Philips, the Dutch design and electronics firm, failed to impress seasoned Meterati when they held their launch party on Friday this week. Second Life blogger Veejay Burns wrote that the new Philips presence, located on the Our Virtual Holland sim, "makes absolutely no sense", and indeed, I found it hard to work out why a platform and a coffee table would be considered a worthwhile achievement. Companies have a hard time in the virtual world, they're damned if they do and damned if they don't in terms of effort, expense and design, but from talking to Veejay and others who visited the party, this was just a drop to minimalistic, and frankly, a little perplexing.
I spoke to Ingrid Bal of Philips some days prior to the launch, and she was full of genuine enthusiasm for the project, saying that they believed virtual environments such as Second Life were the future of the web, and that they had great plans for their co-creation projects inworld. I don't doubt we'll see more from Philips, but they're going to have to work a whole lot harder if they want to win over Second Lifers.
Philips has an amazing track record. Those of us within the Industrial Design profession have quite a bit of respect for their work.
However, my experience within the design community (mostly online as a former contributor to/moderator for the large Core77 design website) is that most designers don't comprehend virtual environments any better than average people, thus people shouldn't get their hopes up. Professional credentials may help, but the playing field seems level right now. Good opportunity for a lot of people imo (if they can trust their instincts enough to not copy the real life crap permeating our real world).
It sounds like a pretty bad misfire. Surprising, considering Philips have been doing their thing on their private island for some time, and reaping a number of plaudits (tho' based on what, I'm not sure).
I shall be "having words".
Yes, csven, im prepared to cut them a fair bit of slack as well, hence the reasonably kind link post hehe... Im sure we'll see good things from them, as Aleister points out, they have been mucking about on that Island for some time as well.
Let's hope it's not just a bigger platform and coffee table...
You misunderstand. I don't think Philips should be cut *any* slack at all.
I wouldn't cut them any.
Oh i see. hah!
Well ok, fair enough.
I don't think I've actually blogged this (difficult when your blog is locked) but I did receive this, presumably in response to my comment here:
"Hi Aleister, thank you for your blog mention, sorry that our plot did not meet with your expectations. We were very happy with the results of the launch which was intended to introduce people to our Cocreation plans at Philips Design. We did aim for a simple presence and a soft launch but indeed it seems that expectations were raised for a number of reasons, press releases, Brand name etc. Please feel free to get back in touch if you like, or even better join our group and see that this is only the start of something that is focused on people and creativity instead of large empty spaces."