E-paper Concept, More than a Device

In the last years there have been a lot of buzz around the electronic paper technology (or epaper, for short), specially after the introduction of the Amazon Kindle. At Design vs Art our motivation for our last project was the fact that, aside from ebook readers, not many devices have been presented using the epaper technology.

In order to discover opportunities we went through a whole design process: defining the problem to solve or motivation, looking for a strategy, ideation, prototyping and explaining the idea.

 

Designing with Post-it

Designing with Post-it is always fun

 

For us one of the most important features about the epaper technology is the possibility of creating a whole system around the device. Data on the display could come from different sources and the epaper device could communicate to a variety of other devices and to gather information from its environment creating a whole information ecosystem.

 

Epaper billboard with Paperspot logo

Electronic paper billboards are one of the faces of our last project, Paperspots. See our project page on Designvsart.com

 

Once we decided to develop an advertising system, it was clear for us that we would need more than a device if we wanted a good user experience; so we designed epaper billboards and a whole information system including the necessary interfaces to manage it.

We also imagined the way the user would intereact with the billboard and how the service could add value to customers.

 

 See how the Paperspots system works

 

Of course traditional paper billboards already work in a system; but the digital nature of the electronic paper could revolutionize the business.

At Design vs Art we do product ideation and concept design, starting with a motivation and following a whole creative and design process.

If you are thinking of a new product or service focused on users or if you are interested in any of our concepts you might want to contact us. Here is our contact information.

FromHere, an Application for Mobile Public Transport Information

At Design vs Art we have been thinking for some time about how it would be to give users of public transportation the possibility of knowing in a fast way how to get from A to B in an extremly fast way. In this article I would like to give you some insights about the design of the fromhere application.

The Problem to Solve

Our agency is based in Munich, a city with a huge public transport network that takes people everywhere. The problem is that as the travelers get more options the network becomes more complex. Then, is very difficult for people to plan a journey without a computer with access to the online route planning system.

There are several services to check this information through a mobile phone but none takes advantage of the latest technology, like GPS.

The Solution

In the following video you can see a fast introduction to our design.


FromHere Application from Design vs Art on Vimeo.

 

We have been asking users of public transportation about the places they usually go. The answer was that most of them are regularly going to the same places, like work, gym and favorite cafeterias or bars.

So we decided to design an interface as simple as possible that makes the journey planning really fast, wherever the user is but going to those "standard" places. We decided to design our first solution for the iPhone as we realized that tapping on the destination would be the fastest way to do it. 

The Interface

The fromhere interface is clean, it loads fast and eliminates any distraction other applications could have. For us, designing an interface that is fast and easy to use was our main goal. 

The Technology

Thanks to GPS the telephone knows where the user is located. The application then connects to the server to translate coordinates to a real address, such as "Duesseldorfer Strasse 11, Munich".

In the next step the application requests the journey plan between departure and destination to the servers.

Contact Us

Please contact us if you need farther details about the application.

The official fromhere product information website is here: http://www.designvsart.com/fromhere 

Creative Commons

You can use the contents of this article and video under Creative Commons Attributions License 3.0. Just link to http://www.designvsart.com/fromhere