out of oblo - January 2025
If we have to pick up a keyword for these first weeks of the year, it would be “transition”, and here's why.
Dear oblo friends, how is it going in the first weeks of the year?
We approached January with the right dose of inspiration to deep dive into relevant topics such as the evolution of digital well being and the future of… many things.
Ongoing projects focused on supporting the ecological and technological evolution of organisations, lead us to reflect on the topic of transformation. So, here we are.
Stories of digital transformation: our upcoming Service Design Meets at Talent Garden
With AI and emerging technologies rapidly reshaping organizations, services and experiences, how can we navigate this shift and drive change? What learnings could we bring along from the past decades of digital transformation?
We are kicking off the year with a special edition of Service Design Meets, hosted at Talent Garden Isola. This time, we’ll explore three transformation journeys that have redefined industries and organizations in different ways. From Intesa Sanpaolo’s drive to become a digital banking leader, to Medici Senza Frontiere’s internal evolution through human-centred and agile methodologies, to the development of Italy’s public service ecosystem with PagoPA and the IO app — each story offers a unique perspective on the challenges and opportunities of digital transformation, and what happens when reaching maturity and scale.
If you're curious to hear directly from the people behind these transitions and explore how service design plays a key role in shaping the future of organizations, join us in person or online. Expect an evening of insights, discussion and great company 🎤🍻.
We kicked off a new project with Doctors Without Borders (Italy) to define their AI strategy
Speaking of organizational transitions and the impact of AI, Medici Senza Frontiere has now reached a pivotal moment in their digital transformation journey. After achieving a certain maturity in terms of optimization of internal processes and innovation of their offer, a new question is emerging: what role can AI play in MSF’s growth and continuous innovation? How could MSF leverage the new technology to further improve communication and fundraising activities?
A first attempt in this direction has been already taken (by working on a new AI-based operational tool with oblo and Ammagamma), but this project aims to broaden the scope of AI integration, mapping potential opportunities, assessing their functionality and developing a roadmap of interventions. To achieve this, we will be applying our AI Landscape Canvas, a tool designed to identify opportunities and support organizations in developing their AI strategy.
We enjoyed 72 hours in Turin, training coordinators for green transition in the cultural sector
From January 21st to 23rd we’ve spent intense days in some of the most beautiful venues we’ve ever seen for the workshops! Surrounded by the old books and ex-noble palaces decor we led a workshop for 80 Green Coordinators that are going to guide selected cultural entities through a Green transition in the following months. This was the first training workshop in the Green Culture project on which we’ve been working for 8 months already, creating a new toolkit and a method for the cultural organisations in Italy to approach sustainability. It’s been a long path alongside Circolo del Design, Fondazione Santagata and Legambiente, to bring together design expertise and their knowledge of cultural sector and environmental assessment.
In the next months Green Coordinators will start to effectively use the design toolkit and methods in order to accompany 75 cultural entities across Italy (from municipalities to museums and festivals) in defining how to improve their environmental sustainability. We will meet all of them again in March, to check progress and support their ideation and roadmap development. Looking forward to going back to Turin and working together with our friends and colleagues from Fightbean and Bomberos Design to facilitate this process!
We just emerged from a full immersion into the future of digital wellbeing
We just finished a foundational research project aimed at identifying a strategic framework for AI application into digital wellbeing habits. Besides the qualitative immersion with users, Chiara Albanesi and Alessandra Del Nero had the opportunity to interview experts from different disciplines, from behavioral science to digital humanities to AI ethics.
The work of Ashley Whillans from Harvard Business School about the way we intend time and happiness, and its influence in our work experience, was extremely insightful and inspiring, alongside the perspective of Cristopher Burr from the Alan Touring Institute, with whom we discussed about the implication of social connections and autonomy, and limits and opportunities of positive computing.
These topics are deeply connected to our daily work and inspire essential reflections on the role of digital media in our lives. One of the books we are reading on this subject, Christine Rosen’s The Extinction of Experience: Being Human in a Disembodied World, challenges us to consider the skills we are gradually losing due to the rise of mediated interactions. Face-to-face conversations, sharing public spaces, and reading non-verbal cues are all experiences that are mutating and that can be completely mediated by our digital devices—on one hand, this could be a tactic to cope with the stresses of our fast-paced lives, and on the other, it might also make us increasingly unaccustomed to “imperfect” human interaction.
We learned a lot about the potential future of the world in the next decade
Before stepping into 2025, we worked on an exciting project of defining the megatrends affecting consumer electronics in the following years. Remember our news from Dubai Future Forum? Besides interviewing the futurists there, we have studied multiple reports about megatrends and proceeded with some deep dive with expert interviews regarding some of the most important topics like the future of work, learning, family and relationship structures and many more.
We feel extremely lucky to have been given this opportunity to look at the state of the world through those multiple points of view, and get to some synthetic vision of main driving forces like growing fragmentation in society, search for more local cohesion, redefinition of all possible milestones in one’s life, nouveau nihilism, among others.
Do you get excited by the visions of the future as we do? Or do you feel like it could be interesting to discuss more of those for your field?
🔮 Here’s a summary we assembled of the most interesting trends for consumer tech. Feel free to share with friends and colleagues and drop us a line to discuss more about that :)
It’s all for this month, see you soon!
Anything you want to discuss with us? You can book a 30 min call or drop us a line.
Enjoy February,
oblo team