Hey there!

What’s up? We’re back with another newsletter — even though it’s hard to believe a month has passed already 😅.

Don’t fret; this edition will be short and sweet. We get that you might be in the mood to put your phone away for a bit in this heat instead of reading emails.

Today, we have an important “save the date” for you and another glance into what we’ve been up to recently.

Let’s go!

Save the date: Ponder Summer Party 🪩

This is exciting! On September 2nd, 2022, we’ll be having an official summer party — and you are invited!

There will be music, food and drinks. You can try beating Peter in pingpong. We’ll be raising funds for a good cause. And we’ll have great fun hanging out with you in our riverside Haus of Ponder.

Watch your inbox for a more detailed follow-up in a week or so — we’re still working out some details right now.

But please make sure to mark your calendars today.

We’d love to see you in person! ❤️

Behind the scenes: What we work on right now ✏️

We love to share stuff we’re working on regularly. But sometimes it takes a while before the fruits of our labour go public (and sometimes they stay secret forever 🤐).

So here’s a good but slightly mysterious ✨ picture of what kind of projects we’re currently working on.

With two partner companies, we are prototyping a wayfinding system for urban transport stations.

• After several previous steps, our current goal is to assemble quantifiable data to prove that the new wayfinding system works better than the existing one.
• To pull that off, we prepared a massive usability test with 400 participants across all age groups, with and without disabilities. The focus of that test will be on orientation benefits and accessibility of the newly developed solution.
• The exciting bit? Even though we’re testing a very physical solution, we’ll run the test in an entirely virtual, online environment. So all assets for testing (images, videos) are based on a 3D/VR model made explicitly for this purpose.

We’re working on secret stuff in the financial services realm.

• We recently wrapped up a highly complex UI prototyping project that brought us very close to maxing out our skills and Figma’s capabilities. 😅 Thanks to great collaborators (Hi, Dennis!), the project was successful and created many insights for the client.
• Even though we’re not allowed to discuss the project in more detail, it created more than enough material for a separate series of articles on “Interactive Components”. Maybe you’ll read more about that here soon 🤓.

We’re creating a custom design sprint format for the future of work.

• We’re currently developing a bespoke workshop format to generate ideas that help students and young professionals start successful and happy careers.
• In the project, we’re covering all steps – from developing the overall concept to defining the right audience and recruiting participants. We’re defining the sprint agenda and methodologies and formulating a sprint briefing that creates benefits for both the participants and our client. Oh, and we’ll be moderating the workshop too.
• The whole project and the workshop will be well-documented. So expect a more specific follow-up later this summer! 🌱

Weekend send-off

As a regular reader, you know what’s next – our inspirational weekend send-off.

Summer (and holiday time) is still here, but we shared ample reading material with you last time around already. So, this time we’ll share a simple but very intriguing concept connecting indigenous wisdom with our modern tech world.

FRAMEWORK: Wampum.Codes In a very on-point article, Amelia Winger-Bearskin (Banks Endowed Chair AI and the Arts, University of Florida) lays out a fundamental challenge of today’s tech ecosystem. People build products and systems without responsibility for potential misuse or adverse side effects. “If we start to believe that it’s not our responsibility as the builders of these systems, then we are really building systems of harm.”, she writes. To address this, she has developed an ethical framework for software development and design: Wampum.Codes. It is rooted in the principles of co-creation as understood by her people (Seneca-Cayuga Nation of Oklahoma). It tries to imagine how we can weave ethics back into 21st-century technologies. To us, the idea seems very intriguing and pretty simple to implement. So, please read all about it here and maybe use it in your next project.

Thank you so much for reading!

We hope you’ve enjoyed this newsletter. If not, please let us know what bothered you before you unsubscribe. We’re always happy to hear your feedback and use it to make the newsletter more relevant for everyone. Here’s a simple form to submit your thoughts.

That’s it. Read you again in a month for the next regular edition — and in a few days for more details on our upcoming summer event!

See ya,
Your friends at Ponder