Beautiful.AI
Why is this project worthy of an award?
Because we’re democratizing design! It’s well understood how important design is nowadays. Everybody gets that most things are judged in part by how they look. Over the years, we’ve seen a continuing trend of bringing “professional design” tools to the masses. These tools (along with countless books, videos, blogs, podcasts, and webinars) have attempted to get the average worker to be able to use them to do great design work on their own behalf. The problem is that they’re not designers: they’ll never have enough time to invest (nor the innate skills) to become good designers and - without that expertise - the tools leave them struggling. To make matters worse, these demanding tools leech time away from the user’s actual task of crafting a compelling narrative to drive forward their agenda. Beautiful.AI was created to break that cycle. The essence of working with a human designer is that they help transform your ideas into visuals that are not only attractive but also effective at communicating your underlying intent and story. Beautiful.AI uses AI technology to do just that - intuitively and with minimal effort. When you eliminate the distraction of having try being a designer when you’re not, it allows you to focus on the whole point of why you’re doing it in the first place: crafting your story and honing it for impact. We don’t believe that AI is going to replace designers anytime soon, but it can certainly elevate the quality of the work output by the masses that aren’t designers!
What else would you like to share about your design? Why is it unique and innovative?
We’re one of the first companies attempting to bring AI and UX conventions to bear on the problem of graphic design. Our team has created professional design tools in the past, and it’s become clear to us over the years that providing professional-grade design tools to non-designers does not typically lead to beautiful results. Beautiful.AI is the response to that reality - a tool that allows non-designers to create consistently beautiful output. Another major benefit of our approach is that it drastically reduces the amount of time needed to complete a project. Who could ask for more? Better, faster, and beautiful!
Who worked on the project?
Mitch Grasso, CEO
View the project video:
Bike Share – Electrified
Why is this project worthy of an award?
JUMP is bike share electrified. We create the hardware and software so you can go further, get there faster, and have more fun. With our mobile app, users can find and unlock our pedal-assist e-bikes, ride to their destination with ease, and lock up to any bike rack to end their trip – all for just $2. JUMP bikes are designed in Brooklyn, NY by people who love bikes and care about the future of our cities. Our bike is designed from the ground up to deliver safety, ease of use, affordability, and durability with a beautiful and joyful mode of electric transportation. Whether you need an affordable commute, to make it across town during rush hour, to conquer neighborhood hills, or just want a fun way to get around, JUMP transforms how you move about your city. JUMP is experiencing industry-leading adoption in the cities we operate because of the product experience. Our electric bikes provide a familiar, yet revolutionary, mode of transportation that appeals to a broader audience, changes preconceptions, and increases urban livability. The team set out to engineer the most meaningful improvements to the bicycle since it was invented 200 years ago. We designed the JUMP bike upon the foundation of seven years of experience delivering bike share hardware and software in over 40 cities across the globe. Our goal was to build a complete solution for personal urban mobility – one that could provide an exhilarating experience but endure years of intense use. JUMP is the result of that pursuit – it’s the embodiment of our passion for bikes and everything we know about usability, durability, manufacturing, technology, and design.
What else would you like to share about your design? Why is it unique and innovative?
In 2010, stationed bike share was booming in major cities around the world. Auto-centric cities like New York City, Boston, and Washington DC were experiencing seismic shifts in how people perceived and used bikes. Meanwhile, JUMP Bikes was rethinking the very fundamentals of bike share design. We took the technology from the stations – the GPS, the payment system, the customer interface – and moved it to the bike itself. This flipped bike share on its head. By removing the need of costly stations, and allowing users to conveniently lock up our bikes at racks, we created a more cost-effective system and a more reliable bike share experience. JUMP Bikes was the first to bring a Smart Bike to market, and now the first to bring dockless electric bike share to the United States. JUMP BIke’s creation process is founded upon the simultaneous obsession with almost-microscopic bike details and the comprehensive understanding of how those details aggregate throughout the entire bike share system. Rapid iteration and constant re-evaluation of design criteria is vital to managing these two vastly different scales of understanding. During the development stage, we designed and built a custom large-format 3D printer which allowed us to continuously print full-scale bike mockups. We created real-material CNC prototypes years before we were ready for production tooling. We took dozens of trips to our manufacturers during development. And we sought out vertically integrated partners who could make our designs responsive throughout the entire process of shaping raw materials into finished products. The outcome of this incredibly fun, deeply challenging process is a product that preserves a beautiful aesthetic and polished user experience while still mastering the difficult realities of bike share. On a technical level, the common failure points of a consumer bicycle have been re-imagined and re-engineered: screws, cables, exposed metals, removable components, have all been protected and integrated. This is crucial to a safe, theft-proof, weather-resistant vehicle that lives and endures in public space. All of the touch points on the bike – the saddle, seatpost, brake levers, handlebars, handling geometry – have been custom designed for maximum ease of use and durability, building on the best characteristics of two centuries of urban bicycle design. The electric-assist is tightly integrated into the shared bike experience, providing industry-leading responsiveness and a human-electric harmony that delivers a boost up to 20mph whenever the rider pedals. This must be felt to be believed. On a visual level, we fought to make the form, color, and branding striking – more bold than any bike share that came before it. The bike’s aesthetic serves as a beacon for this new mode of transportation and the revolutionary user experience it delivers. The JUMP design is a demonstration that technology can be fun, that visual form makes cities more vibrant, and that an equitable, low cost mode of transportation can be fundamentally cooler than everything that preceded it.
