Coravin Model Eleven
Company Coravin
Introduction Date January 8, 2018
Project Website https://www.coravin.com/modeleleven
Why is this project worthy of an award?
For hundreds of years, consumers have been constrained by the way wine is sold to them: by the bottle. The Coravin Wine Preservation System is the first system that allows wine lovers to pour a glass of wine without removing the cork. Coravin is changing the way the world drinks and thinks about wine by allowing consumers to drink any wine, in any amount – without wasting a drop by preserving the wine remaining in the bottle for weeks, months or even years. In January 2018, Coravin turned its wine preservation technology up to eleven with the introduction of the world’s first connected wine preservation system, the Coravin Model Eleven. Designed incorporating consumer insights, the new, intuitive Model Eleven is faster, easier and more fun than pulling the cork. The Model Eleven combines all of the innovation found in the previous Coravin Models with automatic pouring, an LED display and Bluetooth connectivity to the Coravin Moments app. Automatic Pouring gives consumers the ability to pour the perfect amount with one motion. Users can pour a sip, a glass, or more, simply by placing the Coravin Model Eleven on top of the bottle and pressing the needle through the cork. Once the needle is pressed through the cork, the light ring on the Coravin Model Eleven will turn green, indicating it is ready to pour. Then, just tip the bottle with one hand and the wine will automatically flow. As the wine is poured from the bottle, it is replaced with argon, an inert gas used by winemakers, to ensure the last glass in the bottle tastes as amazing as the very first. Once done pouring the perfect amount of wine, just pull up to remove the Model Eleven from the bottle and use it to pour from other bottles. The ring light will turn back to blue. The Model Eleven lets users select from two custom pour sizes from a taste to a full pour so that the right amount of gas is always dispensed. An LED Display lets users monitor system stats including battery life, pour size, argon capsule use, and will tell you when the system needs cleaning. Bluetooth Connectivity pairs the Model Eleven with the new Coravin Moments app. The app helps consumers keep tabs on system stats including gas, needle use and battery charge, shares reorder reminders and allows for auto replenishment of capsules and needles. The Coravin Moments app also helps wine lovers discover new wines, or pair experiences with the wines they already own and enjoy. The app not only provides information on the characteristics and regions of each wine, but also uses proprietary algorithms to offer recommendations that identify unique wine pairings for user-inputted experiences for everything from food to film. A photo capture feature in the Coravin Moments app enables users to add wines to their virtual wine cellar with the press of a button.
What else would you like to share about your design? Why is it unique and innovative?
Coravin was invented by Greg Lambrecht, a medical device inventor and executive with a passion for wine and innovative technology. Drawing on his background in physics, mechanical engineering, nuclear power and medical devices he was inspired to develop a product that allowed him to enjoy glasses of wine without committing to the whole bottle. After his wife became pregnant with their son and Greg lost his wine drinking partner, he set out to find a way to magically pour wine from bottles without removing the cork. With his background in medical device technology, Greg drew from his experience in developing non-damaging needles to create a non-coring needle that passes through cork while it is still in the bottle. Noting the elastic properties of cork and the strength and precision of such needles, Greg tested the idea of piercing a cork without allowing oxygen to enter a wine bottle and prematurely begin the aging process. He spent a decade testing and improving upon his original design before founding Coravin in 2013. The Model Eleven is just the latest example of how Coravin is transforming the way the world thinks about and drinks wine using technology to connect wine enthusiasts around the globe.
Who worked on the project?
Greg Lambrecht, Founder of Coravin Mike Rider, Vice President of Research and Development
View the project video: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/l6f7iuumvyik9ic/AAAse8jpqdkgwIG58Qi9tx96a/Video?dl=0&preview=Coravin+Model+Eleven.mp4
Cortex: The World’s First AI Workbench
Company CognitiveScale
Introduction Date January 23, 2018
Project Website http://www.argodesign.com/work/cognitive-scale.html
Why is this project worthy of an award?
