My friend and colleague, August de los Reyes, was in Toronto over the past few days. He spoke at two of our local institutions that have a very strong footing in the design and design thinking worlds (OCAD & Rotman). At the end of his presentation on emotion, August showed a video from the Envisioning project at OfficeLabs.
“Take a step into the future and get a glimpse into how technology may transform the way we live and work in the years ahead. Explore some of our concepts for how leading edge technologies might be used in real world settings – such as health care, manufacturing, banking and retail – over the next 5-10 years.”
I had a similar albeit different reaction than I did to the Aurora project, the Starfire video, or Knowledge Navigator. I think it was related to the lack of a narrator. I visualized myself using the technologies in my own context, the video had a more personal feel for me. Having rewatched the Productivity Future Vision, I’m going to make time to watch the other videos, including:
Whether or not this is the future, I can start to frame Project Natal, Surface, Courier and others.