Who worked on the project?
Nick Foley: Chief Product Officer Jacob Bouchard: Senior Industrial Designer Chris Partelow: Creative Director Ryan Rzepecki: CEO and Founder
View the project video: https://drive.google.com/file/d/11b1XGGjqtbVaGzLKZ9C5ooAXdAYbQq4S/view?usp=sharing
Bits and Bricks: Tangible Interactive Matrix for Real-time Computation and 3D Projection Mapping
Company Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Introduction Date November 28, 2017
Project Website https://ira.mit.edu/tactile-matrix/
Why is this project worthy of an award?
The Tactile Matrix is a programmable, open source system for augmenting tangible environments with digital information. The system employs a unique, playful interface enabled by projection mapping, machine vision, and open hardware. The system performs real-time computation and dynamic projection mapping as a user interacts with a tabletop of physical data units. Illuminated, tangible-interactive matrices have immediate applications as collaborative computation tools for users who want to leverage matrix-based mathematical modeling techniques within a friendly and accessible environment. The system is designed as an open source kit of both off-the-shelf items, such as Lego, and components that are inexpensively fabricated with standard equipment such as laser cutters. The Tactile Matrix is designed to (a) make matrix-based mathematical methods more accessible and intuitive to users who otherwise do not have access to such tools or (b) provide an interactive narrative and story-telling device for experts who wish to present or explain matrix-based concepts to non-experts. We have applied the system to many case studies to make complex systems intuitive and approachable for a broad range of stakeholders. Each case study leverages some aspect of matrix computation and is unique to a respective field or industry. Finding Places: We deployed the system at a local university in Hamburg, Germany to facilitate a series of community engagement exercises aimed at allocating a recent flood of Syrian refugees into the municipality. Representatives from various districts participated in workshops in which they could receive feedback from the system by manipulating blocks that represent geospatial location of refugee allocations. Performance metrics such as density, land ownership, and strain on public infrastructure were used to assess the feasibility of various refugee allocations. Participants were free to alter allocations dynamically rather than be confined to a single proposal. The project, “Finding Places,” received Urbact’s award for Good Practices. Urban Planning: A rapid prototyping environment for land use planning and pedestrian walkability was developed jointly with the Development Authority of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The system incorporated spatial models of walkable access, daylighting, and energy. Tangible pieces represented building typologies with variable density and land use configurations. The tool was designed for planners to coordinate and reconcile competing agendas within the Authority that are a function of land use and density. Last Mile Logistics: Logistics experts from Walmart used the platform to present parametric models of delivery service areas in a real-time, changeable environment. Users manipulated tangible objects representing distribution centers and other spatial parameters to change a quantitative evaluation of the logistics network. The model is being developed for both internal deliberation and external presentation. Finding Places: https://ira.mit.edu/blog/finding-places Urban Planning: https://ira.mit.edu/blog/riyadh Last Mile Logistics: https://ira.mit.edu/blog/lego-logistics
What else would you like to share about your design? Why is it unique and innovative?