The promise of machine learning has remained out of reach for many companies. Cognitive computing is still a programmer’s black art, often restricted to a world of PhDs. There simply aren’t enough experts to go around in the many companies that could benefit from these powerful new tools. To address this, augmented intelligence software company CognitiveScale is delivering practical, realistic AI solutions that enterprise customers can deploy today—without an army of machine learning experts in their ranks. Imagine a healthcare invoice processing solution that automatically analyzes incoming invoices against the corresponding purchase order, purchase request, and contractual agreements to automatically identify problematic areas for the accounts payable team, and to cite the evidence behind the recommendations. What was once a tedious, and error-prone manual process now consists of only checking problematic areas and transactions, leaving the team to concentrate on higher value work. Separately, consider a wealth manager who is inundated with more research, emails, and market data that she can process, all the while her clients demand highly personalized service. CognitiveScale’s wealth management AI software ingests vast amounts of structured and unstructured historical and real-time data to provide hyper-personalized insights to clients. This helps advisors to scale their personalized service beyond what was previously possible, providing individualized quantamental financial analysis to each client in the communications medium and frequency that they prefer, and while being kept in check with compliance guardrails on advice and communications. These possibilities are achievable with the Cortex 5 AI Platform, an AI engine designed to deliver a higher-level programming model for the implementation of enterprise AI systems: - AI Platform: Compose and orchestrate AI agents visually with an integrated development environment—your own design studio for custom AI solutions—and optimize performance by ensuring the agents you create serve your key business metrics. - AI Marketplace: A global hub of world-class resources and expertise, Marketplace allows you to strengthen the AI solutions you compose with a searchable library of prebuilt agents, skills, and data sets. Enjoy unprecedented access to AI tools and know-how from the biggest players in the industry and all Cortex 5 users. - AI Systems. Manage and optimize immutable, verifiable AI deployments with a strict chain of custody to ensure transparent and ethical AI behavior. When CognitiveScale needed a partner to conceive of a new way for developers to interact with their AI orchestration tools, argo brought deep user research, design strategy, planning, and tight-knit cooperation to the complex challenge. Together, our teams designed and architected the heart of Cortex 5.
What else would you like to share about your design? Why is it unique and innovative?
Cortex breaks down barriers between people who have ideas and the tools that help bring them to life. - Composing custom AI solutions: Weaving together the data-rich and algorithm-complex concepts into a suite of straightforward applications required establishing a new vocabulary of visual and interactive elements, while still providing developers with components that fit into their established workflows and worldviews. Through iterative prototyping, our design and development teams created a suite scaffold that enables not just orchestration, but visual testing, collaboration, and mapping performance to key business indicators. - Optimizing business potential with AI: Even the best intelligent agent will miss the mark if not aligned with business goals. This challenge inspired our design of Performance Manager, a dashboard of tools that visualize agent performance correlated with key performance indicators for the business. Managers can measure the impact of augmented intelligence to optimize efficacy—whether that’s increased revenue or improved patient outcomes. - Building the AI ecosystem: As a new technology, AI has lacked the open community and shared resources of more mature platforms. To promote this important ecosystem, CognitiveScale has assembled the tools and expertise of the most advanced AI thinking in the world through AI Marketplace, a global resource hub. This virtual universe of professional services and prebuilt agents, skills, and data sets empowers users to build their own custom AI solutions leveraging a wealth of syndicated tools and data. In the same way the app store gave us access to all kinds of things we never even knew we wanted, AI Marketplace opens the doors to expert knowledge and custom tools once used to build proprietary AI, making them accessible to all.
Who worked on the project?
Cognitive Scale team argodesign team
View the project video: https://drive.google.com/file/d/18oh614uBPWry5TFYSHEKBpAzPhsyLBKj/view
Creator Restaurant Experience
Company Momentum Machines
Introduction Date June 11, 2018
Project Website http://momentummachines.com/
Why is this project worthy of an award?
