makewithmoto

[makewithmoto]

We're not here anymore

If you're looking for Google ATAP, you can find us here.

If you're looking for Spotlight Stories, please head over here. 

See you soon! 

[makewithmoto]

Project Ara dscout featured snippet

Today's featured snippet is from 33-year-old Christian from Denmark:

ARA 007 SPECIAL EDITION FOR BRITISH GOVERNMENT AGENTS

How thick is your phone? 0.9 cm The size is very similar to the z1 to accommodate a variety of modules

How long is your phone? 14.7 cm

How wide is your phone? 7.35 cm

What material did you use to build most of your phone? Glossy photo paper

Which modules did you create for your phone? Camera, battery, USB,WiFi, additional storage, speaker, bluetooth, GPS, accelerometer

What other modules did you add?  Standard modules Electronic bug detector Geiger counter Plastic explosive + detonator Remote control for BMW or Google driverless car Night vision monocular Mini dart gun module Satellite phone + antenna SDXC SIM Micro usb Extra modules Tails module modified for secure, private and anonymous communication Taser Mini flame thrower Aerosol (pick your own chemicals) Some of the ideas have been shown in various movies, or already exist. Whats new is assembling all of the ideas in a modular phone.

If you want to join dscout and help us make the world’s first fully modular smartphone visit dscout.com/ara

[makewithmoto]

Insights and Inspiration

As we begin Mission 4, the Project Ara team wanted to share with you some of the insights and inspiration we’ve gotten from all of our scouts. We’ll begin with Mission 1, which overwhelmed us beyond expectations. As this experiment in global, open, online design unfolds, we’ll share back what we’re learning after each mission (we’ll be quicker moving forward :).

Let’s start with a few numbers:

within the first 24 hours of announcing Project Ara, 40,000+ scouts signed up to participate in the Project Ara Research Scout project

almost 3 months later, we’re still getting a few dozen sign-ups each day

Mission 1 had 18,097 scouts who submitted 41,567 snippets. The picture above is a collage of the scout profile images to inspire the team!

Scouts come from at least 111 countries (and these are just from those that entered their country in the profile - I suspect we have closer to 200 countries represented). The map below shows the snippets we received in the first 72 hours.

well over 25% of scouts have Apple devices - very cool to have everybody in the mix!

Mission 1 invited people to share their first impressions, and we got a little bit of everything. Most of the impressions were around customization, module possibilities, and just pure excitement. Here are some of our favorite snippet titles:

each phone one of a kind

endless possibilities

innovation above profitability

user inspired

the 4ever phone

second chances

open community

a brand I grow with

the best of everyone

complexity into simplicity

as unique as me

A few things stood out to us. First, a lot of scouts explored how a modular phone might support the close relationships in their life: such as a couple or a household swapping and sharing modules. Here’s an example:

“When making something your personal brand is not enough, make it even more personal by coupling parts together. With your love or your best friend or your grandma. So parts belong as you belong in your family.”

The second thing that surprised us is how many scouts talked about how energizing it was to be part of the conversation. We called this category of snippets “Moto+Me”, and the contributions here encourage us to continue with our open design approach. Here’s an example from Mark in the UK:

"Open, user driven, forward thinking community. The first peer to peer hardware community. Able to easily interact and give/get support from developers."

Third, Project Ara has captured the imagination of the world’s youth. Scouts range in age from 13-73, but the largest group of participants are in their 20s and the next are in their teens. Each snippet was ranked on a level of excitement from 1 - 7. What was really interesting is that while the average interest level steadily declined with age, it shot up to the highest levels for those over 70. Teens and our most senior scouts are clearly our most enthusiastic participants.

Fourth, while the overall tone of participants was optimistic, there were a few key questions and concerns that we saw repeatedly. As we begin to develop and share the technical details of the project, we’ll address each of these questions:

Will the pieces easily break apart if dropped?

How easy is it to take the modules out and fit in new ones?

Will there be enough space for all the modules I want?

Won’t this feel bulkier than the standard phone? Will it look good?

Is there a way to lock down the parts so they don’t “walk away”?

Will I need to upgrade the main board every few years?

Will my phone be water proof despite its modular design?

What we’ve seen so far has only solidified our belief that the best kinds of innovation come not from closed doors, but from an open collaboration that engages everyone in the process of thoughtful design. And while we can never hope to return as much inspiration as we’re getting from all of scouts, we’ll continue to share back some of the insight from their participation.

A sincere thanks from the entire team.

// daniel

Daniel Makoski // Creative Director // @mak0ski

Advanced Technologies & Projects (ATAP) // Motorola - a Google company // @MAKEwithMOTO

P.S. You can always reach us at projectara@dscout.com for anything related to dscout, or @mak0ski for anything else.

