Fjord is a digital service design agency with offices around the globe. They help develop services for clients in industries such as telecom, mobile, finance, publishing/media etc.

At Fjord’s London office I do a mix of strategy, concept development, information architecture and interaction design. As most of the work we do is confidential, I can’t share it here.

For this project, I made some hardware prototypes to see how a series of physical toys could be designed to work with the capacitive touch screen on the iPad and iPhone.

I also developed a series of mockups for how a story-based monster game might work. Placing the toys on the screen triggers sounds and graphics, as well as interactions between the monsters, depending on their different characters.

My masters thesis project with the Experience Design Group at Konstfack in Stockholm.

I worked with Nina Bačun in exploring relationships between people and technology. We created interactive prototypes and fictional scenarios for two case studies, which were also showed at the degree exhibition. At the exhibition we also offered consultation to anyone willing to share their experiences with technology. In response, we offered suggestions on readings or prescribed actions to take in order to gain a more well-rounded perspective on the role of technology.

More info here and at the project website.

Update: Mixology 2 and 3 are featured in Gestalten’s just-released “Delicate”, and was just performed in its fifth iteration at Designgalleriet in Stockholm.

Mixology 4 was performed during HönnunarMars (DesignMarch) in Reykjavik, in collaboration with Dill Restaurant. See more photos here and video here.

It started out as a fun way to socialise with friends, but has been scaled up and performed with over 150 guests. That time in collaboration with Fredrik Eriksson of Långbro Värdshus.

Wait! What?

The long story made fairly short is that Prang had her laptop held hostage by the repair shop of a well-known computer/fruit company refusing to repair or return the computer. A fundraising campaign started alongside my diplomatic attempts to get the computer released. This time, diplomacy won, to the joy of us all as we proceeded to throw a party using the raised funds. This came to be the first installment of Mixology and the start of a soon year-old eating design project.

When guests arrive, they are given labcoats to put them in an experimenting mood, and notepads to document their culinary trials. During the course of the evening they are asked to follow three simple rules;

1. Compound of Three
2. Only Once
3. Do Tell

Meaning that participants should look to make combinations of three ingredients each, only have each combination once, and that they should feel free to share their experiences and perhaps trade combinations with others.

The combinations are recorded, along with any comments.

I co-designed the event with Josefin Vargö and Prang L and I typically manage documentation, projection, light, sound etc. More video can be seen here, and more photos here.

Konstfack Design Talks is a collection of short interviews with leading design thinkers about the use of design thinking in non-design contexts, as well as a series of interviews with researchers and students at Konstfack about their experiences from earlier or ongoing projects.

I manage the project, shoot and edit the videos. It is done on a part-time basis, adding new interviews as they are completed. Willow Tyrer designed the website and identity. The cards above we designed together, basing them on the sound graphs resulting from the interview quotes appearing also in type on the cards.

Play-along with Frédéric Chopin; Nocturne in F major. The player sits down at a piano, where lights are mapped to four keys on the piano. As the music starts playing, the player can take part by listening, watching the lights and pressing the corresponding key, just like in the familiar video game.

I designed and built this installation as a low-tech interactive piece, to be included in an interactive theatre performance. It consists of a control panel built in Max/MSP, coupled with an electronics part based on an Arduino.

I’ve worked together with Nina B. designing and building scenography for the Stockholm School of Entrepreneurship events Startup Day and Good Morning 2020.

Insulinom by Aktör & Vänner is an interactive theatre performance set in a medical clinic. As special effects technician I helped create the illusion.

Photos by Oskar Allerby

A vision for the future of medicine;
The practitioner combines traditional and conventional medicine in a treatment tailored for the patient.

Created with four other students as part of the course Trendspotting in India.

“The Experience Design Group powers your brain”

After the yearly Nobel gala dinner there is an afterparty hosted by students of Stockholm’s universities. In late 2009 the Experience Design Group was asked by the organizing committee at Karolinska Institutet to craft an experience to honor the Nobel laureates. We interpreted and re-negotiated the brief, which originally was to make visual portraits of the laureates. After researching the achievements of the laurates, and designing experiences in line with those achievements, we decided to give every attendee at the party a “brain”.