Creator is a new dining concept that completely reimagines the restaurant experience for the era of advanced AI and automation. Designed by Per Selvaag of the award-winning Montaag studio, working in tandem with Michelin star restaurant veterans and roboticists from NASA, Google, and Tesla, Creator aims to substantially improve the dining experience for everyone: For customers, employees, communities, farmers and ranchers, and the environment itself. At Creator’s center is a sleek, wood and glass-paneled culinary robotic instrument, which prepares -- right before diners’ eyes -- gourmet, custom-ordered burgers starting at under $7, with the same or better quality as high-end restaurant burgers that typically cost $15-18. Equal attention is devoted to the entire Creator restaurant experience: Warm, earth-toned, and open, with no traditional kitchen or counters dividing customers from staff, Creator is intended as a new third space that encourages community and individual creativity, inviting people to invent and share their favorite customization options with each other. With the cost savings made possible by the Creator approach, the entire dining experience has been re-designed: Fresh preparation: High quality, locally and ethically-sourced produce and meat is fed directly into the kitchen robot -- nothing is pre-made, pre-heated, or pre-sliced. Locally-sourced buns, tomatoes, onions, pickles, and cheese are all sliced and prepared the very moment an order is made -- eliminating the oxidation or need for preservatives typical at fast food restaurants. Transcendent cooking: Creator’s kitchen robot’s grilling process replicates a technique first innovated by Michelin-starred chefs of The Fat Duck. Burger patties are ground from scratch, then gently packed into patties so fragile that human hands can’t hold them. The grind of the meat is aligned vertically, to enable the most tender, juicy bite. 350 sensors and onboard cooking algorithms control and adjust the cooking process in real time. Signature or custom-designed burgers by app: Customers can order in the restaurant with the help of the tablet-wielding concierges, or on their own devices — Creator’s app takes care of payment, remembers previous orders, and invites creativity by offering a wide array of ingredients and toppings to choose from -- along with signature burgers designed for Creator by celebrity chefs such as Chef Tu from Top Chef. Space and energy efficient: Without the need of a traditional kitchen, Creator takes up half the size of a typical restaurant, consumes far less energy, and produces far less CO2. Sustainable employment: Creator is staffed by a well-paid, high-touch concierge staff who give customers personalized service, and provide technical support for the kitchen robot. Superior scalability: With the space and energy savings that the kitchen robot makes possible, Creator is optimized to scale across the country, including underserved neighborhoods -- offering better food and jobs to communities which are hungry for each.
What else would you like to share about your design? Why is it unique and innovative?
Beyond being a new restaurant concept, Creator is designed to impart a new model of work and community in an uncertain age. Where some see a future in which human labor is threatened by automation, the Creator experience points the way toward a more democratic, sustainable vision, where beautiful robots empower humans to become more creative, productive, and engaged with each other.
Who worked on the project?
Per Selvaag/Montaag Studios Alex Vardakostas/Momentum Machines Kyle Connaughton/Single Thread Farm-Restaurant-Inn
View the project video:
Deakin Genie
Company Deakin University
Introduction Date April 16, 2017
Project Website http://genie.deakin.edu.au/
Why is this project worthy of an award?
Genie leads Deakin University’s ground-breaking journey of revolutionizing the education industry forever: the moment when educational organisations are able to deliver extremely personal learning experiences on a massive digital scale. Genie’s cutting edge user-centred design efforts were conceived by monitoring the rise of AI-powered digital assistants in the marketplace and industry, and applying this concept within the University for the benefit of our students. Integration with University systems, and the considerable effort put into University-specific conversation and content curation differentiates Genie from other digital assistants. The ability for students to ask questions in their own words and receive accurate replies, gives Genie an edge over alternative technologies such as web search and navigation. Market intelligence shows that prospective students, driven by employment goals, are ever more discerning about their investment in education. Students’ digital behaviours and expectations are growing more complex and demanding, and are influenced by increasingly commonplace technology innovations and extraordinary digital consumer experiences. In developing Deakin Genie, we are also addressing the mega trends of the digital age – mobility, hyper-personalisation and ambient, zero-friction interactions through natural language ‘conversations.’ To leverage these trends and new technology opportunities in ways that meet real human needs, we have developed and been led by a deep understanding of student goals, needs and behaviours. There is a solid science-and-art balanced design thinking approach that has put our students at the centre of our thinking to discovering enhancement opportunities and challenges to solve. Genie was inspired by global AI trends and research indicating virtual agents can be as effective as human tutors in achieving desired learning outcomes. Compelling evidence from academia through to mainstream media, indicates a majority of tertiary institutions worldwide are grappling with the impacts and challenges of digital disruption in an increasingly competitive global education market. Many are seeking to transform student attraction, engagement and retention, while also educating students more effectively and preparing them for a new employment market. Genie does not merely react to students’ queries, but also predicts needs, automatically undertaking repetitive tasks, prompting with ‘just-in-time’ information, and assists individual planning and motivation. Genie alerts students to time-critical information via smartphone notifications. Through natural text or voice-based ‘conversations,’ it guides them through complex university and academic processes. Certain conversational cues trigger Genie to connect students to peers, support staff and teachers where human engagement is important.
