Photo © Julian Bleecker, Montreal, 2008.
No notes, no slidecast, you had to be there. Sorry.
This is [a temp] slidecast of my presentation for the session "Aiming for a better society" at the Lift Asia 08 on September 5th.
I would like to thank the Lift team Laurent Haug, Nicolas Nova, Sylvie Reinhard, and all the others for the invitation and the opportunity to share the Homegrown story with such an amazing audience in a breathtaking setting.
Thanks to the Nokia Design Homegrown team and extended contributors who made all this happen.
The video recording of my presentation will be eventually published on the Lift website, knock yourself out!
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After 3 exceptional years in Los Angeles where I have had the privilege to work with the most inspiring, intelligent, and skilled designers on projects you can hardly dream of, I have decided to move to San Francisco to establish and lead a Nokia Design Service and UI team.
The aim is to have a highly dynamic and open multidisciplinary team of 8 by the end of the year that will provide design leadership through vision, concepting and co-development of Nokia's future services and UIs. This team is part of Nokia Design Service & UI Design which has already a presence in London and Helsinki.
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137 days after the accident, I am finally walking without any assistance. I am walking funny. Sure. But I am walking. I will need a few more months to fully recuperate and another surgery next year to remove all the hardware, but the worse is behind. Let me tell you, it's a fucking relief. Very humbling as well.
This long-awaited achievement is a great opportunity to thank Dr. Bruce Thomas who performed an outstanding surgery and the kind staff at Ogden Regional Medical Center who professionally cared for me during my stay.
Thank you Phil, Lotta, Jan, Christie and Guy for being there during the whirlwind of snow patrol rescue, ER, surgeries, etc. You were outstanding.
Many thanks to the fantastic rescue patrol of Powder Mountain and EMTs who drove me down to Ogden. Thank you for the teddy bear, the pain reliever, and for not cutting my expensive jacket :)
I would also like to express my gratitude to Orr Limpisvasti, M.D and Michael J. Harris, M.D at Kerlan Jobe Orthopedic Clinic in Los Angeles for providing excellent care after flying back Utah as well as educating and comforting me during my rehabilitation. Thank you Candice and Laura for bearing with me during my numerous visits at Kerlan Jobe.
And today, I am able to walk thanks to the skillful hands and work of O'Real Cotton, David Pevsner, Jessica Lauppe, Dave, Cindy and Denise at JMP Rehabilitation Group in Reseda, Ca. Thank you for pushing me beyond my limits... especially Cindy.
I would like to thank all my friends who kindly called, emailed, and came to visit with sweets and cakes, DVDs, books, etc.
Many thanks to my colleagues and Nokia Design management team to cover for me during my recovery.
I want to thank from the bottom of my heart Laura who came to Los Angeles to take care of me the first week after the accident. Your kindness is incomparable.
Thank you Rhys for the amazing cane, I am sad to let it go. It was a good prop!
Finally I want to thank my mom who has been by my side since the accident. I don't know what I would have done without you. I love you.
]]>“Global issues cannot be removed from the business world, as we only have one world in which to operate.” - Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo
A few weeks after unveiling remade in Barcelona, we are excited to share the context in which remade and Homegrown came into being.
Our goal with Homegrown, the umbrella project, was and still is to work towards the most sustainable, ethical, and desirable communication solutions for Nokia. We’re not interested in sentimental greenwash, but the cold hard facts. If the intangible human benefits of communicating through our devices are the rewards, it’s the physical things we produce and consume that are the costs. Why are we doing this? The numbers tell the story - it's our responsibility, it is everyone's responsibility. And how? Principles in action - we are simply placing sustainability at the top of our design list.
Homegrown nurtured four case-studies: Zero Waste Charger, remade, Wears in not out, and People First.
At present, phone chargers waste 300mW of standby power when left unplugged.
There're roughly 3,000,000,000 phones on the planet which means there're also 3,000,000,000 chargers. The average charger consumes 300mW on standby. You can do the math. The waste is tremendous. In addition, most mobile phones take only ~60 minutes to fully recharge these days. Yet most of us keep them plugged for hours... while resting at night.
Nokia chargers are energy-star rated and some consume less than 40 mW in standby… but this is still not zero. The design and engineering challenge is not to bring the consumption as close to zero as possible, it is to leapfrog to zero. And the only way to achieve this is to change our ways.
