To all the interaction design applicants, there may be ambiguity on how we define the role of interaction designers. We hope this post may shed some light on what we are looking for.

Digital design is evolving

There's not much interest in designing a tree of static web pages anymore. We're being called upon to design sophisticated digital experiences across multiple devices and contexts. Interaction design is no longer primarily about information science: it's visual design + information design + motion design + pattern recognition + systems thinking.

This kind of work requires a rare individual.

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The launch of the new Tesla store at Santana Row in San Jose includes three gorgeous touch screen experiences designed and developed by Odopod with Tesla Motors. The experiences immerse visitors in Tesla owners’ stories, vehicle innovations, and enable them to configure their own Roadster for purchase or sharing with friends.

As Tesla's digital agency of record, Odopod designed the experiences to fit within Tesla’s unique retail strategy, one that rethinks the entire approach to selling cars. Odopod and Tesla continue to collaborate to produce digital experiences that augment the purchasing process and make for a remarkable experience.

An excerpt from Tesla Motors press release:

Today Tesla Motors reinvents the car buying process with the grand opening of its store in the popular Santana Row retail district of San Jose, California.

...The Tesla Design Studio will also debut on Teslamotors.com. Built using HTML5, the Tesla configurator provides an intuitive interface for users to design their Roadster from a computer, smart phone or iPad.

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We're thrilled to have worked with such an amazing group of people at Tesla to bring the innovative retail experience to life.

For more information visit these links:
Teslamotors.com
Press Release
Exclusive Tour Of Tesla's Showroom With Apple's Retail Guru

Our friends over at The FWA recently interviewed the brilliant Jacquie Moss, Odopod Founder and Digital Strategist. Check it out.

By Rob Ford, The FWA
November 01, 2010

Please give us a brief bio of yourself.
It was in architecture school in the early 90s that I became interested in interactive design and began collaborating with fellow Odopod founders, Tim Barber and David Bliss. Similar to architecture, interactive design appeals to my predominant traits – artistic, organized, introverted (yet social) and technical.

My first job in interactive was at Human Code (Austin). It was the heyday of CD-ROM development. We were a young, enthusiastic, hard-working bunch dedicated to creating “edutainment” products for clients like the Discovery Channel, National Geographic, Hasbro and Mattel. I loved the work, and I especially loved the people with whom I worked.

Meanwhile, Tim and David had started Circumstance Design (San Francisco) and were creating a massive digital production for James Cameron’s Titanic. In 1998, I headed west to join Circumstance and help lead subsequent titles for Fox Interactive, like a King of the Hill game.

Circumstance was acquired by Rare Medium. Tim, Dave and I left to start Odopod in late 2000. The bubble burst. We endured. In the last ten years, Odopod has grown slowly and carefully from us three to now 50-something.

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Associate Technical Director, Boris Pique shares his experiences attending and speaking at this year's FITC San Francisco.

FITC had its first FlashintheCan conference in Toronto in 2002 and has since grown to become one of the most important events of its kind. What initially started as a Flash-only conference has expanded over the years to include sessions about other relevant technologies such as Processing and openFrameworks just to name a few. Even if the event is a Flash conference at its core, the broader breadth of topics is, in my opinion, a welcome approach since it’s undeniable that technologies other than Flash are better suited for certain types of work.

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Odopod Designer, Linzi Bergmann shares her experiences from this year's FITC San Francisco.

I am super excited that FITC came to San Francisco this year. The conference was smaller and more intimate than FITC Toronto, so you were able talk with and learn from the speakers on a more personal level. There were some key themes that continued to stand out throughout all of the presentations and an overwhelming amount of awesome content, topics and speakers. Here are some of my highlights from this year.

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Prototypes can serve a wide range of purposes. If you haven’t done so yet I encourage you to read previous posts in which we’ve looked at prototypes that help define the user experience and others that evaluate technical feasibility.

In this post we’ll look at another kind of prototypes, those that are used as a sales tool.

Prototypes as a sales tool
Sometimes clients come to us with very ambitious and exciting application ideas. At this point, their internal teams have spent some time giving birth to these ideas and are working towards getting them green lit to become actual products. In order for these projects to ever see the light of day, our clients usually need to get approval from stakeholders higher up in their organizations. These stakeholders are not designers or developers; they are business people. So for them to be able to fully grasp the value of these potential products it’s essential to present them with a visual depiction of how these applications might look and behave. It’s our goal to help these clients make a strong case for the investment that these projects will require when fully produced.

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Communication Arts so graciously featured the work and the culture of Odopod in the 2010 Photography Annual. We hope you enjoy the article.

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Communication Arts
Photography Annual July/August 2010
By Sam McMillan

Odopod
On the spacious sunlit second floor of the San Francisco loft they call simply, The Studio, 30 of Odopod's production staff are quietly at work. Arrayed in three long columns, worktables are placed end-to-end and front to-front. Each column constitutes a multidisciplinary team of graphic designers, interaction designers, programmers and art production staffers. The close quarters means the teams constantly face each other, and have no choice but to engage and interact with one another.

The physical layout of the Studio is modeled on small independent production studios that hark back to Odopod's genesis eight years ago. As Odopod matures and grows, co-founder and creative director Tim Barber explains that the floor plan is a way of maintaining the creative energy, jump-starting the free-flow of ideas and sharing resources. Between the columns, the teams are matrixed to encourage cross-team communication. So a programmer can simply turn around and ask a member of another team for advice, help troubleshooting or just extend an invitation to get lunch.

Each team is led by an associate creative director and a senior producer. The arrangement is "a legacy of our training as architects," Barber says. 'We're still fascinated by the idea of shaping spaces to help us work and interact better." It seems to be working.

At a time when many agencies are downsizing, Odopod is thriving, winning new clients, capturing every award in sight, generating huge industry buzz and, yes... hiring. Today, Odopod creates digital marketing for clients like Nike, Sony and Red Bull that want to reach an audience on the Web.

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Tesla Motors has had a big year. The brand new Roadster 2.5 was just unveiled. Last week, they debuted a much anticipated public stock offering with investors hot for shares. In May, they announced a partnership with Toyota to build vehicles in Northern California. And even before, the announcement that a more affordable sedan, the Model S, would soon be available, brought excitement to masses.

Today, we share some of our own big news with Tesla. As their digital agency of record, Odopod has spent the past several months on our first assignment with their team: reinventing the brand online. With the launch of the new Tesla Motors Website, we focused on designing an experience that makes owning an electric car easy by communicating complex technologies in simple, accessible ways, bringing the car to the center stage and letting the owners tell their stories all within a clean and compelling interface.

We're thrilled to be a part of the Tesla vision and to work on such an innovative and progressive brand. Our goal is to seamlessly connect all aspects of the Tesla customer experience - from the website to the showroom and on the road as we continue to work together into the future.

Check out the site »
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FITC just announced its San Francisco lineup - full of inspirational speakers from all over the world including Odopod's Associate Technical Director, Boris Pique. FITC comes to San Francisco August 17-19 with Boris' talk, "Innovation through Collaboration," being held on the 19th at 12:30.

For the full schedule visit FITC San Francisco. See you there!

I am a firm believer in the fact that close collaboration is the foundation for bringing high quality work to the digital space.

Every individual brings their own talents to the table and it’s important to provide a vehicle to express them but at the same time, when team members seamlessly work together, that’s where a lot of the magic happens.

It’s in our nature - no matter how hard we try, we are always going to have a limited point of view shaped by our individual experiences and the way we perceive things around us. Innovation often comes from looking at something from an angle that we hadn’t considered before. Collaborating with talented people with different backgrounds is a great creative catalyst so why limit your creative brainstorms to designers and strategists? Why not include developers and information architects into the mix as well?

But don’t let yourself feel like this point of view dilutes your creative expression. It’s actually quite the opposite. Your raw idea can evolve and blossom into something delightful that you never expected. Just because it’s a collaborative effort doesn’t mean that you can’t feel a sense of pride, ownership and accomplishment.

Prototyping can be a great tool to spark this cycle of creativity. It can be used in a number of ways and fulfill several purposes. In a series of blog posts we’ll explore some of them and expose the value that they provide. We’ll look at prototypes that help define the user experience; others that evaluate technical feasibility and some that can be used as a sales tool or even a spec for application development.

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