The Tactile Matrix extends prior work in tangible tabletop user interfaces for sensing and information display and contributes to the ecosystem of scalable, low-cost tabletop augmented projection tools. The system works by first detecting a matrix of uniquely tagged physical objects in real time as they are moved by a user. Next, it performs a real-time digital reconstruction of objects’ configuration including form, position, ID, and any metadata and runs a real-time analysis of the objects’ configuration. Finally it generates a real-time visualization of the analysis via the display screen(s) and projection maps visual content onto objects on the scene. Tangible Objects: The ability to process an extremely large number of separate physical objects in real time is facilitated by a novel feature of this device: a user can place the physical objects into a spatial region, but the placement of the physical objects in the spatial region is constrained by a gridded tabletop such that only certain positions are allowed. A demonstrative system digitally reconstructs and projects light onto 1,936 (44x44) separate physical objects in real time. Computer Vision: A user places the physical objects into indentations in the table. The fact that the physical objects on the table are limited to a set of specified positions in a physical grid allows an algorithm to quickly detect and infer the exact location and nature of all pieces. Digital Reconstruction and Projection Mapping: An algorithm merges the location, rotation, and ID data with a digital object repository that uses IDs to link data. The repository contains additional information about object form and any other metadata important to associate with the object. Algorithms perform matrix-based computation and further package a digital 3D model, its meta-data, and any analysis into integrated visualizations for export to display screens or projectors. The user may use the visualizations to influence their next interaction with the system, thus completing a real-time feedback loop. Tabletop Structure: For the purpose of scaling and deployment, a tabletop structure has been designed from standard, procurable materials and components such as acrylic and aluminum. A grid for constraining placement of objects upon the matrix is cut from acrylic. Dimensions accommodate a 22x22 grid of Lego objects, and the system may concatenate multiple modules. The Tactile Matrix was invented during a cold, Boston winter by Ira Winder, Joshua Fabian, and Grady Sain while working for Changing Places Group in MIT Media Lab. The creators are heavily inspired by the work of Tangible Media Group at MIT Media Lab. The system has inspired input, experimentation, and hacking by numerous collaborators at MIT and beyond. This work would not be possible without advice and input from Kent Larson, Christoph Reinhart, Cody Rose, Edgar Blanco, Matthias Winkenbach, Daniel Merchan, Brandon Martin-Anderson, Mike Winder, Hafencity University, Walmart, and many others. Many thanks to Processing Foundation for making and maintaining the tools that were largely used for prototype implementation, and to all of our collaborators for having the faith to adopt our system and methodology.
Who worked on the project?
Ira Winder, Research Scientist Joshua Fabian, Research Assistant Karthik Patanjali, Project Assistant Grady Sain, Project Consultant
View the project video: https://youtu.be/EnmngGkm8bY
Blend
Why is this project worthy of an award?
The largest investments in life are usually accompanied by the most thoughtful experiences. Luxurious showrooms house new cars and other fine goods. Beautifully staged photographs help buyers shop for their dream homes. This is by design, of course. But whereas driving a car directly off the lot is commonplace, and huge audiences flock to YouTube to witness the mere unboxing of the latest tech innovation, the convenience and delight of purchasing a home abruptly ends after the open house. In an era when consumers can file tax returns, trade stocks and pay bills easily on their mobile device, why does applying for a mortgage remain a relic of the past? The reality is innovation within the consumer lending industry has been overlooked for decades. Regulatory complexity, technical constraints, and competing policy and practices have contributed to a painfully slow and frustrating consumer experience, further bogged down by crippling paperwork and antiquated technology. Lenders want to make responsible credit decisions based on various documents and pieces of paper, so they set up manual, time-consuming workflows to catch errors in imperfect information. Consumers are just trying their hardest to comply with the dizzying array of requirements that stand between them and their dream of a home. Blend is pioneering a better way by partnering with a growing lender base — including U.S. Bank and Wells Fargo — that serves over 25 percent of the multi-trillion dollar U.S. mortgage market. Over the past few years, we’ve redesigned the transaction to be fully digital, tailoring it toward modern borrower and lender expectations, while taking advantage of verified source data to create a complete financial profile. Artificial intelligence and machine learning help further drive a step change by automating huge friction points for everyone involved. We see the power of design and technology not only providing delight and ease-of-use, but also promoting social benefits for all borrowers by streamlining the high-touch nature of the process and reducing the risk of biases. We’re successfully impacting a large share of America’s prospective homeowners: 2017 saw over $60 billion in mortgages flow through Blend’s platform. From getting pre-qualified at an open house directly through their mobile device to shaving down 8-10 days on average from their application cycles, consumers clearly enjoy the experience: Blend reports an average NPS in the 60s. Purchasing a home requires more than just completing an application and making a lending decision, though. To fully realize our vision of an end-to-end experience centered around a borrower — from shopping for their dream home to acquiring the keys — means integrating with a number of additional services and providers (e.g., realtors, home insurance, appraisal, title). By designing an open, configurable platform with a robust set of APIs, developers and other third-party providers can partner with Blend to build out additional key functionality — all within a modern, friendly user experience.
What else would you like to share about your design? Why is it unique and innovative?