What else would you like to share about your design? Why is it unique and innovative?
Deakin Genie is an innovative new foundation for transforming education, embracing the behaviours and needs of a digital generation of staff and students and preparing for a future in which smart assistants augment the workforce. Specific examples of Genie’s innovative capabilities include: • Delivery of course news posts as automated push notifications. • Instant, voice-controlled access to a range of high value features, including timetable, due dates, and reading resources. • Levering machine intelligence, Genie continually analyses and ‘learns’ about a student’s preferences, academic progress and environmental and learning content interactions. • Genie can prompt with ‘just-in-time’ information, help with planning and motivation, and automatically undertake repetitive tasks. • Genie alerts students to critical information via smartphone notifications and conducts text or voice-based ‘conversations’ that guide students through complex university and academic processes. • Conversational cues trigger students to connect frictionlessly with support staff and teachers where human engagement is important. From a design and architectural perspective, the real power of Genie comes from its ability to create and publish conversations instantly using a custom-built, ‘drag and drop’ conversation builder tool. This allows non-technical authors to build conversations in seconds using a range of pre-configured assets to create a rich, interactive experience to support our students. Students can ask Genie any question they like, and in response Genie offers engaging conversations rich with media and microservices. Genie operates via Deakin’s own AI-powered Q&A platform. Integration with enterprise systems gives Genie an edge over all smart agents in the market. Genie’s ability to integrate with the University’s core systems to provide Deakin-specific information and services differentiates it from generic digital assistants. However, Genie’s effectiveness extends beyond Deakin boundaries, as the platform is able to integrate with other architectural components and native digital assistant services, such as Facebook’s M, Google Assistant, Microsoft Cortana, Apple’s Siri and Amazon Alexa. Genie targets enhancements to customer experience by providing extreme personalisation and frictionless self-service transactions. Whilst its primary benefit is not seen as cost avoidance, a reduction in low value customer service interactions is expected, allowing existing customer service staff to focus on high value or complex conversations. The ability to reduce customer service spend is anticipated as organisations identify high touch transactions in service and call centres and build matching services in Genie that allow customers to self-serve at a significantly lower net cost. The Genie platform has also been designed to scale across sectors; it is currently being prepared for commercialisation, with plans to eventually license Genie to customers in other industries. Deakin’s strategic motto is ‘Driving the Digital Frontier’. Deakin Genie is an innovative use of digital exploration and foresight, delivering premium experiences to students and staff in line with the University’s strategic plan, LIVE the future.
Who worked on the project?
William Confalonieri, Chief Digital Officer, eSolutions Lynn Warneke, Executive Director Channels & Platforms Alan Longmuir, Emergent Technologies Manager Steve White, Digital Solutions Manager George Cockerill, User Experience Specialist Brett McBride, Back-end Developer Brett Sinclair, Back-end Developer Michael Muscat, Front-end Developer Jo Camilleri-Olin, Project Manager Ron Wilson, Front-end Developer Muhammad Mazher, Back-end Developer Srinadh Paruchuri, Tester Herb Huebner, Tester Terry Kildea, Technical Writer
View the project video: https://video.deakin.edu.au/media/t/0_m9of13fm
Defining the Future Autonomous Car Experience
Company Native Design
Introduction Date January 23, 2017
Project Website
Why is this project worthy of an award?