[makewithmoto]

ATAP at Sundance

ATAP is landing at Sundance Film Festival with Regina Dugan, celebrated creatives, and a sneak peek at the upcoming Spotlight Story. On January 17th, the Moto X Lounge at Park City Live will play host to the latest Story's debut, along with panel-ready creators, Jan Pinkava and Glen Keane. We can't wait to show the world the latest from our band of Spotlight pirates. http://bit.ly/1davBlg 

[makewithmoto]

Welcoming Ivan Poupyrev

Today we welcome Ivan Poupyrev to the ATAP team. Ivan is number 14 on Fast Company’s 2013 list of most creative people. That’s right between Ken Lerner and Ai Weiwie. Not bad company. In the early 90s at Sony Ivan invented the first tactile feedback touchscreens. At Disney he invented novel sensing technology called Touche, which created the ability to make any object interactive. Including living plants. And recently, Fast Company dubbed Ivan as as one of the world’s greatest interaction designers. Needless to say, we’re excited to see what we’ll make together. Check out more of Ivan’s R&D portfolio at http://ivanpoupyrev.com.

[makewithmoto]

Project Ara dscout featured snippet

Today's featured snippet from dscout mission 3 is by 27-year-old Mikhael from Russia.

We love the use of organic materials and the slidable modules:

How thick is your phone?  8.9 cm

How long is your phone?  14.0 cm

How wide is your phone?  6.9 cm

What material did you use to build most of your phone? bendable plastic

Which modules did you create for your phone?  camera, battery, WiFi, additional storage, speaker

What other modules did you add?  Biometric (finger scanner), 3d-scanner. If you want to join dscout and help us make the world's first fully modular smartphone visit dscout.com/ara

[makewithmoto]

2014

It’s 2014. The world is a year older. But ATAP is still pretty young. We’ve been around for less than two years. But we work quickly. We work with big ideas. And we work them hard to find out if they’re going to make an impact.

As you may know, our Technical Program Leads are hired for only two years. In that time, they need to assemble a team. Do all their R&D. Create prototypes. Release Alpha and Beta versions. Dogfood these. And, finally, present a product with a plan to manufacture it at scale. This year, we'll reach that second birthday.

You’ve met a couple of our projects already: MAKEwithMOTO, Ara, Spotlight Stories, Skip. But there is plenty more to come in 2014. Over the next year we’re going to introduce you to some of our team, invite you to explore our work, share our philosophy for innovation and finally introduce some really kickass products. So be excited for 2014. We certainly are.

[makewithmoto]

motorolaspotlightstories:

Merry Christmas from Pepe and the gang

[makewithmoto]

motorolaspotlightstories:

To animate means to bring to life

And Glen Keane’s work seems larger than life. As the creator and animator of beloved Disney characters such as Ariel from The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Pocahontas, the Beast from Beauty and the Beast, and Tarzan, Glen has drawn more than figures on a screen. He has made the stories and characters of our childhoods. He gave us imaginary friends, admired heroines, misfits in search of understanding, and at least a Halloween costume or two. 

We’re excited to announce that Glen—the artist behind so many classics—is working with us to push the future of animation with an original Spotlight Story. 

Expected to release the middle of 2014, in this third Spotlight Story, Glen is going back to the drawing board. Literally. Together with the engineers who unlocked the graphics technology that made our first Spotlight Story, Windy Day, possible on the Moto X, we’re pushing new edges. The raw emotion of the hand-drawn line brought to life in our technological world. And yours. 

What will happen when a master animator of the big screen jumps to an innovative, mobile canvas? We’re excited to see.

- Baback Elmieh, Technical Program Lead, Spotlight Stories

Disney legend Glen Keane joins Spotlight Stories

[makewithmoto]

ATAP's Jason and Daniel talk about their trip across the country in a Velcro-covered maker van and how they're applying what they learned from college students to making a phone for 6 billion people. Skip to 2:30:00 for their talk.

Find out more about MAKEwithMOTO here.

[makewithmoto]

Regina in Verge top 50

Regina Dugan, director of ATAP has been listed on the Verge's top 50 of 2013. The Verge, which shies away from buzzfeed-style lists, described 2013 as "a year of the people — a year when it was never more clear that just a single person could change the way we all feel and think. The Verge 50 comes from a desire to call out — to showcase — the people who changed our lives this year. Whether they made us laugh, think, act, or pause, these are the people in our world right now who are the prime movers. The leaders both in thought and deeds. These are the people who matter now."

"Dugan is taking her eye for the avant-garde and applying it to the consumer realm. As senior vice president for advanced technology and projects at Motorola, she’s spearheaded the development of far-out products like electronic tattoos to replace passwords and pills powered by stomach acid. “If you want to ensure failure in your innovation, try removing the risks,” she said earlier this year. “Boredom is the enemy of innovation.”

