adam-oliveira

[adam-oliveira]

About Me

I have been creating the future through design and strategic foresight since 1991. Over my career with small and big companies, from startups to enterprise, my relationship with design has taken on many dimensions. I built teams and practices that solved complex problems at scale at IBM, tackled product design with relentless honesty for Apple, performed in the theatre of creativity at Saatchi, and obsessed over micro-interactions with Organic and Blast Radius. As a co-founder, design was an important social instrument for crafting sustainable culture and innovation. And experimentally, I designed games that activated foresight methods for exploring emerging futures. From desktop publishing, through the birth and evolution of Cloud and digital, to mobile apps and AI, my journey has been like a trip through “Halt and Catch Fire”. As technology continues to advance our human condition by enabling new competencies that change how we work and live, I hope I can keep applying design in ways that impact transformation.

Download my resume | PDF »

[adam-oliveira]

Two more pieces of fancy wallpaper I need to get framed in addition to my MDes. The first is my First Patent/Invention award from IBM. The second is a grad award for Strategic Foresight + Innovation: Challenges and Change, nominated by my prof and advisor Dr. Peter Jones.  Thank you IBM and OCAD University for the recognition!

[adam-oliveira]

Can long futures be adaptively transformed by choices and decisions in the face of indomitable challenges?

This major research project for my Master of Design explores human capacity to create our future through the lens of complex systems and foresight. We designed a cooperative board-game about off-world colonization as an interactive platform for testing the effects decisions have on large-scale, long-time-frame challenges, and whether civilization has the ability to steer the outcomes.

Explore the project at Cosmic Labs »

#design #future #foresight #systems #space #colonization #interstellar #space travel #space flight #extraterrestrial #offworld #game #board game #cooperative

[adam-oliveira]

The future of rail

For the 2019 World Rail Conference, IBM’s Travel & Transportation industry asked me to reprise a futures exercise that could engage attendees while also testing the probability of emerging trends. I proposed using the Cone Of Possibilities, with a collection of trend cards we researched ahead of the conference, that attendees could apply to the Cone where they expected it would most likely mature. The results became useful inputs for the Rail team’s subsequent strategic roadmap planning.

[adam-oliveira]

Aviation futures

To demonstrate how foresight could be effectively workshopped at IBM’s 2019 Aviation Summit, I designed a game based on Dator’s 4 Futures and 3 Horizons, and facilitated the exercise through Design Action Research. Essentially using the game board and pieces as the canvas for mapping emerging trends, and then creating a simple scoring system in Airtable that could track progress on participants smart phones to encourage coopetition between teams.

[adam-oliveira]

The intrinsic human need to explore, discover, and conquer new frontiers saturates every domain, from sports to science. By far the most daunting of these domains, whether material, physiological, or intellectual, is interstellar space. Although still at least 100 years away from viable commercial space travel to Mars, the entities with the means to drive this pursuit remain vigilant despite popular wisdom. It is a pursuit that requires a non-zero-sum game, a Systems Thinking perspective of global cooperation and mutual gain. Technology, policy, and social advancements born out of space travel may provide the answers to some of Earth’s most pressing problems. The challenge has been to inspire the vast majority of people to look upwards again after decades of fixation on the current world condition. Media and entertainment play significant roles in influencing attitudes and world views, and games in particular can offer ways to explore complex multidimensional ideas in simple and fun ways. By combining gaming and systems concepts, Interstellar, explores the social and ethical plateaus that challenge our evolution toward a unified space-going species through a compelling multiplayer board game. By balancing the causal, and contradictory, relationships between military, civilian, commercial and scientific interests, the game lets players explore the dynamics between cooperation vs competition, and their effects on advancing civilization into Space.

#space #synthesis map #systems thinking

[adam-oliveira]

IBM approached me in Dec 2014 through a referral. They were looking for someone who could lead and be transformative, knew product development, UX, mobile apps, and what Apple's design philosophy was all about. Creating awesome iOS apps for specialized industries, lots of travel to Cupertino, and change the way people do things - seemed like a match made in heaven. I was onboarded by Feb 2015, and by March was at Apple's Enterprise Design Lab combining Apple's hardware with IBM's cognitive and analytics services.

It continues to be one of my favorite roles. We launched 100+ apps in a year. Utilized device sensors, location, voice, 3D Touch, Watson cognitive computing, big data analytics, and more. The apps work for pilots, mechanics, miners, bankers, law enforcement, drivers, healthcare professionals and other enterprise users, and do things like diagnose engine problems via vibrations and sound, calculate aircraft fuel for flight paths, detect hazards in mines, capture conversational data, annotate over images, predict outcomes, and display custom terrain maps. They run on iPad and iPad Pro, iPhone, and Watch

See the apps here: http://www.apple.com/business/mobile-enterprise-apps/

[adam-oliveira]

Crafting The Third Epoch

Made this little short documentary in 2013 for our Indiegogo campaign. Crowdfunding was a lot of work and an interesting learning experience! We didn't reach our goal, but have a better sense of what to do next time - longer duration, lower base goal, lots more social media, and simpler reward tiers. We did however launch Third Epoch v1.0 for iPhone at Christmas that year despite very limited funding. It got some encouraging reviews on TouchArcade, PocketGamer, and PocketTactics, and has gained a bit of a cult following. My tiny team here is starting work on the iPad HD version, optimized for a larger screen experience. More info on www.blitztream.com

#game #video games #space #science fiction #sci-fi #blitztream

[adam-oliveira]

Eat Sleep Ride (ESR) Motorcycles

I keep forgetting about this project because I never put a case study video together for it until now, but I suspect it’s more significant than I sometimes think...