Over the past two years we have been embedded within Ford’s Detroit Development Team, conceptualizing, iterating, building & testing what we call Holistic Autonomous Vehicle Experience (HAVE) to realize their future car experience. Created in response to exhaustive global research, we identified the compelling user experiences, engagements and interactions people want when they no longer need to drive. It is a living, breathing test bed for new digital, physical ideas and services. The most compelling vision there is for an autonomous car experience in the world today. This enables Ford to innovate at a pace that none of the existing players have managed to summon yet and own the future holistic car experience for 2025 and beyond. While the automobile itself is evolving, a perfect storm of changes in technology, culture, business models and strategic partnerships is underway upending consumer expectations. How we spend our time and engage with brands across physical and digital touchpoints are being challenged with continual advances in models. For brands, turning these interactions into meaningful and delightful experiences that retain their unique ethos is paramount not just in how things look, but in how the consumer experiences each moment. The HAVE is a transformational space, placing users at the center of the automotive experience for the first time. We iteratively designed and built a high-fidelity physical and digital interactive experience, exhibiting how these technologies and services reinvent the business and experience of mobility. Throughout this process, we uncovered critical insights that informed our approach and developed opportunities ranging across all touchpoints of customer engagement, business models, ergonomics, manufacturing and immersive technology. As a fully considered and integrated platform, we were able to bring to life disparate concepts only seen in labs and demonstrations to create a fully functional and articulated prototype. This resulted in 100’s of hours of user testing that defined multiple product and service models across bespoke branding interactions and unique designs. As an integrated holistic user experience lead product design studio, our deep understanding of technology, physical product design, digital interactions and behaviours, combined with materials and finishes uniquely positioned us to deliver this refined and immersive reality. This isn’t merely a concept car, but a whole new luxurious approach to transportation, consumer experience and mobility through intuitive and integrated revolutionary technologies. Radical inventions from this project form the AV future: seating driven by machine-learning, interactive surfaces inspire social interaction, digital windows minimize motion sickness, A.I. air & lighting harmonize circadian rhythms, noise cancelling improves privacy, contextual interfaces interact with the city en-route, and innovative service models deliver goods directly to the vehicle. The experience was unveiled in a specially built 3000 square foot exhibition space within the Piquette Factory – the birthplace of the Model-T. Since then, customers, business leaders, engineers and technologists have spent hundreds of hours experiencing the HAVE; interacting with the adaptive technologies and services to test and refine the definitive autonomous experience. This is not styling, this is product, service and experience design from the inside out.
What else would you like to share about your design? Why is it unique and innovative?
We approached the subject of autonomy holistically by studying the future city and urban landscape, demographic shifts, technology roadmaps and evolving user behaviors. Through this we synthesized a unique set of high-value opportunities that has generated over 50 new patents for Ford. Our hands-on approach allowed us to evaluate new ways of integrating existing and nascent technologies into robust user experiences. We started by looking at the changes in how the context of driving and computer enabled driving impact not just the driver, but every occupant within the vehicle. How can we turn this same space into an intuitive and comfortable space for multiple uses and adaptive comfort? Leveraging OLED technology, eye tracking, projection technology and mapping, we built an adaptive window that can provide unique and focused displays for each person in the car without creating an intrusive visual experience. We extended this technical experiential evolution throughout the cabin to develop interactive augmented reality on any screen that either enhances the environment or shield occupants based on their mood. Sounds are just as important a part of the immersive journey as the sights. Through the use of embedded microphones, speakers and transaural enhancement, we created augmented conversations that minimize exterior noise, increase comprehension and build social bonding. This technology, aligned with real-time eye tracking and embedded facial sensors, defined areas and individuals that we could tune in real-time to enhance whatever interaction the individuals were engaging in. The HAVE platform not only enhances daily activities but can be a platform where we can affect and improve the health of people during their journeys. Weaving transcranial direct stimulation electrodes into the fabric of headrests activated via responsive seating that measured changes in posture, breathing, and voice, we could effectively end motion sickness. Combined with an integrated Photobioreactor, our vehicle was a closed renewable and self-regenerating system that was able to purify external and internal air to improve breathing in any environment. An embedded Artificial Intelligence creates adaptive uses of the furniture and layout that learned individual’s preferences and needs adjusting intuitively. Without an occupant having to initiate an interaction, these integrated systems would unobtrusively coordinate appropriate layouts, functions and environments based on your mood, context and physical state seamlessly. This ongoing coordination could adapt all the physical surface around you to lay down and sleep, sit as a group around an interactive table for meetings or enjoy a rich media presentation event all while in transit. The entire HAVE interface is completely interactive inside and out. Control surfaces are designed to not only provide an optimized operating experience but also inspire social interaction between passengers. Outside the vehicle cabin, contextual interfaces interact with the city en-route, and innovative service models allow for physical delivery of goods and services directly to the vehicle, maximizing time and resources as we navigate the city streets. All of this is integrated within a beautiful and elegant interior that focuses on calm, harmonious, subtle and intuitive interactions.
Who worked on the project?
Native Design London Staff
View the project video: https://vimeo.com/269096677/de239511c4