Feel inventy and collaborative today? If you have awesome ideas for innovative, eco-efficient products it’s time for action. While climate gurus debate a greener world in Copenhagen these weeks Quirky walks the talk. During the summit, you can submit your wildest, sustainable product ideas to the site – without the usual fee of 99 USD.

Or you can discuss or vote others’ eco-effective ideas closer to production. Even improve them to gain co-ownership. Unlike other community-based idea sites, such as Dell’s ideastorm or Starbucks’ mystarbucksidea Quirky shares profits with you if your product vision makes it to production. 12 cents in your pocket for every dollar your product makes.

So, what are you waiting for? Experience the power of co-creation and crowd-sourcing before you try it out in your own business.

We’ve developed a few iPhone apps since the AppStore opened July 2008. Just out of curiosity and for the fun of it. Our latest app is Fit to drive? –  designed to increase awareness of drinking and driving.

We’ve had a lot of debates too – also with sceptical clients that still consider iPhone and apps a passing trend – let’s wait and see if that lasts. No reason for iPhone optimised websites either. Hey, approximately 2/3 of total mobile surfing happens on an iPhone. Go to the café next door, ask two people – one with iPhone and one without – whether they have been online with their phone. The iPhone user will say yes, the other is likely to say no.

Our feeling is that it will not only last, but skyrocket. Apple currently dominates this new market because it created it. App-thinking defines the future for a lot of services delivered on mobile platforms. More than 2 billion apps  downloaded, turnover beyond EUR 2 billion and –  60 million iPhones sold according to TechCrunch. This tells us that those who still don’t believe in apps, better start believing.

What is more, if you add the numbers of iPod Touch sold, it becomes the fastest growing  hardware platform in consumer tech history. The iPhone, the apps and the unbeaten user experience of the iPhone have created a new opportunity space. Of course, leading today is not the same as leading tomorrow but it does make the other tech kings shudder.

Creating a successful app-store isn’t as easy. Google and NOKIA are trying hard. Apparently even the Danish AppStore grosses more in a single day than  Android Market in a year. What about Ovi?. Long way to go but together with Apple they’ll create a whole new category of on-line experiences.

Our point of view? iPhone or not, don’t miss the train – deliver your existing or new service via a mobile app. It’s key to your future.

At a seminar in Copenhagen the other day, Joe Pine from Strategic Horizons told about ‘services you didn’t ask for’ which triggered some thoughts on service experiences in general.

At Designit we’re currently quite focused on the global trend towards self-service and DIY. Self-service – in most cases – actually also happens to be something you didn’t ask for, and rather insisted on not having. But new divisions of labour between service provider and service buyer are here to stay, so it might be worth thinking about!

All sectors and markets experience a shift in user behaviour and service perception towards a preference for self-service and DIY. Not only for user but also for service provider this means new opportunities.

Even ‘mission critical’ industries like health care will become self-care in a couple of years from now. Take prescription drug vending machines for example. Chance is, that we’ll end up prefer self-service. And be surprised how self-service-capable we are – at least if the self-service experience is well designed and with user-capabilities in mind.

Within DIY activities the trend also shifts and creates new markets. Have a look at these two examples. Why not source back your typical DIY tasks (if you are a male) to a service provider. Here is the EasyCarWash offer reinventing carwash experience: Park your car at work, book a wash and enjoy a hand-washed car when you leave the office. A standard car wash consumes minimal water and costs approximately €15 so its benefits are both economical and environmental!

Or book a multi-handyman on the internet and get all the stuff done that used to require serious DIY-skills or two or three different professions + coordination. We tried it and it works! Next thing, I guess, will be a mobile hairdresser in the Copenhagen office saving time and probably cost too.

New, reinvented ‘service agreements’ between the service giver and service taker is the future. These new services are services that you did’nt ask for, but end up loving them and recommend them to your friends. Their logic is irresistible – and that’s why they’ll grow and change the game in the sector.

So, all you big established service providers with dated business and service concepts – rethink, get into the new game – or loose it!

Businesses and organisations often overly invest in short-term initiatives, instead of identifying the problem and developing solutions – the key to which is multi-skilled, stakeholder involvement.

One example is cycle helmets. Today, after more than 10 years of public campaigns with little impact, people are starting to don helmets. Why? A new product design approach is supplementing the public campaigns.

New design solutions make people want to wear a helmet. BELL, for example, has moved away from the typically unattractive cycle helmet to a tough and attractive piece of sports equipment. Yakkay has taken it a step further by placing the visual focus on fashion instead of safety. But their success isn’t just the result of good design, but also years of public campaigns. In other words: it’s a combined effort.