How can we be more energy intelligent? By contextualising and understanding energy usage of the appliances and devices we are using.
Already devices like Wattson are showing us the energy our home is using (visualised in graphs and charts) and help us figure out ways to save electricity. But eventually, appliances and devices will have to be energy smart by nature. The Zero Waste charger is a true power-down charger with a recognisable branded element - the push-button. When pressed, the push-button reassuringly starts glowing, the charger delivers a 1-hour charge cycle and then shuts off. Off as in 0mW. The push-button symbolises Nokia’s commitment to energy saving while reinforcing conscious consumption in the user’s mind.
Contrary to Bruce Mau's Massive Change, this case study shows that Small actions x Big numbers have a Big impact.
426,000 mobile phones are retired in the USA daily.
In remade, recycled materials from metal cans, plastic bottles, and car tires are used beautifully; whilst helping reduce landfill and preserving natural resources. The concept also addresses cleaner engine technologies, and energy efficiency through power saving graphics. It is about turning waste into beauty.
Previews blog posts on this site: Nokia remade, More about remade.
After 25 years, mobile telephony is considered an established commodity.
How do we encourage people to keep their products longer? So much so – they might even pass it on…
Created with good design and noble materials, it becomes a phone you want to keep – one that sits comfortably alongside your most trusted possessions. With design decisions driven by sustainability first such as shrewd long term manufacturing investments, timeless design, and no colour variants – this truly is a phone that wears in not out. Inspired from Jan's work on repair cultures, repairable and replaceable components reduce Nokia’s environmental dust-to-dust footprint and keep pace with your needs. Whether redefining a “voice classic” or supporting enduring features such as SMS, internet, and clock – these devices are grounded in mature technologies, open standards, and simple durable execution.
In this context, personal digital content portability and software designed for decades of consumption are an integral and key part of the offering. A suite of services and physical doors enable to safely manage one's growing digital lifetime. I will return to this topic later since it deserves more than a few lines.
50% of a phone’s energy demand is backlighting.
How can we clearly prioritize people first? If we begin designing for those who face daily challenges with current technology, we soon find communication solutions that benefit us all.
With a focus on human universals, the “People-first” experience strips away the complexity of applications, folders, and unpredictable navigation with simpler universally understood organizing principles: time, lists and faces. Content comes first, navigation is shallow, and there are no metaphors or abstractions to confuse. New content is generated at the top of a singular vertical list settling over time into a personal history of events.
A dual layer display allows the user to balance energy efficiency with rich visuals. The user interface graphics are optimized for low-power and high-contrast B&W graphics. When an item is highlighted, a second full color display is partially activated in lieu of, or in combination with the first.
In an effort to increase local relevance, dynamic keymat graphics, based on a low-power bi-stable display, allow a greater number of language variants at little to no extra cost and on-screen actions are presented in textual and iconic form making the system accessible to a larger audience.
Out of the box, People First allows simply to connect synchronously (voice call or push-to-talk) or asynchronously (sms or email), capture a moment with the camera, schedule an appointment with the alarm clock, and manage money with the calculator. These are what we believe the mobile essentials - features that are relevant everywhere for everyone. These essentials are however sometimes insufficient. Instead of second-guessing additional features, we are encouraging personalization, hacking, and entrepreneurial ventures with widgets support, accessible native programming language (as simple as html) and freely available hardware and software specifications. Locally produced or crafted components and softwares provide relevance, while simultaneously reducing production efforts and the amount of atoms that need to be shipped around the globe.
Homegrown is primarily Andrew Gartrell, Rhys Newman, Duncan Burns, Pascal Wever, Raphael Grignani, Pawena Thimaporn, Tom Arbisi, Simon James, Jan Chipchase, Anne Coates, Peter Knudsen, Hannu Nieminen, and Kurt Walecki.
Additional words and pictures are available on Nokia Conversations, the press section of Nokia.com, and Julian's blog.
A couple of weeks ago, Laura Holson came to our studio in Los Angeles to discuss the things we do. Her article was published this morning. Although it is an industry-wide piece, a large portion is describing our idealistic views and unusual methods at Nokia Design.
