fact and fiction, as their creators put it, or the creation of a hybrid space.

Ending the discussion with this topic really gave us all a challenge. If this kind of virtual design is technically possible, and if these kinds of interactivity are just starting to appear now, we have to think about how to use them. How do we Kanye West it? How do we take what we already know, what we’re doing, and combine it with viZoo-style interaction?