ESR is a growing social media platform for motorcyclists. In 2011, we set out to augment the platform with an innovative iPhone app that transferred the social experience to mobile, and added some mobile-specific features such as ride tracking, group rides, and Crash Guard (now called CrashLight), a patented feature that detects collisions and sends an SOS to designated contacts. Utilizing Google Maps API, location-based services, GPS, compass, and accelerometer, users can record ride data (route, distance, speed, acceleration, lean angles, etc.) and share their rides with others, including contextual photos, comments, and reviews. Users can find and connect with riders close-by, and when riding in groups, the ESR app keeps riders in contact with each other. Crash Guard is triggered when the accelerometer detects sudden impact, sending out critical location information to your emergency contacts via voice, SMS, and email. We designed the ESR app to take full advantage of your smartphone. We’re now working on an Apple Watch version to make ESR even more versatile!

Available on the App Store:

http://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/eatsleepride-motorcycles/id541036952?mt=8

We started the project in late 2011, and v1.0 was released in summer 2012. I did the UX architecture and design spec, which turned out to be a whopping 120+ pages! Crazy for a little mobile app, but the size of the end product can be deceiving. There were quite a few important and original features that needed to be thought-through from a user experience perspective.

#esr #eatsleepride #motorcycle #motorcycles #iphone #crash guard #crash light

[adam-oliveira]

Harlequin 60th Anniversary Exhibit

An interactive digital installation we designed and developed that used motion recognition to let visitors put themselves onto a book cover theme of their choice. In 2009, we were really pushing technology at this price point. But we had an awesome client who championed the project, and an incredibly talented team of collaborators from San Francisco, New York, and Cape Town.

[adam-oliveira]

Nike Winter Olympics Digital Storefront

We deployed digital glass projections to 5 Nike Stores in Vancouver that streamed content from FaceBook, brand commercials, and motion graphics celebrating Canadian medalists. The most challenging piece was the exterior projection in their flagship store, in which we needed to create a 90,000 lumens projection with sub-$3000 projectors (we did it by stacking multiple projectors and synchronizing the displays).

[adam-oliveira]

Jamieson Vitamins

Brand reinvention, digital, social media, TV, and radio. Jamieson needed to rise above the price-cutting competition for it's premium quality products and for being one of the only supplement brands that using ingredients from sustainable sources.

I came up with: "Purity Is Priceless"

#jamieson #vitamins #purity #tv #brand #reinvention

[adam-oliveira]

AMI Mobile Frontier Here's a digital strategy piece I lead for a wonderful client who believed in the importance of investing in innovation and ideas. The project consisted of 3 parts - first, a deep-dive into how the visually impaired were using mobile devices and how these devices stacked-up to their needs; second, an ideation workshop with us, the client, and customers; and third, this strategic roadmap of viable initiatives. I presented this on the morning my wife went into labor with Nino, our second child - everyone thought I was nuts, but both Marg and I knew it was going to be a few hours before anything happened, and I was keen to share weeks of good thinking with the client.

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In 3 short years, my partners and I grew Quizative from 3 people to 15. Most of this was done through revenue. At the time, I didn't stop to think what that meant. I definitely under-valued and under-appreciated our success. Looking back at the portfolio of work we had accumulated now 6 years later, it’s strange to realize its significance. We touched everything from banner ads to iOS apps to big screen experiential installations. Not bad for a little Toronto-based “mom-and-pop” shop.

#quizative #digital #innovation #startup #agency

[adam-oliveira]

NZ Tourism 9 Walks

A project from 2008 I worked on with JWT NZ for the New Zealand Tourism client. We deployed a huge PDP digital screen at the Birmingham Outdoors Show on which visitors could select via their mobile phones guided video tours of New Zealand's 9 Great Walks. The SMS message returned to the visitor invited them to visit the touch screen kiosks at the NZT booth, where they could plan a visit to New Zealand with flight and accommodation partners.

#new zealand #tourism #9 walks #digital marketing

[adam-oliveira]

Emirates Flight Wall

Another one from my Saatchi days. A rather ambitious idea for a very adventurous client. Emirates decided that year to give the lead for their media campaign to the interactive team, so I got to propose this. I got a lot of support from Tom Eslinger, worldwide creative director, who was a phenomenal champion of innovation. To design it, I had my team take up the big glass wall of Mike O’Sullivan’s office, on which we pasted sections of the design and had people come by and simulate using it. Emirates aimed to install it in their London airport business lounge, but I left New Zealand before I could see it fully deployed.

[adam-oliveira]

Hallensteins Virtual Changing Room

Here’s the infamous virtual changing room project we developed for Hallensteins while I was with Saatchi+Saatchi in New Zealand. I re-edited the case study video at Quizative, but the credit goes to my team from 2007 in Auckland, which consisted of an incredible multinational group from New Zealand, San Fran, Germany, and Canada. I had this crazy idea to do something like what I saw in Minority Report, and my super-smart friend Steve came back the next day with a prototype he decided to put together, and we all thought, OMG we can actually build this! We sprung it on our client already built as part of a larger campaign, and I was able to have my “one more thing…” moment ;-)