The following information is presented more fully in the Flash potion of the Fiori website. It is duplicated here for the convenience of those who may not be able to run Flash.
Seeing Deeper: The Art of Understanding
People connect to companies through products: something they can touch that touches them in an emotional way. It’s a relationship based on desire and dependability. In many ways it’s like a love affair; it begins with high expectations and optimism, but usually ends up foundering on the rocks of sad reality. Despite eye-catching design or promising new technologies, most products fail to live up to people’s expectations.
Great products, on the other hand, support how people work and play, encourage people’s aspirations, and inspire emotions of confidence and appreciation. They are great precisely because they anticipate exactly what people want and deliver it. They are products that feel inevitable, as if they were there all along, waiting to be discovered.
At Fiori, our ultimate purpose is to design, develop and deliver products that connect with people. We accomplish this by going both further and deeper. We start by immersing ourselves in the worlds of real people, because the complexities of human emotions, behavior and desires can’t be found in focus groups or canned reports.
This real-world understanding inspires design and fuels innovation. It’s a fusion of art with psychology and vision with technology. It leads to products that connect with people, creating emotional bonds between brands and human beings. Bonds that translate into long-term consumer loyalty, increasing your product’s market share today while growing your brand’s market share tomorrow.
To see how much there is to be gleaned from the lives of real people, spend a moment exploring the profiles of Erik and Sophia. While they represent but a fraction of the insight our in-depth research uncovers, they do provide a rare glimpse into the depth and complexity of two real people, and what’s important to them. We find that the more we learn from real people, the better able we are to give them products that they really want.
Methodology
Overview
Fiori is dedicated to seeing and developing what's next in consumer product design. To gain this vision into tomorrow’s products, we employ a context-based approach to product planning, development and positioning. It’s a proven methodology that begins with comprehensive, real-world research.
Research
At Fiori, contextual-research provides a foundation of insight for every project we take on — insight that brings companies closer to their consumers. It’s an approach that takes research out of the laboratory and into people’s houses, cars, workplaces and stores – anywhere and everywhere people buy and use products. Through listening, observing and interacting we study people’s behaviors, perceptions and goals. It’s an in-depth, rigorous process that leads to a comprehensive understanding of the relationships between people and products in real-world situations.
Strategy
In-depth research produces keen strategy. At Fiori, strategy development is a collaborative endeavor that begins with marketers, designers and executives immersing themselves in the world of the consumer. This personal exposure aligns development teams and creates new appreciation of and an unbreakable bond with the people who buy and use their products. This emotional connection and new understanding of the consumer provide the fuel and navigation for enlightened product, design and communication strategies.
Design
Guided by ethnographic and contextual research and strategy, design becomes a process directed by purpose and meaning instead of arbitrary whims, fads and assumptions. Spending time in the real world with real people inspires the design, while strategic goals, metrics and attributes help direct and shape it. People’s problems and opinions lead us to practical solutions: their goals, attitudes and outlooks lead us to meaningful innovation. It’s design that flowers from insight.
Results
The bottom line? Fiori helps companies to create products that connect with people on both an aesthetic and emotional level. And products that meet and exceed consumer expectations cause stronger sales and ever increasing brand loyalty. It's a common sense approach that births uncommon results.
Portfolio
Dagger Recreational Kayak
Dagger is about a passion for water and the thrill of slicing through it at top speed. When they called us, they wanted their obsession with kayaking to be communicated through a new level of kayak design and refinement. To further raise the bar, they wanted their new, refined flat water boat to debut at an industry trade show looming just around the bend. We collaborated with the Dagger team to create a kayak that simultaneously conveys sophistication while never losing the adrenaline, whitewater thrill that drives their company, their products and their consumers.
HP 7260 Photosmart Printer
Photographs are memories made tangible. And while the digital revolution has brought with it the convenience of digital photography, people still demand the tactile intimacy of a printed photograph. HP has become the leader in digital photo printing through the power of inkjet technology. Because the human element is so crucial in the development of successful product, HP turned to Fiori to conduct in-depth research in people’s homes in both the U.S. and Europe and to collaborate in the industrial design of a host of innovative products that connect people emotionally to the pictures they take.
Logitech Desktop Microphones
Low-margin products come alive thanks to high concept design. We began by emphasizing the simple, slender form of the microphone and took it to many elegant conclusions: so many that Logitech was in the enviable position of having too much to choose from. Our abundance of sleek designs triggered an opportunity to split the product line and achieve dramatic business success by infusing low cost products with high-end industrial design.
Intel Web Tablet
We applied ourselves to create a smart, anytime, anywhere appliance. Research showed that people wanted a casual, mobile computer that would provide Web access, email and PC functions: and they wanted it in the kitchen, the living room and even the backyard. Intel needed a flagship product and they looked to Fiori to make it happen. We melded friendly product design with phenomenal function, to create a sophisticated product that was made to move: declaring Intel’s technological superiority and commitment to usability.
Bigha People Bike
The inventor of the bicycle didn’t have ergonomics in mind when he created the two-wheeled back torture device over 200 years ago. Bigha enlisted our help in creating a bicycle that combined comfort with performance. And, as usual, we began at the end: the cyclist who would ride it. After studying, talking, riding and hanging out with cyclists, we came away with specific needs and goals to make sure our designers just wouldn’t be spinning their wheels. The result is a high-end recumbent bicycle whose geometry makes the bike both faster and easier ride to fulfill the needs of die-hard cyclists.
