Fjord

Introduction

After spending some time in Berlin at Waltz Binaire improving myself in creating interactive 3D, real-time animations, and immersive design experience. I wanted to discover what was to work in a bigger design agency with a lot of other designers with other various skills: research, content, business, visual and us the creative technologists. The ones who were called to develop tech prototypes.

When I joined the Paris office, we were 50 designers, with other teams spread across more than 30 cities around the world. We were a lot! Which meant we had many clients, leading to lot of issues for us designers to address.

(A part of the Paris team on the right)

My role

As said previously, my role as a creative technologist was to develop prototype but not only. During my time there, I have developed a taste for user research, which has equipped me with a mindset and a set of tools that I consistently use until today.

Working at Fjord involved dealing with many challenges because we had clients from various industries like automotive supplier, public works, and transportation.

Our main job was working with different kinds of companies which had various types of users like train drivers, taxi drivers, people who build roads, and workers in stone mines. The challenging aspect of the job was understanding their specific needs and designing customized prototypes.

On each of the projects I have worked on, I had the opportunity to immerse myself with the users and spend enough time with them to understand more about their challenges and daily problems. It allowed me travel to North America or Asia to conduct immersive user research. The insights that I learned were essentials for the prototypes that I’ve made later.

(Young self finishing a prototype)

Learnings

A notable example was for the automotive supplier for which we designed new services for their new car interior. Since 2016, car manufacturers have seen a slow growth in car sales worldwide due to a lot of diverse factors (economic, ecologic and social) consequently people who are more inclined to buy a car are hardcore users.

Before starting the research, we had many hypotheses that turned out to be completely wrong because we expected user behaviors that did not exist.

Being regularly in the field, conducting interviews, practicing guerrilla tactics and then directly testing with users allowed us to co-create solutions with them.

Our focus was on diverse users, particularly those like cab drivers who spend long hours in their vehicles. One challenge we found was their requirement for sufficient rest in their work environment.

We created an integrated system with vehicle services and features to facilitate rest, improve drivers’ rest times, and boost their overall work efficiency.

(Me interviewing a car driver)

(Car cabin prototype we were working on)