The evening’s experience started on the buses from the gala dinner to the nightcap, with random guests on every bus bursting out singing “If I only had a brain”. This was received differently by guests, leaving them amused, confused and curious as to what might happen once they get to the party. Upon checking their coats, the guests each received their individual brain. This brain could then be charged with knowledge at different stations around the venue. One station contained written quotes projected inside a picture frame on a wall, one was a whispering station and so on. Every time a guest used their brain, a circular projected neural network visualization placed in the ballroom would respond, and as the evening progressed, the neural network would reflect the accumulated activity during the evening.

Another of the experiences were “Telomere cookies”; chromosome-shaped and dipped in differently flavored frostings. They were wrapped in packages and presented on a wall, and when they were removed they revealed what you might look if you were of a different age.

This was done with the Experience Design Group at Konstfack, part time for about 8 weeks. My role was in co-designing the event and helping figure out the RFID solution for the brain stations and the network.

An intervention in collaboration with Prang L.; an example activity in a larger scheme looking to make public transport more attractive, while also gently questioning our habit of sustained time optimisation.

Krepp-à-porter is a dress responsive to the volatility of markets. The work is based on the hemline index, the old truism that skirt length varies with the stock markets, and is inspired by the worldwide economic meltdown (Kreppa in Icelandic) as well as the eco-design boom.

Working in the tradition of transcending figures like Hussein Chalayan we explore how technology can change peoples relationship to clothes. If the clothes are self-adapting, how does that change the way we feel about them? In the intersection between several disciplines such as art/design, fashion/technology and research/innovation lies the work of Anders Mellbratt and Nils Wiberg. This time all of them coincide in the groundbreaking project Krepp-à-porter; a dress that automatically adapts its length according to the stock exchange. Fashion is changing at an ever-increasing rate – so is the economy – sometimes in a way that has massive repercussions such as the recent global financial collapse. Do people really have time to worry about fashion in such situations? Or is it perhaps even more interesting in volatile times?

There are very few truths within fashion but one of them is claimed to be the so-called “Hemline Index”; the proposition that skirt lengths adapt after the stock market. When the economy is good, skirts are shorter, and in economic downturns the skirt lengths go down too. Pioneered in the 1929′s by George Taylor who observed that skirt lengths not only followed the stock market but even predict it. Two weeks before the stock market plummeted on the collapse of 1929 the Paris runwayas premiered dresses that went all the way to the ground. This predictive quality is the basis for this dress showed at IASDR2009 in Seoul, South Korea.

Photos by Ju Hang, model is Sylvia Benavidez

I developed the concept together with Nils Wiberg, co-designed the dress with fashion designer Sally Ståhl, designed and made the custom circuit using Arduino and Fritzing and built all electronics, as well as co-authored the peer-reviewed paper for the IASDR conference.

To connect a site with tradition and values of a time past, I and Josefin Vargö chose to have Marcus at Stockholm’s Grill Bar compose a drink based on Årsta brännvin.

Recipe
3 cl Årsta Brännvin
1 cl Limoncello
1 cl Vanilla Liquor
3 cl Red Orange purée
1 cl Syrup

Shake and serve in a cooled cocktail glass

A Couple of Morons, together with light designer Daniel Andersson and dancer Amanda Apetrea started a collaboration around movement-based interfaces in 2008. The work has continued through live performance and lab-like experimentation.

When A Couple of Morons was asked to perform an interactive piece using the monolith display at the Re:New festival in 2008, we couldn’t say no. After initiating dancer Juli Gabor, she moved with audio by Nils Wiberg and interactive visuals by me.

In an effort to learn more about current views on technology and its role in society, as well as priming, motivation and imagination of subjects I co-designed a study using bananas as props. The study was part of a competition entry for the HCIEd Student Interaction Design Competition.

In this A Couple of Morons project, we envision a future scenario including the city’s digital layer. The film was part of a competition entry for the HCIEd 2008 Student Interaction Design Competition.

Update 2011: Some of my photos from this project appear in the book This is Service Design Thinking.

As part of research into homelessness for the CHI 2008 Student Design Competition, I distributed probes among homeless in Stockholm. In what can be said to be a DUH! result, the response rate was low, despite a positive attitude and expressed willingness among the participants. In the paper we wrote as part of the competition entry, we suggested a type of service based on basic needs being fulfilled before requiring any action on the part of the homeless person.

I designed and carried out the study myself.

A couple of quick mockups done intended to explore the perception of time while waiting.