The group is the first of its kind at Nokia, the world’s No. 1 seller of mobile phones, bringing together 14 designers and researchers from California and Helsinki, where the company is headquartered. Their charge is to tell Nokia’s top executives not only what consumers will want next year, but 3 to 15 years from now.[...]
“Design used to be inconsequential: just make it pretty, make it sell,” said Mr. Newman, who, along with three members of his team, was interviewed at Nokia’s design center near a strip mall in downtown Calabasas, north of Los Angeles. Now, he said, “we have to think about human fundamentals.”
[...]
When asked if they felt pressure to design new phones more quickly in an increasingly competitive market, Mr. Chipchase responded with a quizzical stare. “Why do you want to innovate faster?” he asked. “Are you innovating something gimmicky just to sell a product? Or is it saving the planet you are after?”
Also Rhys and I ended up having our mugs and fast moving hands pictured! Good laugh...
I had a severe accident on Friday 15th Feb in Utah resulting in a badly broken left leg. I will be recovering at home in Los Angeles with my family and my amazing friends until April.
Please expect some serious delays in all communication, projects, talks, etc. If you have anything time critical, please sms me and I will redirect you to the right person.
I would like to thank all of you for kind words and thoughts. I really really appreciate it.
Bye now.
RG
The intent was to create a device made from nothing new, distilling utility from the materials already circulating above the earth’s crust. We drew on a simple insight that in the not too distant future humanity will have extracted and worked much of the valuable minerals once buried in planet Earth. We will be compelled to reuse and celebrate what is essentially “above ground”.
We proposed the mechanical skin & bones be made from materials readily available in the lithosphere avoiding the need for extracting resources and reducing landfill.
A typical mobile phone contains approximately 44 of the 112 elements known to mankind. Through a principle of economy, we have reduced the number of components within the phone and considered more environmentally friendly technologies such as printed electronic components on non-toxic substrates.
The concept includes a number of features improving the energy efficiency. Drawing upon the fact that more than 50% of the energy a phone uses comes from backlighting the screen, we developed a new graphical look and feel that save energy without compromising style. Additionally, we have prototyped a series of no waste chargers, which power down once the phone is fully charged. This saves the typical 300 milliwatts of standby power wasted when we leave a charger plugged in.
The many small actions illustrated above, when multiplied by large numbers, can indeed change the world.
And most importantly, it works :-)
Post co-authored with the remade team.
]]>The intent was to create a device made from nothing new.
We drew on a simple insight that in the not too distant future humanity will have extracted and worked much of the valuable minerals once buried in planet Earth. We will be compelled to reuse and celebrate what is essentially “above ground”. Thus we explored the use of reclaimed and upcycled materials that could ultimately change the way we make things.
In remade, recycled materials from metal cans, plastic bottles, and car tyres are used beautifully; whilst helping reduce landfill and preserving natural resources. The concept also addresses cleaner engine technologies, and energy efficiency through power saving graphics.
Remade offers a realistic and beautiful interpretation of upcycling and a tangible starting point for discussion. A discussion we have already started a few weeks ago when two designers from our team joined Jan Chipchase and a few others in Accra to discuss, test, and improve remade with the help of the wonderful people of Ghana.
A local repair technician assembling a remade phone. Jan Chipchase - Accra, Ghana.
Our design team is very excited to join the conversation and have the opportunity to engage and receive critical feedback from all of you.
The press release, short video and additional images are available in the press section of Nokia.com - under the materials section and in the Mobile World Congress 2008 press site. You may also find the short video on Nokia Conversations YouTube channel.
*Andrew Gartrell, Duncan Burns, Rhys Newman, Pascal Wever, Tom Arbisi, Simon James, Pawena Thimaporn, Jan Chipchase, Anne Coates, Peter Knudsen and myself :)
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Come and say hi.
]]>The intent was to stretch each category language into new domains and experiences while maintaining Nokia design DNA and brand. During the creative process where people and content were prioritized above everything else, a set of common design elements emerged such as soft forms, tactility and gestures, simplicity and elegance, beauty and smiles.
Our ultimate goal: Simply beautiful communication.
Our vision aspires to natural solutions which enhance collaboration a leap forward from today's cumbersome implements. We are living in an age of virtual teams where people must work without the benefit of in-person sessions using video conferences and remote presentation tools.
