John Kestner.Portfolio.

John Kestner.

Problem

The digital-analog gap

Silvers — people over age 50 — want to feel connected to family and friends. They enjoy the tangibility of photos and letters as a way of doing this.

But printing and mailing actual photos doesn’t fit in the lifestyle of younger people, who are more likely to email a photo or to send one captured with a cameraphone via SMS. And silvers don’t always feel comfortable with the complexity of downloading and printing photos on a computer.

Solution

They send picture emails. You get picture postcards.

Vivien bridges the digital-to-analog gap between generations. It prints pictures with messages on the back, placing them right into a photo frame. It requires no computer, receiving emails with pictures, photostreams and SMS messages through Wi-Fi.

Acrylic, yellow foam, Photoshop.

Vivien photoradio.

John Kestner.

Paper pathPrinting on stiff photo paper requires a fairly straight paper path. To do this within a small form factor, the paper protrudes from the case before being directed to the output tray. With a compact and central solid ink print engine, the printer can print duplex. Vivien reimagines the motion of printing, making it an experience reminiscent of a music box.

Vivien photoradio. (continued)

Study modelsFrom foreground to background:

Upright photo-size printer with paper tray in back, frame as output tray in front.

Explore contoured back, language of a book (lip indicates hard cover)

Consider components (print drum, paper path), generate geometric shapes

Work out proportions and basic relationships between components

Foamcore, pink foam, chipboard.

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‘dog-eared page’ tab to open paper tray

John Kestner.

ProblemDesign an instrument that:

expands the tonal range of a guitarist to the bass register

is easy for a guitarist to adapt to

is styled with consideration given to ergonomics, but does not alienate the typical, very traditional, guitarist with radical shapes and materials

provides a compromise that preserves the characteristics of the guitar and bass guitar, in terms of playability and tone

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Hybrid guitar/bass.SolutionA guitar-based instrument that replaces the top two strings with bass

strings tuned two octaves lower. The neck is lengthened to add the necessary tension but is tuned like a guitar, allowing a

guitarist to adapt easily (especially playing classical style). Dual truss rods counteract the varying tensions between the bass and the guitar sides of the neck which would otherwise warp it. Because of the wide tonal range, dynamic full-range pickups are used. The compact form is contoured to be comfortable against the guitarist’s body and uses less material,

resulting in a lighter instrument with less wood waste.

Made by Bancroft Guitars.

John Kestner.

Seamless one-piece upper is more flexible to offer a tighter fit, in concert with the slits

Slits allow air to circulate and cool the foot

Tread pattern provides grip for the lateral movement common in tennis as well as forward/backward movement

Two-tone color scheme looks great with formal wear

Aggressive styling, with slits and tread taking cues from a shark’s gills, looks great on the tennis court

Steps in the process(below) Sketching sole ideas; trying out color schemes on the sketches; making rough foam models; and after the final model was made, trying different color schemes again using Photoshop.

Pencil, marker, Styrofoam, yellow foam, vinyl, Photoshop.

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Hammerhead tennis shoe.

John Kestner.

The Kinesic Interface.Wink CameraTake a picture by winking at your subject. Have a stranger take a picture of you and your spouse by telling him to wink at your wife.

When you use a typical camera, you’re putting a barrier between yourself and your family and friends — removing yourself from the picture, so to speak. But integrate the camera into eyeglasses or contact lenses, and you remove the divide as well as the inconvenience. The popularity of cameraphones has shown that people value availability — having a memory preserved with no effort is much more valuable than a 5X zoom or 8 megapixels.

Twirl Music Player / Trigger TV RemoteAdjust the volume by sticking your finger in your ear and twisting it, as an old man might do when he can’t hear so well. Pause and resume your music by plugging and unplugging your ears, or by tugging on your earlobe. Advance through songs or stations by twirling your forefingers, much as you would if you were impatient and telling someone to “get on with it.”

Fiddling with controls is distracting while driving or going for a run. With a gesture-based interface read by a motion-sensing ring on your finger, you can keep your eyes on the road and your balance on the treadmill.

