BOSTON—Altitude, Inc., a product design firm based in Somerville, Mass., has collaborated with Ambient Devices on a new design platform for Ambient’s family of information display products. The products include two new sports and weather trackers: the Centerfield Baseball ScoreCaster™ and the Cirrus 7-Day Weather Forecaster™. Both are dedicated, wireless displays that are said to provide “instant, effortless access to data without a PC or Internet connection.”
Ambient Devices’ Cirrus 7-Day Weather Forecaster, which continuously displays forecast data for 150 U.S. locations from AccuWeather.com, provides key weather metrics, such as daily highs and lows, precipitation, wind speed and direction, UV index, and pollen and air quality alerts. The Centerfield Baseball ScoreCaster monitors the latest baseball scores and lets users check schedules and standings instantly.
In Altitude’s platform approach to designing Ambient’s product line, a single product architecture accommodates a wide range of product variants, and the design language creates a visual cohesiveness to the whole offering. This platform approach reportedly reduced part count, manufacturing costs, and inventory complexity for Ambient.
Another priority for Altitude was its client’s powerful visual identity. The new products provide visual continuity with Ambient’s “Orb,” an iconic product that reflects changing information by “glowing” different colors. Altitude ensured this by creating a subtle, blended “dome” that glows in the same way for the Ambient logo. This new logo dome illuminates and shifts color to signify changing conditions, such as a new baseball score or a temperature drop. In addition, the dome lights up when a new message is received through InTouch Messaging™, a new Ambient service that supports direct-to-device messaging via email or web interface.
Brian Matt, Altitude’s founder and CEO, cited the respective strengths of both companies as he reflected upon the collaboration. “Ambient Devices needed a design language and product platform that reflected the excitement of the original Orb,” he said in a statement. “At the same time, they needed an intuitive core platform that would make large volumes of information easy to see. Baseball ScoreCaster and Cirrus 7-Day Weather Forecaster are the first fruits of our collaboration. We hope that consumers will appreciate the ways in which they make the information most important to them available at a glance.”
Andrew Boch, vice president, Ambient Brand, also shared his perspective. “Ambient Devices are about instant, effortless access to information,” he stated. “Altitude took the presentation of that information to a new level—providing a clean, seamless look which effectively highlights information and minimizes the visible frame. Additionally, their core design is extensible and flexible, allowing us to ‘build once, deploy many times’—optimizing time-to-market and BOM while maintaining exceptional performance.”
Altitude (www.altitudeinc.com) says that its “expertise in design strategy, design innovation, product realization, and brand expression enables clients to more easily clarify their goals, achieve competitive differentiation, and reduce environmental impact.” The company’s clients include makers of consumer goods, consumer electronics and mobile devices, biomedical systems, and industrial equipment.
back to Applications Showcase
back to homepage