by anine.hallen -

Precedent study of Northern Playground

In this post I will study how Northern Playground, a small clothing company, makes their production and business as little un-sustainable as possible. They belive no clothing company can be fully sustainable, but of course they can be better or worse. This is how they try to be better:

“Sustainable materials do not exist. Period.” This is how the text starts if you make two simple clicks (Menu > Environment) on the webpage of Northern Playground. This is surprisingly honest when we have gotten used to green labels with “Conscious” written all over on fast fashion giant H&M and many more. Northern Playground is a Norwegian company who is trying to change the textile industry in a way that has real impact.

One click on the menu button and Products and Environment is the equal size.

In the beginning of the company’s life Jo Egil Tobiassen, the brain behind it, thought sustainability was complicated, he tells E24. However, after educating himself he found that it isn’t “how” we produce clothing that is the main issue, it is “how much.” But if his company wants to have a real impact, they also need to grow. This is a real paradox for small, “sustaiable” brands. Tobiassen explains that one way they are doing this is avoiding sale and avoiding middle men. This way the earn more on fewer articles on clothing. (https://e24.no/det-groenne-skiftet/i/8Qkd4r/klesgrunderen-som-vil-at-du-skal-kjoepe-mindre-vil-vokse-mer)

Reducing clothing consumption

Lifetime service: Repairs are made easy by providing knowledge and tools to repair the garment yourself or it can be executed for free by the company. Northern Playground also takes care of recycling when the garment is truly worn out. Producing in only wool makes recycling much easier as this is a highly recyclable material. (https://www.northernplayground.no/en/lifetime-service)

Their business model includes the users: Northern Playground was tired of the guessing game most companies do when deciding on product design and the amount to produce. This leads to massive overproduction, and never-used garments ends at landfills. Northern Playground have developed a big user group who they get feedback from in the design, testing and decision phase. (https://www.northernplayground.no/en/content/our-model)

A clothing company requesting environmental tax: In addition to having put a self-imposed environmental tax on themself (to spend on repairing etc.) Northern Playground is also working part politically to request for an environment tax to be put in place in Norway. (https://www.northernplayground.no/en/content/letter-to-the-government-4, https://www.northernplayground.no/en/content/environmental-tax)

Slow fashion: Producing classic designs who lasts a long time and not releasing a new collection just because a new session arrived keeps the new for bying new things all the time down. Of course this is easier for a company producing wool garments to be used as basics. However, Northern Playground is actively working for owning garments who can serve multiple purposes to become a more accepted standard. (https://www.northernplayground.no/en/content/we-dont-need-collections)

In addition Northern Playground has an open communication about overconsumption as a problem, avoids discounts and design for high quality as a priority over low prices.

Reducing their footprint

Norther Playground of course design for reducing the enviornmental impact from each garment in other ways than ensuring a long lifetime for each garment. They also:

– produce partially (very) locally in Oslo, partially in Europe (at the only manufacturer in the world who fulfills Greenpeace’s environmental standards
– only use (partially organic) natural materials
– use recyclable packaging and no plastic
– ensure a sustainable culture among employees
– believes in and acts with transparency
(https://www.northernplayground.no/en/environment)

by theresa.dietinger -

Game engines in comparison

When developing games there are multiple factors that play into the decision of which game engine to use.

  • What kind of game is being developed? (2d, 3d, performance heavy, art focus, etc.)
  • How much support is there around those engines?
  • What resources are available?

A game engine can support developers in the progress of making games by providing them with a graphical user interface, libraries for multiple programming languages and predefined tools for enabling a quick way of implementing logic of the game. Tasks like rendering a 3d model are made easy through the options of calculating physics, handling collision detections, playing animations and sounds and compiling code.

Unity:

Unity is considered one of the best game engines considering the balance of learnability and support of functionality. It is great for 2D and 3D games, as well as VR and mobile games while still being free for game developers earning less than $100.000. However, once a game is very performance draining, Unity can run into issues handling performance.

Unreal:

Unreal has similar strengths as Unity but excels in its graphical capabilities, which makes it a good choice for high quality graphical focused games. Many developers prefer Unity over Unreal as Unreal requires more knowledge to be able to use efficiently.

Godot:

A selling point of the Godot engine is that it is completely free and open-source with a large community for support.

Phaser:

Phaser focuses on the development of mobile and browser  2D games.

References:

by helena.opower -

Insta-Fluenced: How Instagram is Playing with Our Heads

Blind trust is a phenomenon that occurs when we rely on the opinions and actions of others without critically evaluating the information or the source. On Instagram, this can manifest in the form of influencer culture, where users look to popular and highly-followed individuals to guide their choices and behaviors.

Influencers on Instagram often have a large following and are able to reach a large audience with their content. They are often seen as trustworthy and relatable figures, and their posts and recommendations can carry a lot of weight with their followers. However, it’s important to remember that influencers are not immune to manipulation and bias, and that they may have ulterior motives for their actions and recommendations.