Apply contact lens interface

Wink, take photo

Review photos on wristwatch device

Volume up / down (rotate finger)

Pause / play (pull earlobe)

Forward / back (twirl finger in air)

Turn on / off (snap & point finger)

“Can’t experience and emotion be wedded forever?” - Bill Stumpf, The Ice Palace That Melted Away

ProblemOften, technology removes us from our experiences, especially in a social setting. And each new device ornaments itself with more marginally useful features that only obscure the primary functions, sucking joy out of the activity and alienating us from our environment.

SolutionThis concept brings back an element of playfulness by using known gestures to control our gadgets, thereby breaking down the barriers that technology creates between us and the human experience. When we use body language to communicate, we’re expressing something beyond what a binary button or 15 millimeters of travel can measure.

In The Ice Palace That Melted Away, Bill Stumpf begs for design to reconnect us with each other. In that spirit, let’s strip devices to their primary function and interact with them with the flourish of human body language.

2006 I.D. Magazine Annual Review.

Body language as universal communicator

Apply contact lens interface

Wink, take photo

View photos on wristwatch

Turn on/off (point & snap)

Pause/play (pull earlobe)

Forward/back (twirl finger)

Volume up/down (twist finger in ear)

John Kestner.

Ideation.Design ideas for a cell phone, metal pen, blender, humidifier, and public seating.

Pencil, pen, marker.

John Kestner.

The most inefficient process in the grocery store experience is the checkout. All items must be removed from the cart and scanned before being put back. The Shoppingmaid is a barcode scanner that allows the shopper to scan in his or her own groceries as they are pulled off the shelf.

In addition, the Shoppingmaid takes advantage of barcode information and a wireless network to

present relevant information to the shopper, such as nutrition and “bang for the buck”.

This is the result of a year-long development process (done, before grocery stores began adopting self-checkout technology), from ethnographic research in a grocery store environment and user profiling, to ideation and technical research and specification.

ResearchThe research goal was to identify and explore design issues in the grocery store environment, and develop product and environment concepts to address those issues for Rubbermaid.

Users, both customer and employee, were observed interacting in and with a grocery store environment, to identify needs of users in the real world. In addition, research was done on the existing grocery store market, and on current technology and trends in related fields. This was done to ground the design concepts in what is currently possible, what has already been done, and how well it works.

Users

The primary user of this study was the shopper. To better study and address the needs of individual shoppers, the primary users were divided into three groups. Each of these groups came into the store with different goals and exhibiting different behavior patterns in shopping.

Of course, employees are also users in this environment, but in this research, they were secondary to the shoppers and were observed only in their interactions with the shoppers.

Shoppingmaid wearable shopping assistant.

(continued)

John Kestner.

activities

locatecheck-

out

look forcoupons

getreceipt

bagitems

handcustomergroceries

get groceries

paywait

in lineunloaditems

selectitems

collectproduce,

bulk

acquireitems

prepcheckout

feedbacktransact

acquirereadsigns

readsigns

readads

askques-tions

askques-tions

readshopping

list

locate

prepshopping

seatkid incart

getcart

getbasket

getbasket

usehands

pickupflyer

getcart

keep kidbusy

seatkid incart

storepersonal

items

the “pro”

the “run-in”

the “wanderer”

User activitieswere separatedinto two majorgroups, shop-ping and check-out.

The shoppingactivity beginswhen the shopperenters the storeand preparing,by getting a cartor basket and sit-uating childrenand personalbelongings. Thecore shoppingprocess follows,in a cycle oflocating an itemand acquiring it.

After all desireditems areacquired, theshopper proceedsto the checkoutactivity. This con-sists of prep xx,transacting, andreceiving feed-back (includingthe groceries).

customer

employee

shopping

checkout

keep kidbusy

Topics identified

AccessibilityCan a user easily reach products that are high or low on shelves, or into or over floor bins?Are the checkout scanners flexible enough to scan heavy and bulky items, and items on the bottom of shopping carts?Is it easy for the customer to weigh and label bulk foods and produce?