The lesson? Involving all stakeholders early on in multi-skilled, collaborative process will result in hitting target faster and more accurately. If the public health campaigners had teamed up with designers 10 years ago, we may all have been cycling more safely and stylishly for years now.

Governmental health care communication can be boring, finger-wagging and just a bit too lecturing. The result is that we don’t listen! So how do you get in touch with huge part of your target audience, engage them to listen and help spreading your message at viral speed? Here is a good example – it’s fun, entertaining, and works on your iPhone, too!  Click below to get the first (and fun) part. But you only get the full message by going to Computertan.com to get the sad end of the story. Anyway, if  you think you’re just a click away from getting the perfect tan online (like an unnamed colleague of mine here at the Copenhagen office did) you’ll be surprised.

Tired of getting out to refuel? Tired of getting hands and shoes ‘dieseled’ every time? Here is the solution. Automatic refuelling! It might be your most unrealised need.

The retailer will be happy as well. According to Fuelmatics, Easy-Fill® doubles customers per hour, increases their loyalty and rocket sales in shop! The latter is quite amazing as most auto-refuellers stay in their cars and never make it to the shop. Must be some new kind of remote shopping.

Anyway, I’m an automation geek and just I’m longing to do that drive-through fill up!

Start taking notice of your (potential) female customers, was thrust of a seminar late last year at Copenhagen Business School. The seminar focused on how businesses can increase sales significantly by focusing on female customers. According to Helle Katholm Knutsen, women decide or influence a whopping 80% of all purchases! A GIANT business opportunity.

Many of Designit’s clients are starting to recognise this opportunity and requesting our expertise on how to best target the female segment. And we’re not the only ones. Here are examples of formerly male-focused companies that are doing what they can to get their foot on the female ladder.

Take for example Sydbank, which has a pension and investment service especially tailored to women. Or Q8, the chain of petrol stations, who is launching ‘Qvik To Go’, a new product series of healthy snacks and stations with new interior that appeals more to female customers. When Procter & Gamble Co. invented Swiffer, it was a result of considering how women feel while cleaning the house.

The business potential of the female segment is huge, so grab it!

This year's Mini-lit hit

Due to my roots in communications design, I’m often asked this question. It’s a question impossible to answer with conviction, as no other design discipline has such a wide cultural and personal variety as communication.

Blogging may be the fashionable answer right now, but in essence it’s just more of the same. There’s a more interesting answer. A new thing is going on, that if nothing else illustrates the challenge of the continuous information overload.

It’s called Mini-lit. The phenomenon owes a lot to synchronised messaging: SMS, Twitter.com, chat etc. It’s about saying a lot in very few words – demanding more from the reader – and sender. Mini-lit is limiting the number of words you have to convey a message: a five-word film review, 12-word novel, six-word prayer. Concentrate, think and communicate and challenge me – don’t just spam me with words. That’s the idea.

Hemmingway apparently started the whole thing when he was dared to write a six-word-novel. He came back with: “For sale: baby shoes, never used.” Now you know what I mean.

I think Mini-lit will find it’s way into mainstream communication – for a while. This year’s surprise hit in U.S. bookshops was ‘Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure’. And a second six-word collection, on love and heartbreak, will be out in January. The Mini-lit thing is spreading.

Read more here

If you ever bump into the hard-pedalling ‘Espressoman’ in central Copenhagen — or if he bumps into you (scary thought)  — try his divine espressos or lattes. You won’t be disappointed. Waiting for my coffee and staring at his super-heavyweight espresso-bike, I asked him what would make life easier for a biking barista. I was sure he’d opt for some lightweight gear, but no. Stable weather however, providing temperature stability to his sensible gas-driven espresso machine, was all he needed. A humble wish, but knowing the weather in DK, I guess this would take some help from above. Anyways, 10 out of 10 for the coffee. And the same for the enterprising set-up which provided me with a true service value moment.

I saw this on the way to work this morning in central Copenhagen. It’s well-intentioned service design but it simply doesn’t work! Ironically the green recycling bin doesn’t solve the problem; it’s just a quick fix.

Instead, lets adapt solutions to human behaviour. If we apply persuasive design that encourages people to act in a more sustainable way – not to dump their newspaper in the recycling bin after a two-minute read but to leave it in a designated pile for reuse – we will achieve much more. After all, reusing is more sustainable than recycling.

How’s that for morning philosophy!