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As said before, we are between offices. Our old office has some new use to it already, but the new one is still getting its finishing touches by the renovation crew. Well, actually we are waiting for the floor to dry and get its hardened properties. In effect, we had nowhere to go.

Surprisingly, this was not a big problem. People just had to choose whether they wanted to work from home, cafe or wherever (of course depending on the level of secrecy required by the project at hand). Because this also coincided with the arrival of company iPads, several emails this week contained greetings from “this and that restaurant” and included the signature “Sent from my iPad”.

Other than that, for the info on what happened this week, I have to trust our digital systems and people’s own explanations of what has been going on. This is because I’ve just been working from home, been on a holiday in Estonia, had a flue, and haven’t really spoken to any colleague face-to-face this week. People, have your say:

Matti

Last week we managed to push OSLO forward huge steps – on Tue we presented concept alternatives to the client, and workshopped an implementable concept approach, which the client approved. Rest of the week we pushed this selected concept forward. Next week we’ll finally got approval for the project’s 1st phase and hopefully get a full reference right from the client as well!

Apart from that, I’ve also talked about new resources with Ilkka and planned how things would work if we would have one more COO kind of a guy involved.

Oh and one more thing, the iPad, which is way too cool! Some days I mostly worked with it, and it worked pretty well. Only keynote is still missing.

Aki

Finalizing a prototype of a mobile UI project, verifying client’s wireframes and mostly excited about iPad, iPad, iPad.

Sauli

I built a video site. Wasted lots of time on rendering the videos. It’s hard to find good balance between quality and reasonable file size. I think in maybe 5-10 years we don’t have worry about this kind of things.

What if a some browser vendor would get so much money and resources that they could build the ultimate browser. What new features it would have?

Did Teppo’s creativity exercises.

Samuel

Handed video site’s layout to Fabian and started on a web brand guidelines for a company. Excited about the move to the new office and a Trip to Tarto, Estonia.

Fabian

Thrown into full steam agile project with Teppo and Panu’s leftovers.

Panu

Projects never finish, they just move to maintenance phase. This week we designed a couple of small design additions and improvements to make a old project even better.

All systems go in a new project! Implementation project starts right now. Teppo and Daniel will take over and correct all the design flaws that I created in the concept phase. (editor: the design’s fine)

The media house project will this week create the first UI concepts. We’ll get these reviewed by Tuesday. This is the messy part of the project, where we communicate actively with the client so that our and their expectations will meet.

In the near future, we will be starting to design a mobile version of a web service that we designed. It will be fun to put some mobile experience in good use again.

This week, I’ve been mostly getting excited about exploring alternative working locations.

Petri

I’ve been creating and updating two lecturing sessions: First one will be about Design Management or Design Thinking. Second one is about Service Design and how small business units can utilize design efficiently in general.

This week’s most exciting meeting was with colleagues from ‘southern Helsinki’ —Tallinn. Looking forward to give them return visit in few months as promised.

Definitely all the eyes were focused on Iceland due to dramatic events. Because of these ash clouds, our sister company Lillehammer seems to be stuck at Milan and few other friends have had to change their flight schedules into ferry-car schedules. Maybe this is the mother nature’s tactic of turning business into trendy slow-living mode. Yet it remains to be seen how this event will affect weather and food production conditions in long term.

Sami

Made a pitch for a large software company. Worked on Nordkapp.fi 4.0, synthesizing Sauli’s IA to design drivers and principles. Working on NK products & services v2.0, and also updating other corporate assets for the future. Some work on roles and job descriptions too as well as with finalizing the values & culture.

Lots of work on concept and graphics from the future in one project. Taking load of Panu & Teppo.

Elsewhere, first of a group of services is now ready for private beta. Visual style needs some tweaks still but can be implemented to other projects too. Which is where I am helping Fabian with this week.

Lots of pieces falling together which is nice.

Oh and got an iPad, eBay’d some gift cards for the US iTunes. Result: iPad now loaded with iWork, concept magazines and alike. Device is cool, but apps seem to range from very cool to utter crap. Like mentioned earlier on Twitter, some of the designs remind me very clearly of first days of Flash 10 years ago. it’s about the context people, not doing stuff just because you can.

Teppo

Among other things already mentioned, I urged our people to do “creativity enhancing things” from one of those lists while they were away from the office this week. I was thinking about listing what people did here, but the submitted list became just way too long. Basically I would have ended up reposting nearly the full list here! Instead, I urge you try them at your work / life!

That’s it for this weird week. Happy creativeness for the upcoming week and hopefully we get to our new office soon. Cheers.