StorageHow are personal belongings (purses, children, shopping lists) managed while shopping?

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Insights and conclusions

The shopping cart is not an object – it’s an environment.Shopping carts and baskets are not merely objects that shoppers store groceries in, but are mobile environments. Grocery shopping revolves around the cart – shoppers store their personal items in it, sit their children in it, lean on it to rest, and much more.

The cart goes everywhere the shopper goes. It has potential as a shopping aid — with fairly common technology, a portable information terminal could be added to the grocery cart, offering store navigation and contextual information such as specials, recipes and related products that the shopper might be interested in.

The idea of the cart being central to the shopping experience can be taken even further with self-scanning systems, where customers scan groceries as they put them in to their carts.

Technology has changed – why hasn’t the checkout?The checkout process is a tedious task that can often take as much time as shopping itself. It’s a bottleneck to the shopping experience, and no one enjoys waiting in line.

With existing self-scanning technology, the customer can check in his or her groceries as they are picked up, saving time and eliminating the need for a checkout station. All that would be necessary is a cashier station to pay for purchases at the end of the shopping process.

Will a customer be able to load and unload her cart with heavy items?Is there enough room for the customer and his cart to navigate the checkout aisle comfortably?Are the shopping bags easy to fill and transport for both the customer and the store employee?

SignageIs the current signage effective and helpful to the customer?Is navigation, especially for the first-time customer, effective? Do product price labels provide enough information clearly?

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Shoppingmaid wearable shopping assistant. (continued)

Activities

John Kestner.

Shoppingmaid concepts.

Produce scale

Handy scanner

Cart assistant

John Kestner.

As the uhaul.com lead designer, my task was to guide customers to the information they wanted, present them with transaction opportunities and to reinforce U-Haul’s brand on the Web. How was this done?

Brand: developed an online message and codified it with a style guide for visual language and content

Content: rewrote the copy for the Web audience

Navigation: made decisions based on methodical user testing and crunching the collected statistics

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U-Haul International main site.

To support U-Haul’s SuperGraphics campaign — a series of truck graphics celebrating unique features of each state — I conceptualized and executed a number of fun and educational sites exploring each subject further, and was art director for the rest. These are screenshots of some of the sites I did myself.

U-Haul SuperGraphics sites.

John Kestner.

ProblemFind new opportunities for Arc’teryx, a outdoor gear company. The company is in a tight spot between becoming a mainstream outdoor clothing/fashion company, which it does not want to do, and facing pressure from smaller, forward-thinking competitors. Our team of four designers identified a core issue: How does the company maintain its elite image while growing?

SolutionTo understand the company, develop user personas, and come up with design directions, we used a variety of user observation methods.

Day-in-the-life disposable camera journals

Contextual interviews

Fly-on-the-wall observations

Climber community questionnaires and follow-up interviews

Aspiration collages

This produced insights, primarily that while some are closer than others, what all the profiled Arc’teryx users have in common is whom they want to be, and be seen as. This led to suggested offerings that amplify the company’s authentic association with that image, and thereby retain their core users while including receptive casual users.

A build-to-order product that develops a personal relationship with the customer who recognizes the company’s uncompromising quality but doesn’t need all the features.

Increased in-store visibility in innovative tags to communicate the company’s exceptional warrantee and engineering strengths.

Mobile weather alerts / climbing resource website to build community using the company’s insider position.

Indoor climbing wall challenge for the elite climbers to receive recognition while attracting other customers with a spectacle.

The results were extremely well-received by the client.

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Arc’teryx user research.

John Kestner.

Rapid form study. An iconic screwdriver whose Phillips-head shape indicates its function while also providing a good close grip for high-torque applications, and bigger channels for improved overall grip.

Study model; yellow foam.

Ergonomic screwdriver.

John Kestner.1511 N. Wood #3FChicago, IL 60622

(602) 697-3610john@coloured.net

Additional material and interactive pieces:

http://coloured.net/john/portfolio