InFocus Design Strategy
InFocus asked us to go beyond visual consistency to create an arching design strategy that would set the standard for products exceptional in their support of business professionals. We visited large and small companies in the US and Europe to understand the people, practices and environments that relate to digital projectors. This research led us to innovations that support the everyday use of projectors through new storage and set up solutions, an interaction model that really follows how people use the products, and remote solutions. This design strategy will soon be applied to every product in the InFocus line.
Intel Wireless Camera
At Intel, teams are built around innovation. One of Intel’s brightest groups stitched together two bits of research — security as an emerging trend and the growing interest in digital imaging and high speed-wireless networking — to create a wireless digital camera that spontaneously captured the events in people’s lives. As pictures were taken, they were immediately and wirelessly transferred to the home PC, which meant that the camera could also serve as a home security device. Fiori took this innovative vision and made it real, simple and beautiful to behold.
InFocus LP130 Digital Projector
InFocus asked for the smallest and lightest digital projector ever made. And we threw sleek, sophisticated and savvy into the bargain. The InFocus LP130 is where high-end meets high-expectations. It’s for mobile professionals who demand more of themselves and more from the tools they carry. Its premium design meshes so perfectly with the needs and sensibilities of mobile professionals that it is one of the company’s best selling products.
Planar Invitium Medical Information System
Planar develops and sells innovative flat screen display technologies. And, to capitalize on the higher profit margins of medical product, they wanted a bright solution that would allow medical professionals crisp access to crucial information without disturbing patients. Fiori thoroughly researched the hospital environment, uncovering opportunities to enlighten and inform. Invitium’s design has received accolades from users and industry professionals alike. By marrying a progressive design with a deep understanding of the way people use products, Fiori helped Planar to deliver truly stealth care.
Idatech Residential Fuel Cell
Fuel cells produce clean and efficient electricity, reducing dependency on fossil fuels. But to become pervasive, this amazing technology needed to fit seamlessly into people’s homes and lives. We transformed an industrial-looking machine into something that instantly communicated green efficiency. The design wowed customers, the press and the industry alike, helping to cement Idaho Power’s position as the industry leader in residential fuel cells.
HP 7960 Photosmart Printer
When the world leader in digital photography developed their top of the line photo printer, they asked Fiori to help them connect with people for whom photography is not hobby but passion. The expertise and creative standards of our audience led us to design that embodies precision and exactness. And to prove that professional function needn’t be married with complexity, we created a remarkably simple interface that offers the printer’s power and flexibility to anyone, not just technophiles. The net result is a product with the complete package - advanced capability, radical simplicity and head-turning beauty. Sales have been beyond all forecasts, showing that combining leading technology with the finest in design produce surprises pleasant to both the people who use products and those who make them.
Iomega Jaz Drive
Jazz is all about the tempo, and this project was so fast that Charlie Parker would have problems keeping up. Iomega needed help developing their new Jaz drive and they needed it to get to market in just twelve weeks. While we defined a new boundary in rapid product development, you would never know it by the Jaz drive’s refined and well-detailed design. This twelve-week wonder exceeded sales expectations and Iomega’s aggressive schedule allowed for additional months of sales.
Planet Halo Wireless Communicator
We know a good thing when we see it. A start-up called Planet Halo asked us to collaborate on fully-functional next generation, wireless communication prototypes for a crucial wireless industry event. After three months of very long days and very short nights, we had ten functional systems ready to take the wireless messaging industry by storm. The attention garnered at the show helped Planet Halo to secure the deals necessary to catalyze the full development of the system.
Intel Akeru Business PC
Intel thinks a lot about the true cost of PCs — the purchase price, support, servicing, upgrading and ultimately disposal and recycling — to arrive at the product’s total cost of ownership. When Intel asked Fiori to design a low cost PC to accompany the launch of a new processor, we started with a clean slate. First we took out all the screws (since each turn of the screw costs money) and held it all together with polypropylene foam. The foam also cushions from the inside of the PC, reducing the need for another cash drain: packaging foam. We also eliminated the fan by creating cooling channels in the foam and created a lockable, latched, hinged case that opens in seconds. And, since it can be dissembled without tools, recycling one is as easy as buying one.
Clients
- AT&T
- Bigha
- Bioject
- Cisco
- Dagger
- Fujitsu
- Giro
- HP
- Infocus
- Intel
- Iomega
- Logitech
- LSI Logic
- Medtronic
- Microsoft
- Philips
- Planar
- Precor
- Scott USA
- Samsung
- Yakima
Website Production Credits
- Website by
- The Artists Formerly Known as Paris France
- Brand Strategy
- Chuck Nobles
- Creative Director
- Doug Lowell
- Producer
- Scott Trotter
- Designer
- Molly Sokolow Hayden
- Technical Director
- Scott Trotter
- Developers
- Sophie Schmidt
- Scott Trotter
- Erik Falat
- Graphic Artist
- Molly Sokolow Hayden
- Writers
- Dale Bayse
- Doug Lowell
- Photographers
- Steven Bloch
- Mike Dahlstrom