Ikivo and Ocean Observations have a partnership to create exciting new concepts for mobile applications by combining Ocean’s design and mobile culture expertise with the advanced Ikivo SVG graphics platform. So we decided to break industry patterns and mix high-tech interaction design ideas with Pop cultural references to create added value for the most important person in the world — the consumer — by making every little interaction point fun to use and adding emotional value to functionality. The Ikivo + Ocean MP3 player There is a reason records came with elaborate cover designs — people are very visual and emotional beings. The Ikivo + Ocean MP3 player mixes this fact with some pretty advanced thinking in the area of visual interaction. The music library is organised around a heat map, where the music files are represented by genre rectangles, whose sizes are dependent on how many songs you have from the particular genre. Showing the world that listening to music shouldn’t feel like wading through another Excel spreadsheet.

The Ikivo Fantasy TV Set: creating desire TV players are kind of binary in their nature, either they let the users watch TV programs or not. So differentiation becomes a very important factor for success on the market. With the Fantasy TV theme we let Ikivo break away from the pack of competitors and gain the power of addressing special interest audiences. The concept uses a cartoonish fantasy theme to present the TV player, and makes use of the SVG possibilities of scaling to create a vibrant and playful effect. Brainees™ — the world’s first story-based interface for mobile phones — has now been realised on the Ikivo platform. The Brainees™ live in the mind of a girl or a boy and the icons are morbid versions of the regular icons; Call Record is a little character whose tongue has strangled him after too much talking, Tools is a monster sawing himself in two, and Messaging is a spider with pencil legs. Brainees™ is one of our favourite examples of adding emotional value to functionality by making the actual OS into a product for entertainment.

The ippi is one of those products that just put a smile on your face. It’s about home, family and friends. By combining new and existing behaviours and technology In View, the company behind the product, strives to make our life a little nicer, transforming the Heart of the Modern world — the TV set — into a GSM communication central. ippi allows you to communicate with mobile friends and family, directly from your cosy couch, using the big TV screen. The challenge: It’s a new Behaviour, so you need a new friend. Early on we understood that this should be about a relaxed and fun way to keep in contact with your family and friends. This realisation has then defined the whole project – from the easy to use Jog Dial on the remote control to the Iconic graphical menu system. Our guiding principle has been “friendliness with style”. Style is important because ippi is a new thing to be placed in the heart of your home so it has to look good. Ocean has been responsible for delivering the total communicative concept covering all aspects from defining a Brand communication platform to actual product and GUI design in a true interdisciplinary work process.

Ubiquam came to Ocean Observations with a clear business goal: to create a CDMA dual mode mobile telephone aimed at the European Businessman. This might have been a pretty straightforward job if it weren’t for the fact that Ocean was contracted to deliver both the physical form of the handset and the graphical user interface, and to get it ready for rollin’ in only 5 months. The target audience is pretty well mapped out, and it was not a group who is looking for a revolution but rather for merits such as high capacity, reliability and good quality. We found a good balance in the industrial design and managed to create a feeling of conservative high tech, oozing of confidence and power. By letting this be reflected in the GUI with very few colours and a highly stylized symbol language we believe that the u520 has all what it needs to challenge some of the world’s largest Brands in mobile communication.

Working with Nordisk Mobiltelefon has been a massive project for Ocean in which we have had a variety of responsibilities. Our full spectrum of abilities have been utilised in building this new Nordic telecom operator and handset provider. It is an ongoing journey that literally has taken whole teams of Oceanites around the world to ensure that our ideas have been properly preserved throughout the process.