See the full list here. 

[makewithmoto]

i LIKE/NEED/WANT/LOVE a DIFFERENT/GREAT/NEW PHONE/IDEA

A little over a month ago, we announced Project Ara and invited the world to be part of the conversation. We expected several hundred people to be excited about it. Maybe even a couple thousand. If we’ve been a little slow reporting some of the findings from the first research mission it is because we got more than a couple thousand. You blew away our expectations: 16,173 people submitted 37,770 snippets from 111 countries. You literally overloaded our dscout account. For that we thank you. We had a few hiccups in the beginning but we’re now ready for the world.

To make sure anyone can get involved, we just launched a web form so that anybody can participate regardless of the device you currently have. We’re especially excited for those of you who don't have a smartphone to get your voice in there.

The full results from the first mission are coming soon. But just for now we wanted to share something that excited us. This is just a quick glance at some high level data. This graphic shows the top words that you used to describe your Ara phone. They are drawn from the titles, descriptions and comments of all the snippets you submitted. 

Over the last month we've been going deeper into individual postings. And hired two additional full-time anthropology PhDs to help us understand what makes all of you tick.

We can't wait to show you what you’ve made possible.

Stay tuned.

// daniel Daniel Makoski // Creative Director // @mak0ski

Advanced Technologies & Projects (ATAP) // Motorola - a Google company // @MAKEwithMOTO

dscout.com/ara

[makewithmoto]

Welcome to ATAP 

[makewithmoto]

Ambitious goals, temporary projects and independence: making innovation real within ATAP

Ever wonder what enables great groups to make great things? Regina and Kaigham Gabriel have a few thoughts in this Harvard Business Review article.

[makewithmoto]

Check out some of the cool stuff that our Spotlight Stories team is getting up to. This video is from the pop-up creative spaces they put together in New York and Chicago to celebrate the launch of Windy Day! 

Phase two of our Windy Day pop-up locations involved a total transformation of the spaces. We brought Pepe’s world out of your phone and built an indoor forest for you to explore. Of course there were also plenty of phones for people who hadn’t experienced Windy Day yet! What do you think? Look like fun?

[makewithmoto]

Project Ara dscout Mission Two: Colors and textures and pictures oh my!

As we develop Project ARA, we’re setting up a series of dscout missions. These missions let people from around the world help us tackle some of the questions that we come up against while making Project Ara come to life.

Mission Number One was all about collecting people’s first impressions of Project ARA. We got some great stuff that Daniel is going to report back on soon.

In the meantime, say hello to Mission Number Two: we're making a global brand mood board - help us!

As we’ve been building the product, we’ve also been building the Project ARA brand. We have ideas about what the brand should stand for, what it should say, what it should do and what the overall energy of it should be.

While our ideas are well and good, we’re quite curious about what you think.

So, what’s a brand mood board exactly?

Mood boards are a collection of images, colors and textures that represent a brand. They should be inspiring and bring to life what a brand is all about.

So our mission to you is this: in the next three days, photograph and tag at least three images, colors and/or textures from your world that you think best represents all the goodness that Project ARA can be.

Not a Project ARA dscout agent yet? Sign up here.

We’re really looking forward to what you have to say.

We’ll share it all back soon.  

Rock on.

// heidi (&daniel)

Heidi Hackemer // Brand Director // @uberblond

Daniel Makoski // Creative Director // @mak0ski

Advanced Technologies & Projects (ATAP) // Motorola - a Google company // @MAKEwithMOTO

[makewithmoto]

ATAP’er + Five Questions: Neal

1) Describe what you do at ATAP in 3 words. Work hard everyday.

2) If you could have any superpower, what would it be? Animal mind control.

3) What gets you up and to the ATAP office every morning? Science.

4) What’s the most dangerous thing you’ve ever done? I walked about 6 km south along the edge of the Cliffs of Moher seeking a ruined castle tower on the horizon. It rained. A lot. The wind almost blew me off into a watery death a couple times. I remember mentally calculating the probability of my survival and the possibility of death becoming very real to me. Then I imagined everyone who lost their life at the Cliffs of Moher feeling the way I did before the end. The impending, inevitable transformation into a statistic, that damn sign warning you (but really daring you) not to go further, the not so subtly juxtaposed memorial.

With the equivalent odds of death in both directions, I felt the decision was whether to be someone who dies trying to run away, or simply die trying. So I kept walking. I saw what looked like an Andy Goldsworthy. A kettle lake. Some old stones. A beautiful brambly field of flowers. And finally, a ruined castle tower.

Inside I found the ruins of an old wood staircase, some old beer bottles, and proof that on a long enough line of probability, anything is possible.

5) If you could make anything for the future, what would it be? A benevolent government.