Review: PhizzPop Design Challenge Chicago
Last week I attended the PhizzPop Design Challenge in Chicago. The event was sponsored by Microsoft and and it was pretty much a big marketing event to raise awareness of Microsoft Expression Suite and woo the creative web community into trying the product. I’m not one for attending events as such but I decided to give it a shot since I heard about it through the IxDA group. I was pretty much clueless as to what was to take place other than the vague description of designers competing in some type of challenge. The event was held at the Underground and I figured at the very least it would be worth attending for the free drinks.
The night started off with an excellent presentation by David Armano of Critical Mass on the topic of where Experience Design is headed. In a nutshell everything is becoming fuzzy. Individual team roles/titles are overlapping and traditional definitions of design and experience in the space are changing. The slides are up and are worth checking out.
After intro the the design problem was explained: The 6 teams comprised mostly of local agencies had to revive the Pan Am brand by improving the overall travel experience by focusing on digital technology solutions. All the teams created prototypes for the digital screen experience located in the back of the airline seat. Each team had two and half days to conceive and build prototypes and the catch they had to use Microsoft Expression Suite. I found the challenge to be especially interesting since I work for a technology startup in the airline industry so the content was familiar and made me even think about some of the things I’m working on in different ways.
The teams did a great job considering the amount of time they were alloted. Most of the designs focused on trying to bring experiences from the web to the plane. At a birds eye level things like having access to Netflix accounts and movies, being able to message and communicate with other travelers onboard and most importantly tying in functionality that would allow travelers to get up to the minute reporting on connecting flights and allowing travelers to make last minute changes to itineraries in the event of travel delays. Some really solid concepts and executions came about.
Another plus on the night, before leaving I got a chance to chat with Carlos Segura who to my surprise was on the judges panel.