For example, influencers may be paid or sponsored to promote certain products or brands, without disclosing that information to their followers. They may also be swayed by their own personal biases or interests, rather than providing an unbiased perspective. This can lead to users blindly trusting influencers and making decisions based on their recommendations, without considering the potential conflicts of interest or lack of objectivity.

From a psychological perspective, influencer culture on Instagram is able to tap into several key factors that make it effective in influencing and manipulating user behavior. One major factor is the concept of social proof, which refers to the idea that we are more likely to conform to the actions and beliefs of those around us. On Instagram, this can manifest in the form of seeing popular influencers endorsing a product or behavior and feeling compelled to do the same.

Another key factor is the concept of self-esteem and self-worth. Many users on Instagram may feel a sense of validation and connection through likes, comments, and followers, which can be influenced by influencers. Influencers can also create a sense of aspiration and FOMO (fear of missing out) by showing off their seemingly perfect lives, which can lead to users feeling like they need to buy certain products or follow certain trends in order to be like them.

Instagram’s design also plays a role in facilitating the work of influencers. The algorithm used by Instagram favors posts with higher engagement, which means that posts from influencers with large followings are more likely to be seen by users. Additionally, Instagram’s design makes it easy for influencers to monetize their following by providing sponsored post options and other forms of brand partnerships. This means that the platform is designed to reward influencers and make their content more visible, which in turn makes it more likely that users will be influenced by them.

All in all it’s important to be critical of the information we see on Instagram and to not blindly trust influencers or any other source of information. It’s always better to do our own research, and to be aware of the potential biases and conflicts of interest that may be present.

by nadine.lowden -

The Future of Design & AI – Some Thoughts Midway

For a long time now, the news has been filled with fear-mongering articles about AI taking human jobs. While it’s true that many jobs will be replaced by AI, human-AI partnerships will also create many new jobs, with humans and AI filling in each other’s weaknesses and working towards a balanced future. While we shouldn’t downplay the challenges due to the jobs that will be lost to AI, we should focus rather on finding opportunities to work together and create new jobs in an evolving future.

For designers, AI streamlines our work and completes menial tasks for us, giving us back the time for more creativity. Personally, though, I am not convinced that greater productivity is always a good thing. During the COVID-19 pandemic, many of us found more working hours with the loss of commute times, social breaks at university or the office, or other distractions that we no longer had when working from home. However, it was widely reported and now has been studied that those moments of pause keep us mentally well and also lead to greater creativity, as boredom generates breakthroughs. Of course I am thankful when the AI embedded in Adobe products auto-selects the part of the image I am trying to trace, but I would also be remiss to say that all menial tasks should be removed from design by AI. Repetition can be meditative. I am neither entirely for or against AI in design, as it is much more of a grey area, but I do believe that it is important to carry some caution and reservations as I move forward in my research.

by nadine.lowden -

AI Case Study: Adobe Sensei

When I chose the topic of AI in Design, I was aware that AI was already all around me in ways both known and unknown, but I didn’t realize how much AI already impacted my work as a designer. Adobe Sensei is the AI and machine learning system implemented in all Adobe creative suite products. Adobe Sensei’s mission statement is to “handle the time-consuming parts of your job, so you have more time to be creative”, nothing that “74% of creatives recently surveyed by Pfeiffer Consulting said they spent more than 50% of their time on non-creative tasks — a huge opportunity for AI to help”.

AI and machine learning features from Adobe Sensei include recommended presets, content-aware fill for photos and videos, subject or object selection, character animator, body tracker, anomaly detection, sky replacement, neural filters, and many more. One feature that I found particularly baffling is the face aware liquify mode in Photoshop, which detects facial features and allows you to manipulate individual parts of the face, widening a smile, raising eyebrows, completing changing a facial expression with an entirely believable result.

Adobe Sensei is also used in Adobe Spark, a program that generates social graphics, webpages, and videos in 20 seconds or less. Once the initial content is created, the user can cycle through different layouts of text, imagery, and other elements, and customize with auto crop and zoom and scale slider to maximize for dynamic graphics. Brands can upload their colours, logos, and assets, and use Adobe Spark to streamline the graphic design process – turning what used to be a 2 day process of creating a social media post optimized for all platforms, into a 2 hour process.

A graphic generated with Adobe Spark
by theresa.dietinger -

Game design in MMORPGs

Game Design is an essential aspect for the development of every game, independently of the genre or whether its online or offline. While MMORPGs require thorough planning of many different aspects such as keeping the game interesting even after the main story is completed, managing a fair skills and levelling system or managing performance one of the most important aspects is enabling controlled communication that doesn’t restrict the players in their interactions with each other. For this reason, this blog entry will take a closer look to what it needs to design a successful MMORPG.

As explained in a previous blog entry, the flow state can be achieved if the player is challenged enough to be entertained without getting frustrated. While the flow state can be achieved in traditional games if certain rules are followed, achieving the flow state in MMORPGs where there is usually no clear path to follow and a major part of the play time is spontaneous interactions with others player, it is more difficult to guide the player to the flow state.