Mobile video conferencing becomes easier and more productive when participants are able to visually identify who has joined the call and who is currently speaking, to mute speakers at the touch of a finger, or to start a private conversation with another participant. The dual touch-screen provides enough space to display at once large still or moving faces, documents preview, and contextual actions. The goal was to combine in one glance the people and get-things-done aspects of video conferencing.
Copyright ©2007 Nokia. All rights reserved.
The approach to get-things-done is to provide flexible, natural, and powerful multitasking capabilities with side-by-side view, tiled view, messy desk view. Applications or documents can be left open, pushed to the background, tucked under other things or just minimised to support streamlined or disjointed workflow.
Copyright ©2007 Nokia. All rights reserved.
Input is a critical aspect of the workflow - we all know how annoying it is to have a mouse or a pen that does not work. To afford complex and versatile interactions, we classified the most important workflow and optimised their interaction for either stylus or finger input based on parameters like accuracy, speed, most-likely context, satisfaction, and playfulness.
Copyright ©2007 Nokia. All rights reserved.
Achieve is about what will become possible in the near future when the current limits of mobile communication are erased.
Live looks at the devices we own and what they say about us. We choose our objects because they speak to us in a special way: surfaces are inviting to touch, interfaces are at once intuitive and beautiful, forms are pleasing to interact with. We choose them because they communicate something that we want to be known. The physical and digital blend seamlessly and behave like chameleon to match your many moods and desires. Appearance skins can be created from photographs, music tracks, usage patterns, or simply by sensing the environment.
Copyright ©2007 Nokia. All rights reserved.
The influence of femininity emanates very clearly in this category where shapes and content blend in unique designs.
Copyright ©2007 Nokia. All rights reserved.
All the little moments - gestures and glances that create an atmosphere and help people bond, have been distilled in these personalisable and socially oriented devices. Giving your number simply by touching the other device (near-field communication), inviting and guiding your friends to the next place (navigation GPS or otherwise), etc.
Copyright ©2007 Nokia. All rights reserved.
Live celebrates good design as an expression of beautifully crafted artifacts which involve us in their completion.
Connect captures core Nokia values and what we value most as humans: staying close to the people that matter. Interfaces are kept perfectly simple in the service of human connection. Memories are collected and filed away to be savored later. Mobile technology is easy to use and available to everyone from the very young to the very old and all of the people who care about them.
People centered communication is the essence of connect, and faces are the portrayal of people. We felt that they should duly take a prominent stand in the design language. The interaction becomes personal and efficient since people recognise faces much faster than words.
Copyright ©2007 Nokia. All rights reserved.
Connect is about facilitating communication with your most important people, all forms of communications. A natural extension to current practices is speech recognition where natural speech can be transcribed into a text message, a note, a task, etc. It lowers the threshold for features like text messaging and email to those that are not comfortable inputing text on a mobile phone keypad.
Copyright ©2007 Nokia. All rights reserved.
It was also important to acknowledge the greater ecosystem of home and entertainment appliances which provides an great environment to share, explore, and consume content. We purposefully used "cliché" examples of the fridge and TV shying away from the much more compelling implementations coming soon.
Copyright ©2007 Nokia. All rights reserved.
Connect is the embodiment of Nokia's wish to connect all people.
A View of the Future was created in the spring of 2006.
Late-February 2006, Nokia Design management asked our team in L.A. to make the Nokia Category Vision tangible and meaningful with design & experience concepts for Nokia Strategy Forum - an internal event for Nokia top 100 managers held on May 9th in Helsinki.
At the time, the London team in charge of developing the Category Vision was still in the definition phase, which meant that we had to collaborate very closely with them in order to deliver a shared message. Roughly a dozen people with expertise in trends, industrial design, colours & materials design, graphic design, interaction design, motion graphics, photography, model making and exhibition design set to work with four words: Explore, Achieve, Connect and Live.
Copyright ©2007 Nokia. All rights reserved.
We started to observe people, not objects or technology. We observed and documented needs & wants, moods & modes, behaviors, social ties, lifestyles. We then spent hours distilling internal and external trend forecast reports, digging and hand-picking ideas from past vision projects, gathering inspiration, and interviewing experts and stakeholders company-wide.
