XPLANE | Dachis Group and The Economist teamed up to create the “World in Figures” application for iPhone. Based on The Economist’s popular book, Pocket World in Figures, the application provides a unique, visual way to discover and display global data so that it’s compelling, understandable and easy to use. Here’s a quick video overview of the project.
Designing a great workplace
By Brooke IllaHuston and Teija Springman
At XPLANE | Dachis Group we have some of those fun perks you often hear about at great workplaces — wine every Friday, free M&Ms, a pool table, and a duck pond to name a few. But we think the reason our workplace is so great runs a little deeper than that. For us, building a great workplace is a big commitment, and it’s all about building trust, pride, and camaraderie. We wanted to share a few of our practices with the hope that it might inspire you to think about how you could build a better workplace — wherever you work.
Our beloved X.
A visual thinking showdown: Top Jeff 2011
I should probably begin by explaining why we call it “Top Jeff” in the first place. Myself, fellow St. Louis designer Susanne and XPLANE Project Manager Lisa were discussing the strange phenomenon of Jeffs that orbit the XPLANE | Dachis Group world (we counted around eight or nine). It was determined a reality show should be created that would collect all of these Jeffs together and pit them against one another to find out who would be Top Jeff!
Cut to Spirit Week at XPLANE, a week where we do fun, silly things to raise money for local charities. We needed a name for our Top Chef-style quickfire competition and Top Jeff felt right. Instead of Jeff vs. Jeff it became XPLANEr vs. XPLANEr. Events were devised which tested an XPLANE employee’s most basic skills: Scheduling, live sketching, rendering and more! The St. Louis staff was split into two teams and we gathered in our main conference room. What followed was an hour of teeth-clenching trepidation and gut-wrenching tension! The defeated were downtrodden. The victors, proud. Here follows an account of the events that took place that fateful April day in St. Louis…
Behind the scenes: The 2.0 Adoption Council salary survey graphic
We take a lot of complicated issues, ideas, initiatives, products, plans and processes and visualize them so that people can better understand their world.
When we started back in the 1990s, we designed a lot of charts. Now we help businesses redesign — and communicate those changes to all involved. We’ve been pretty busy because business is changing pretty quickly. And in big ways. As we say at Dachis Group…
Technology, society, and work are all changing at breakneck speeds, but businesses are not keeping pace. When these emerging trends work together, they call for a new kind of business — one that is distributed, collaborative, agile and better positioned to succeed.
The 2.0 Adoption Council (also part of Dachis Group) recently completed a survey of its members and we worked with them to represent the results in a meaningful and interesting way. The survey was purposefully simple, but highlights some key changes happening in social business. It was just two questions: What department do you work in and what’s your salary? Here’s what was learned… Read more
Celebrating working women: International Women’s Day 2011
Today is International Women’s Day.
XPLANE teamed with Kronos, a global leader in workforce management, to create new video to celebrate the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day. It’s a visual homage to women and how their role in the workforce has changed throughout history, making all of our lives exponentially easier, safer and more productive.
Do you know who Melitta Bentz was? Or Ida Forbes? Or Ruth Wakefield? No? Then watch and learn.
In our DNA
Doors + file cabinets = Desks! XPLANE circa early 2000s.
When I was combing through dusty hard drives and ancient project folders the other week looking for that old Robonaut XPLANATiON, I found an old text file (saved in BBEdit!) called “Core values: Things we believe in.”
It came from conversations and emails with Dave Gray, XPLANE’s founder. It was shared with all employees, even back when we were just five or six people working on desks made of doors and file cabinets. I’m pretty sure it dates to 1999…
Read more
Also published in Business issues, Business of design, Creativity, Entrepreneurship, Leadership comments (1)
Safe travels, Robonaut
Way back in 2002 XPLANE did an XPLANATiON for NYSE magazine about NASA’s robotic astronaut, which was then in development and expected to start flying in 2004 or 2005.
Click above to view larger.
Well, yesterday our friend Robonaut finally blasted off aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery. While Robonaut 2 is the first humanoid robot to go into space — this is the shuttle’s 39th and final flight.
We’re very happy you finally made it to space, even if you’re never coming back.
But don’t be too sad, folks. You can follow Robonaut’s space exploits on Twitter: @AstroRobonaut.
A love letter to Designers
I bet you thought we forgot all about Valentine’s Day.
We didn’t.
A love letter to Designers from XPLANE on Vimeo.
Dear future XPLANE Designer,
We may not have met yet, but I suspect you’ll receive this letter as if it’s a call from a wayward kindred spirit. See, we’ve got this magic chemistry that’s precious and rare. In short, I’m looking for you. More directly, the world needs you.
First, let me tell you that XPLANE is unlike anywhere you’ve worked before. We give respect to Design by using it as a proper noun. We’re neither an advertising agency nor a marketing group — we’re a consultative Design studio wherein Designers employ the arts of listening, strategizing, creating and presenting on a daily basis.
Now that I have your attention, please allow me a few moments to tell you why you’re so very special.
Also published in Business of design, Communications, Creativity, Graphic design, Infodesign & graphics, Interaction design, Interface design comments (2)
How will your week work?
Hi. It’s Monday — the start of the work week for most of us.
But before you get started, let me ask you a few questions… Did you know that 40% of workers say they bring work home to complete at night, or work overtime at least once a week? That 15% of people admit that they are addicted to email — some confess to checking their email at the beach, at weddings and even at funerals? That the number of workers who work remotely is on the rise — in 2009, 28% of the global workforce worked remotely and by 2016, an expected 43% of the workforce will become remote workers (and did you know that studies show that working remotely improves productivity by 15%)? Did you know that a whopping 26% of Americans say they never take vacations?
If you didn’t, kick off the work week by watching this:
Also published in Business issues, Life, Meetings & office culture, Mobile, Movies & motion comments (0)
26 wonderful triangles
Last month at VTS our St. Louis studio did an exercise we called “What’s in a triangle?” Basically, everyone drew a triangle on a whiteboard and had five minutes to turn it into something. So from a very simple starting point we ended up with a lot of clever and creative sketches. The idea was to make something out of nothing — to exercise our visualization muscles.
Brian Williamson came to that VTS. We had been talking with him about the designer position we had open. Afterwards, Brian went home and took that single triangular starting point all the way to the finish line: He made his niece a beautiful book called ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ: An alphabet book of drawings inspired by the simple triangle — and he sent us a copy.
Brian started working with us in our St. Louis office last week.
