Method (Experience Design Firm)

History

Method is an international experience design firm focused at the intersection of brand, product, and service design. Method was created in 1999 by Kevin Farnham, David Lipkin, Patrick Newbery, Mike Abbink, and Meng Mantasoot. First started in San Francisco, Method's founding principle was to use multidisciplinary, multi-platform design thinking to create beautiful and extendable solutions. Method's goal was to be quick to adapt to new technology. Method has approximately 100 employees in 3 offices located in San Francisco, New York City, and London.

In 1999, the opportunity to work together with Autodesk arose, launching Method. In 2000, Method expanded and opened its New York office in order to accommodate more work. Method's earliest clients were Autodesk, Adobe Systems, Gucci, Palm, MoMA, and Macromedia.

Their international presence was established in 2008 when Method opened its London office.

Method was acquired by global product development company, GlobalLogic, in September 2011, and remains an independently run unit of GlobalLogic.

Notable work

Method created the brand identity and initial set top box user interface for OTT startup, Boxee, in 2006. The Boxee work has won the Graphis Gold Award for logo design. Boxee has since been named one of the top 5 Companies That Are Re-Inventing Media by The Huffington Post and named "America's Next Top Gadget" by Appletell.

In 2007, Method launched and redesigned the website for the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) Conferences. The conference is very exclusive, and previously only the select TED members had access to the TEDTalks. The website redesign has opened the talks presented at the conference to the public, and offers new browsing and social networking features. TED.com has since won awards from the One Show Interactive, Webbys, OMMA, HOW Interactive, and Pixel, w3, and Communication Arts for Visual Design, Navigation/Structure, Technical Achievement, and Video Sharing. TED was named one of the 50 Best Websites of 2010 by Time magazine, and has received praise from various media outlets, including The New York Times, The Guardian, and Design Week.

In 2009, Method worked with the founders of Aardvark to expand their services into an online offering. Previously, Aardvark was available via instant message and text message. The new website, vark.com, has an infographic that explains how Aardvark works in 3 steps and also encourages people to use the service with a test question. 6 months after the website launched, Aardvark was acquired by Google for $50 million. Aardvark has also won the SXSW Web Award for Community.

Method was design partner for leader in social television, Viggle, creating their brand identity, loyalty strategy, and the design for the iPhone application, which in its first year since launch in January, 2012, has surpassed 1.8 million registered users and 151 million check-ins.

In 2014, Method worked with Salesforce to design and develop a new multi-channel online broadcast experience for their 2014 Dreamforce conference. The analytics on the site far surpassed the goal, with 8 million unique viewers from all campaigns, 284k visits to Salesforce LIVE, 608k page views on Salesforce LIVE, and 20 minutes average view time (and 24 minutes average view time to the Channel 1 experience).

To celebrate their 11th anniversary in 2010, Method launched its own content series, 10x10. The 10x10 series covers topics such as cable-cutting, monetization of content, entertainment in the cloud, mobile interfaces, and gaming impact. The series has been well received by the media including The Huffington Post, PSFK, Core77, Cool Hunting, and Fortune. The series currently lives on Method's website and is syndicated by Fast Company Design.

Awards

Method has won many awards for work since the company began in 1999. Awards include HOW, One Show, Graphis, Rebrand 100, Webby, Pixel, Hub Prize, Interactive Media Awards, and Web Visionary Awards.

Winning work includes Viggle, Reuters The Wider Image app, TED, Cinereach, Horse & Country TV, PBS Video, Boxee, San Francisco International Film Festival, Comcast Fancast, SFMOMA, Coda, LUSH and Nike.