Copyright ©2007 Nokia. All rights reserved.
Then we discussed. A lot. The often small, and sometimes big moments of everyday life. We built and illustrated moments we believed were the essence of connecting, showing off, working, and exploring. All these moments were consolidated into structured scenarios and storyboards. We were building the foundations. Everything had to move very fast, moments had to be consolidated or discarded in minutes, the writing had to be compelling, concise and communicable over teleconference for the steering group, stories had to be implementable within the schedule and production capabilities, etc.
Copyright ©2007 Nokia. All rights reserved.
Then we designed in parallel products, colours & materials, and UIs while continuing scripting and storyboarding the four stories. It is hard to capture all the steps and breakthroughs of the design process, but working in the same space, at voice length, with formal daily reviews was essential. We were all aware what the others were doing - ideas and designs were shared, evolved and incorporated instantly.
Copyright ©2007 Nokia. All rights reserved.
Then we went into an iteration and assessment cycle while keeping an eye on the looming deadline. What are we trying to communicate again!? Are the designs telling the right stories? How can we sharpen the message? It was a gratifying and frustrating part of the process. The stories started to animate, the props were modeled and took form on the 3D printer, colours and materials samples got pinned on the wall, etc. The vision came to life. It was also a time where decisions became irreversible, uncorrectable mistakes were made, and production limitations became apparent predicaments.
On May 6th, time was up. The model makers and motion graphic designers could finally get some sleep after working more than 20 hours a day for 2 weeks straight while a few others had to fly to Helsinki from Los Angeles to set-up the space with eleven props and four 2-minutes video clips.
Explore
North/South: A light multimedia companion, featuring a see-through screen allowing the user to interactively hide/reveal both physical & digital world views. East/West: An active multimedia tool, featuring a wide-screen flexible-folding display & clutch-control interface.The adventurous two-handed usage is tailored for horizontal scanning/navigation and allows the overlay of digital & physical infrastructure for new perspectives. A separate kick-stand charger supports the device for comfortable tabletop viewing & extreme bandwidth multi/media transfers.
Copyright ©2007 Nokia. All rights reserved.
Achieve
MED: A “medium” folding mobile-workspace, featuring dual hinged touch-screens & an adaptive control-spine. Tailored for compact two-handed messaging on-the-go and sturdy tabletop input. Features an external camera, ticker-tape display, and gestural “strip” interface. LRG: A “large” mobile workspace, featuring generous dual folding touch-screens with an adaptive control-spine. Tailored for sturdy two-handed tabletop multi-tasking and pen input. An intelligent charging slot supports a suite of performance Bluetooth accessories affording strong and clear communication.
Copyright ©2007 Nokia. All rights reserved.
Live
Le Fold: The familiar form of a compact fold made out of wood, a renewable resource, contrasting with the copper trim. Le Block: A robust backed rich full window front active lifestyle product. A single metal band unites the dedicated function key, camera and volume control. Fit for purpose, both in terms of strength and agility. L'Assembleur: A well-made mobile platform designed to encourage both formal & informal personalization potential; from point-of-sale to 1st, 2nd, 3rd life & beyond. A series of exchangeable solid-state puzzle blocks slip-lock onto the interconnect chassis/display, with power & data-signals routed via both magnetic & optical couplings. A patchwork motif crafted of pieces-of-me, pieces-of-you. The deceptively simple solid-state blocks encompass the functionalities of primary interface, public/private audio-speakers, in-line camera/flash module, micro music-player, additional memory storage etc.
Copyright ©2007 Nokia. All rights reserved.
Connect
Hei: A simple and personable tool for maintaining close relationships, Hei takes full advantage of it’s fold configuration by maximizing its UI space. Using a transparent OLED display, it is visible whether opened or closed. Hola: A simple and personable tool for maintaining close relationships, Hola takes the form of a monoblock for optimum performance, efficiency, and robustness. Hi: A simple a personable tool for maintaining close relationships, Hi slides open to expand its UI when more complex interaction is required. A high-res camera with high quality optics provides enhanced imaging capabilities in the open position, but are hidden and well-protected when closed.
Copyright ©2007 Nokia. All rights reserved.
