Google and Levi’s Are Working Together to Make a Jean Jacket

Ivan Poupyrev and Paul Dillinger come from very different worlds: Poupyrev, a technical program lead for Google’s Advanced Technologies and Projects (ATAP) unit, has spent years working on user-interface design and interactive technology, while Dillinger, the head of global product innovation for Levi Strauss & Co., has immersed himself in fashion.

These worlds collided more than a year ago, though, when Levi’s agreed to work with Google on Project Jacquard, an interactive fabric project that Poupyrev heads. It aims to create conductive textiles that can be manufactured like regular fabrics and woven into everything from shirts to teddy bears. The idea is that you’ll then be able to swipe and tap the fabric to do things like control music or get directions.

 

Right now, Poupyrev and Dillinger are gearing up to roll out the first Jacquard-enabled consumer product that will do these things in 2017: a jean jacket aimed at cycling commuters.

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Slack - A service built for the era of mobile phones and short text messages is changing the workplace.

The intra-office messaging system known as Slack is often described as the fastest-growing workplace software the world has ever seen. It surpassed two million daily users less than three years after its launch in 2013. Slack gives you a centralized place to communicate with your colleagues through instant messages and in chat rooms, which can reduce the time you have to spend on e-mail.

The reason for its success lies in part with big trends: more and more people now get work done on mobile devices, in collaboration with people who aren’t always in the same office at the same time. But Slack’s specific design choices have also been important. Gerald C. Kane, associate professor of information systems at Boston College’s Carroll School of Management, points out that Slack funnels messages into streams that everyone who works together can see. That “allows you to ‘overhear’ what is going on in an organization, which research has shown can lead to business impact,” he says. “It’s a kind of ambient awareness that you just don’t get from e-mail.”

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