There are three conditions that need to be met in order to achieve the flow state:

  • There need to be clear goals defined that the player must know of
  • The balance between challenges and skill needs to be so that the player is neither frustrated nor bored
  • The progress on the goals need to be made clear to the player in form of feedback

These conditions can be met by clear directions given to the player, but they can also be goals that the player themselves creates. For example, a player can decide to craft a special item that requires a lot of material and experience, for one of their friends. If the players are given options, they will naturally come up with challenges themselves. This way every player type has their own goals:

  • Killers: Want to become the best and compete with others
  • Socializers: Want to communicate with other players
  • Achievers: Want to progress within the game and level up
  • Explorers: Want to learn about different systems (e.g., different skill trees) integrated into the game and explore the world

References:

by carolin.dasilvanasseri -

Thoughts on Learning Behavior

I read up on learning behaviors and came across a lot of theories and myths on how to learn efficiently. I wanted to quickly summarize what I have learned so far to remember everything later.

  1. Learning success isn’t greater under pressure, especially time pressure.
  2. Learning is not like filling a jar in which the acquired knowledge accumulates. Connections between previous knowledge and new knowledge needs to be established to fully comprehend everything.
  3. Learning cannot be planned. The learning environment (location, breaks, repetition phase, etc.) can be planned and thought through, but there is no guarantee that you will actually learn something.
  4. There aren’t gifted and ungifted students. By the time children enter school, they have gone through years of socialization and learning, have developed certain interests, which in turn lead to individual and very different potentials. Not all children are lucky enough to receive adequate support from their family to further develop that potential.
  5. Teachers aren’t among the most impactful influences in learning. Factors created by the teacher, which promote or hinder learning are of greater importance.
  6. The theory that the ability to learn needs to be learned stems from our output orientated education system.

Some of these things took me by surprise and I’m interested in learning more about them. Especially the idea of the gifted and ungifted student or lack thereof is something I never looked at from that perspective. This is important to keep in mind when thinking about possible gamification of nature solutions.

Sources:

https://www.schulpsychologie.at/fileadmin/user_upload/190304_Lernen_verstehen-Unterricht_gestalten-final.pdf

by nadja.pirchheim -

Different types of touchpoints between companies and young people regarding apprenticeships

For my next blog article I was looking into how companies are adressing their offered apprenticeships. This time I am keeping it quite short in presenting you my findings.

Well, there were several ways how companies communicate to young adults and teenagers regarding their offered apprenticeships.

  • Representing the company at fairs and events
  • Website
  • Videos (e.g. YouTube, …)
  • Social Media
  • Word of Mouth
  • Bulletin Board (Schwarzes Brett)
  • Flyers/Poster
  • Vocational Information Centres (e.g. BIZ, AMS, WKO, … )
  • Job platorms (e.g. Karriere.at, … )

For reference, I often chose “Plansee SE” as they are the largest company in my hometown and train the most young people in the region.

Example: Flyer

Bibliography:

https://www.plansee.com/de/karriere/ausbildung.html

https://www.voestalpine.com/lehre/

https://www.raiffeisen.at/de/meine-bank/karriere/ausbildung-weiterbildung.html

https://www.lehre-im-handel.at

https://www.lehrlingsportal.at

https://www.karriere-mit-lehre.at

https://www.instagram.com/uhlmann.azubis/

by theresa.dietinger -

Nonverbal communication

Nonverbal communication can convey multiple aspects of information such as:

  • Emotions
  • Needs
  • Intentions
  • Attitudes
  • Thoughts

As a large part of information is transported through nonverbal cues the communication changes drastically when they are missing. Sarcasm, humor or anger might be missed if facial expressions can not be read properly. However, a major part of nonverbal communication is based on social and cultural habits that can differ from person to person.

“Nonverbal signals are important in many psychological processes, including attachment, attraction, social influence, deception, self-presentation, and interpersonal self-fulfilling prophecies.”

Typical ways of expression emotion or transfer information nonverbally are eye and head movements, gestures, posture, and gait.

Another important aspect that is part of conversations but isn’t communicated through speech are auditory cues like tone of voice, pitch, speed and pace of speech, and volume.

References:

by helena.opower -

Please like me – a take on the pros and cons of Instagram Engagement 

Like buttons and comments on Instagram are features that allow users to interact with each other’s content. They are a fundamental part of the platform and have a significant impact on how users experience the platform.

Like buttons, also known as “likes,” are a simple way for users to indicate that they appreciate a post. They are often used as a form of validation and can serve as a measure of the popularity of a post. The number of likes on a post can influence how users perceive the value of the content and how they interact with it. For example, a post with a high number of likes may be considered more valuable or interesting than one with fewer likes. This can also lead users to feel pressure to get more likes on their own posts and create content that they think will be more likely to get likes.

Comments, on the other hand, are a more interactive way for users to express their thoughts and opinions on a post. They can be used to start conversations and to build relationships with other users. However, comments can also be used to bully, harass, or spread misinformation. This can lead to negative experiences on the platform and can have a significant impact on a user’s mental well-being.

Both like buttons and comments have the power to shape how users interact with the platform and with each other. They can be used positively to connect and engage with others, but they can also be used negatively to manipulate or harm others. It’s important for users to be aware of the potential impact of these features and to use them responsibly.