Copyright ©2007 Nokia. All rights reserved.
Showtime. The Nokia Strategy Forum attendance were divided into two groups, and both sessions went fantastically well - people were looking and handling the props with child-like eyes, the video clips and props sparked conversations, people were genuinely excited and inspired. It was extremely gratifying for the team.
Copyright ©2007 Nokia. All rights reserved.
Back in Los Angeles, we celebrated what we thought was the end of this project. If only. At the end of May, Alastair Curtis, Head of Nokia Design, informed us he will present the four video clips at Nokia World 2006 on November 30th, 2006 in Amsterdam.
"Keep Achieve, redo everything else! And each video clip must be under a minute."
We followed a similar process, but with less people and a new set of challenges. Namely.
1. Telling eloquent and vivid stories in half the time.
The main effort was to rewrite the stories with less narrative and more experience moments without compromising the clarity of the message.
2. Producing a gnarly original soundtrack.
Adding music to anything that might be presented or distributed publicly is a nightmare. Securing all possible rights (one-time event, internet, TV, all countries, etc) for a recording from a known artist is tedious and seriously expensive, so it was out of the question. Our only option was to commission four tracks, and it's quite a challenge too.
3. Protecting concepts and potential new ideas that may or may not be produced.
The clips and props were initially designed to be shown only internally - we had no creative limitations; and it turned out to be an problem for this phase. Some digital and physical interaction moments had to be edited out and a couple of props had to be left out altogether.
4. And of course, striving for the best quality possible within our constraints.
Not only Nokia has historically been very secretive with upcoming products and visions, these clips were set to introduce to the world Nokia Design interpretation of the new Categories. Quite an ambition considering the initial purpose and production style. Ultimately, the public clips are of much higher quality both in storytelling and production than the original ones. They are far from being perfect, but they do convey the categories key experiences quite clearly without explicitly revealing upcoming Nokia products and features.
Finally, it is not the view of the future, it is a view of the future. The video clips are designed to stimulate debate and discussion around how the mobile device of the future might look and function in our lives.
Explore: Sharing Discoveries
Achieve: Achieving Together
Live: Inspiring Senses
Connect: Connecting Simply
"What can BROWN do for you?"
Let's start with some background information. I am a French citizen, living and working out of Los Angeles on a L-1b visa for Nokia.
My passport was sent to CIBT in New York mid-October to obtain a Ghanaian visa stamp for a business trip starting 11/6/2007. "CIBT [..] offers complete document expediting services in the United States. [...] With nearly 200 professionals nationwide, and a state-of-the-art tracking system, CIBT always knows exactly where your documents are in the process." Remember this, it is important.
CIBT obtained the said visa stamp in time and used the services of UPS NEXT DAY AIR to ship my passport back. The UPS website showed a pick-up time for the package on 10/31/2007 at 5:29 P.M. (All dates, time, and location information from the UPS tracking website).
The next day, the UPS driver came and went at 10 A.M. without the package containing my passport. I had a flight to London at 9 P.M. The UPS website showed IN TRANSIT to a location in IL, USA. We called UPS, they assured us that the package was on its way and would get to our office this afternoon. At 5 P.M., the package had not been delivered; time to reschedule my flight to the next day.
On Friday 11/2/2007, the UPS driver came and went at 10 A.M. without the package containing my passport. The UPS website still showed IN TRANSIT to a location in IL, USA. Our assistant spent the entire morning on the phone with CIBT and several departments of UPS to have a status on the package containing my passport. UPS refused to share any information with us since we were the recipients. Seriously? Meanwhile I rushed to the Consulate General of France in Los Angeles to see if they could issue a 1-year temporary passport. It was possible however since 9/11 the Department of Homeland Security do not issue (temporary) visa on temporary passports anymore nor consider valid damaged passports. I could have left the country with my temporary passport but would not have been able to return to the U.S.A. In a nutshell, I was grounded.
Back at the office, I received the following email from CIBT around 12pm:
Dear Mr. Grignani,
My name is Daniel [lastname removed], and I am assisting with locating your UPS package. The agent handling this request has already placed numerous calls to UPS to try and have them track this down, and she has followed all the UPS protocol for lost packages.