The economic and human cost to originate a single mortgage today is staggering, regularly requiring 400+ pages of documentation and 25 people to process, over an average of 50 days, ultimately costing lenders north of $7,000. While a few standalone solutions like Quicken or Sofi have attempted to solve some of the consumer experience challenges, they have yet to drive major innovations unlocked through verified source data and machine learning — and their impact is ultimately limited by the size of their customer base. Partnering with incumbent lenders allows our technology to drive massive efficiencies at scale across the consumer lending industry. A digital, mobile experience additionally opens access by eliminating barriers to borrowing. Historically, getting a loan has meant going to a retail branch, followed by endless amounts of paperwork with little guidance or transparency into the process. Not only stressful and inefficient, the old way created opportunities for human errors and biased decisioning. With Blend, borrowers easily fill out information online by connecting directly to verified financial source data (asset statements, tax returns, income streams, etc.) and electronically signing required documentation. Guided throughout by simple, personalized questions, borrowers can complete loan applications on their own. In fact, more than half of borrower activity on Blend takes place outside of normal business hours. Furthering our commitment to all borrowers, Blend is built to WCAG2.0 standards and is compatible with screen readers, keyboard tools, and other accessibility features. A 2014 Federal Reserve report found that 88% of the underbanked have access to mobile phones. Blend’s platform specifically sees mobile usage higher among lower-income borrowers. The ubiquity of mobile devices and the availability of Blend’s web application across familiar lenders means easier access to services that have historically been unavailable or inconvenient for low-income or minority communities. Through partnership and advocacy efforts with existing lenders, as well as government sponsored entities (GSEs) like Fannie Mae, we’ve helped to reimagine ways of upholding compliant lending practices and important consumer protections, while ensuring an effortless experience for borrowers and lenders alike. A representative example of how we blend data science, automation and design to accelerate key aspects of the mortgage process while maintaining compliance is seen in a key feature associated with letters of explanation (LOEs). Much of the time spent on a loan application is a constant back-and-forth of information requested by the lender and poor responses received by the borrower who may be confused by the request (not to mention normally being required to scan or fax these signed documents). Instead, Blend is able to use data parsed directly from a borrower’s credit report, identify items that require explanations, automatically trigger a follow-up, and allow the borrower to provide the explanations directly. The online design of these requests makes it virtually impossible for borrowers to enter incorrect information, moving the application forward without error. We call this Mortgage Intelligence and we believe it powers a smarter, faster process while ensuring a simple, transparent and compliant experience for all.
Who worked on the project?
Anthony (Tones) Porter — Head of Design Eunice Noh — Product Design Manager Christine Chao — Product Designer
View the project video: https://vimeo.com/248891919; https://vimeo.com/263404887
bob
Why is this project worthy of an award?
There’s no question that the working world as we know it is changing fast. Things like machine learning, the gig economy, and the shifting expectations of employees, are reshaping the priorities of businesses and their leaders. Tomorrow’s working world looks more devolved and mobile, more networked and fluid, more team and project-based, more collaborative. Above all, the future of success depends on companies' ability to attract, encourage, reward, support, and keep the best and brightest people. bob was founded in 2015 by serial entrepreneurs who realized that we live and work in a talent-driven job market, and that many companies are neglecting their single most important strategic asset: their people. They also understood the importance of design and user interface in creating an engaging and valuable experience for clients. bob is worthy of an award because the platform is having a positive impact on companies and their people: 1. Company success. bob is a tool for companies to use in order to maintain a positive, open, and therefore productive, culture. In doing so, bob helps companies retain their top talent, and thrive in an increasingly competitive environment. 2. Employee experience. People spend a large portion of their lives at work. bob focuses on relieving some of the stress that comes with running a company. But bob also helps increase employees' happiness, engagement, growth, and wellbeing. bob sees the challenges faced by employers and employees as intertwined: if an employee's happy, you don't have to worry about retention. We're here to make a better working world for our clients. We do this by helping improve their bottom line, as well as providing products that help working individuals feel more connected, and therefore more motivated, at work.
What else would you like to share about your design? Why is it unique and innovative?
bob's UX and UI are unlike any other on the market today. This is because the premium we place on creating a design that impacts the way people management software is used and applied. Our design philosophy is daringly different, but is based on a simple idea: to ensure that our clients find what they’re looking for on our platform quickly and intuitively. We chose warm, welcoming colors to reflect the openness and support of today’s most innovative company cultures. With the growing amount of people who are categorized as ‘contingent employees,’ we also understand that our website design must be responsive: easy to view and use. Last but not least, bob’s designed with a strong focus on making it easy for the user to have a customized experience, which allows content and functionality to be tailored based on a person’s unique needs and preferences. One of our clients, and one of the UK’s most forward-thinking advertising agencies, chose bob “to bring their HR department in line with the rest of this wildly creative company's culture.” Because it's so simple, fun and engaging to use, people want to spend time on our platform - and not just to perform basic administrative tasks.
Who worked on the project?
Ori Succary, Head of Design, Matan Stauber, Product Designer, Adi Klagesbrun, Product Designer, Tali Eilon, Product Designer, Ben Lev,Product Designer, Timor Davara, Product Designer
View the project video:
