Aug 04 2008
Interesting developments at Cooper and Adaptive Path
I have noticed a couple of interesting developments at two of the leading companies in the user experience design field: Cooper and Adaptive Path. Both companies seem to be taking a decisive step into the wider design territory occupied by companies such as Ideo and Frog Design.
On July 9th, Adaptive Path announced that they had selected Michael W. Meyer, a former executive at both Ideo and Frog Design, as their new CEO. About the same time, Dan Saffer started blogging about physical computing and his experience of learning electronics. In his first post, he says:
Over the last several years, Adaptive Path’s business has expanded from mostly web work to a mix of web, mobile, medical devices, and consumer electronics.
Interesting. The second thing that got my attention was that Cooper made an appointment on July 14th, making Michael Voege, also from Frog Design, their Director of Industrial Design. Making the anouncement, Dave Cronin at Cooper said:
Some of the most exciting and challenging products we’ve designed here at Cooper have involved a physical component. We admit it, we’re greedy: we want to do more fun projects like that.
So what? Well I think this marks a sea change in the field of user experience design. I have long admired Ideo’s work and wondered what the difference was between what I did for a living and what the people at Ideo did. The answer seemed to be simply that I designed for software, a material with no physical properties, whereas at Ideo they designed both the software and the hardware. I’m sure that at Cooper and Adaptive Path, people have been looking at the iPhone and at Microsoft’s Surface and have been thinking that these types of physical computing devices with complex behaviours and innovative interfaces are where all of the interesting future action will be in our field. They are positioning themselves to take advantage of these kinds of opportunities. Now that’s the sort of move I wish I was making myself.
Good point, plus they’ve been constantly alluding to a big announcement at some stage mid August, and they have a party planned for it.
I’d really like to see them as a products company, cause the only insight we get into their work is through whitepapers and talks. (Such is the nature of consultancy I guess).
That Alan Kay quote keeps running through my head “if you’re serious about software, you should design your own hardware too”
Yes, The Aurora announcement, I just read it. Interestingly, they open that announcement by styling themselves: “Adaptive Path, a product development and consulting service in San Francisco…” which reinforces my point. I see, too, that Cooper are no longer styled “Cooper Interaction Design” on heir web site, they are just ‘Cooper’.