UPS has placed a tracer on this package and we will be notified as soon as they find any information regarding the package. The last time UPS scanned it was in NYC and then there are no further scans. This does not mean that it is still in NYC, and that is why we have to let UPS investigate the shipment.
I wanted to send you an email to assure you that we are doing everything possible to get this resolved and are in touch with and will continue to be in touch with UPS.
Time to reschedule my flight to Monday. The UPS website now showed Status: Exception.
At this point, I was nearly losing it. I spent the past 6 weeks organizing this business trip for 2 other designers and me. All of us spent Sunday at the office for a briefing, status review, rescheduling, redistribution of the equipment, brain dump session. Fantastic.
On Monday 11/5/2007 morning, some hope...
Dear Mr. Grignani,
I spoke to UPS this morning and they have located your package. They are going to ship this out and it will arrive tomorrow morning.
We should be able to track the package with the same tracking number, but it may not be updated until this evening.
I apologize for the inconvenience this may have caused, and UPS has also expressed their sincere apology for the delay with this shipment.
Any questions, please feel free to call me at any time.
Sincerely,
Daniel
I called Daniel immediately. According to him, a UPS representative told him that the label on the package has been lost therefore UPS did not know who the recipient was. Okay.
At this point, I called the team in transit to Ghana to notify them that I will arrive on Wednesday evening.
On Tuesday morning, CIBT emailed the new tracking number. The UPS website showed two things:
The UPS driver arrived at the office at 9:50 A.M. Our assistant signed the package, it was in good shape but when she opened it in front of the UPS driver, this is what she found.
The cover of the passport is missing, the pages are held together with an elastic band. When removing the elastic band, some pages show tire traces and dirt marks. All pages are present including the I-94. Considering the condition of the passport, I knew that I could not travel anywhere even if I had a valid temporary one along with it.
Time to call the lawyers, cancel the trip, and call the team in Ghana for the nth time.
Later that morning, I went back to the Consulate General of France in Los Angeles to void my current passport and apply for a new one. On close inspection, the vice-consul was surprised to see the cover missing considering the overall good condition of the pages and suggested that it might have been removed intentionally to make a fake passport. The vice-consul went on to describe how the French passport is constructed; the cover and pages are really thick and sturdy and are sewn together. It is nearly impossible to detach the cover without human intervention. Notice on the pictures how all the other pages are still sewn together and fairly intact. If it is hard to physically damage it, according to this report from Sénat français, "the French passport is very attractive [to criminals] because its security features against falsification are relative and it allows its owner to prove his/her French nationality and his/her identity as well as to enjoy the consequential rights and benefits and to have a travel document". Apologies for the poor translation.
Back at the office, I took a closer look at the UPS package my passport came in. Notice on the image below how the labels are stickers and that there are two of them. How can it be lost?
Today, UPS is still investigating the claim - the claim type being Damaged Package. I am still waiting for a written letter from UPS detailing why the package was not delivered to us on time. Also it is worth noticing that UPS has a clause in its contract stating they will only reimburse the price of the damage good (86$ in this case). So forget about the costs of canceling my business trip, the hassles to apply for a new passport, the 10 days in Europe + lawyer fees + paperwork to re-apply for a L-1b visa stamp at a US Embassy, etc. You get the picture.
To conclude, I want to briefly touch on the issues this incident raises, (I am planning to discuss them in full in another post). Unless my passport did open the package it was in, jump out of it, pulled out its cover and then threw itself under a Fenwick, someone somewhere in the UPS world did.
This is what BROWN can do for you.
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Fifteen years ago, Nokia launched its first GSM handset, the Nokia 1011, the model number coming from the launch date: 10 November 1992.
A few figures: 196 x 62 x 45mm, 475 g, two-line mono-chrome screen, 12 hours standby time, 80 minutes talk time, mono-band (GSM), 99 phonebook entries and text messaging.
The rest is history.
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The New York Times just introduced silently a very neat feature. Double-clicking any word will open a page which shows by default the definition of that word (Answer.com/Reference). At the top of the page, there is a search box for NYT archives, NYT blogs, Google, etc. It does not work everywhere but it does on this article: Fuel Without the Fossil which is part of the Energy Challenge series.
It is simple, elegant, non-obtrusive and certainly useful.
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