CES Wrap Up

Last week we exhibited at CES, and had the opportunity to partake in the many festivities that surround the giant tech show. Here is our booth, which we shared with MDRevolution, Panasonic, MDLive, Misfit Wearables, and BleepBleeps:

Between 7 of us we covered halls North to South, hotel exhibits, happy hours, meetups, and met people from around the world. Here is our take on how companies big and small took Vegas by storm (or not).

Ant Creed, GM of Experience Design:

Ant contributed to a panel discussion on Tuesday at the Silvers Summit, called “Designing Products We LOVE,” where they discussed designing tech for the senior user, focusing on the importance of early user feedback and the Experience Design Cycle.

Favourite product: the Liftware spoon, more attachments to follow. The spoon handle reduces or eliminates tremors so a person can feed themselves. Extraordinary!

Favourite Booth: Samsung. Not only the biggest booth, it had the widest range of products, from fridges to tablets, and pretty much all of it was world class.

Biggest Surprise #1: There wasn’t anything really new. There were lots of things that were bigger, smaller, faster, cheaper, simpler, richer, and so on, but most things were incremental improvements on existing products.

Biggest Surprise 2: products are still being created in silos, without regard to related products and services (especially from other companies). The concept of experience design was new to all of the people I spoke with, but they were excited to hear about our holistic approach, and it seems to be an important differentiator for us.

Overall Take-away: consumers are viewed as a patchwork of problems to be solved, and each company picks the problem that they think they can solve, without regard to the bigger, experiential picture. Few companies view consumers holistically, fewer still do anything about it.

Deni Cook, Interaction Design Manager:

Favorite Products:
Audi‘s new car was pretty amazing.

Loved the 3D printing this year, especially the ceramic 3D printer, CeraJet.

BleepBleeps has a great, fun line of products for the design-conscious parent.

Best Booth Experience:
Mercedes-Benz was cool–the fact they had a augmented reality customizable car display was tops.

Overall Take-away:
Great show, lots of new technology to work with on the horizon.

Charles Curbbun, Chief:

The entire 3D section was impressive. Everything from CeraJet to multicolored printing to home 3D printers the size of microwaves–you can make/create/innovate anywhere, anytime.

Tracy Manning, Business Development:

Favorite Booth/Product: Mercedes-Benz and their S-Class/smartwatch combo. They showed how a car is also a part of the “internet of things,” by demonstrating how a smartwatch can connect to a vehicle and thus unlock a series of features. Your car being such a personal item, it makes sense that the car of the future is engaged with the growing wearable market–you can check your gas gauge (or charge bar), check traffic conditions, and even see stats from your last trip.