Posts by Kristian Andersen

Audi has a reputation as the “designer’s performance car”. Audi has long been venerated for their relentless attention to detail and sublime ergonomic design. Sitting behind the wheel of an Audi is different from almost any other luxury performance car. They somehow manage to pull of a practical, no-frills vibe, coupled with an almost Apple-like design sensibility. As a matter of fact, I’ll just go ahead and go on record by saying, that in a world of “we want to be the Apple of (insert industry), Audi actually is the Apple of automakers. Or put another way, Apple is the Audi of consumer electronics.

In a piece titled “Sense & Drivability”, in the October issue or Fast Company, Jason Feifer broke down some of the subtle ways that Audi…

I manage a lot of bank accounts. I have personal accounts, business accounts, checking accounts, savings accounts, money market accounts, etc., and that doesn’t even include things like HSA accounts, brokerage accounts, credit lines, etc. The accounts are spread across several banking institutions in a handful of states. The one thing they all have in common is that they are all a source of ongoing frustration. On a good day, they are impersonal, faceless, corporate behemoths. On a bad day they are uncaring and even down right belligerent.

Since the House of Rothschild established European banking and finance houses in the late eighteenth century, the banking industry has been historically resistant to change. To be fair, there have been some successful attempts to drag the banking industry into the 21st century, by banks such as ING, Commerce Bank, and First Internet Bank, but there is a new player that is really attempting to shake things up.

There has been a lot of buzz lately about a new banking startup called BankSimple. BankSimple is based in Brooklyn, NY and they claim to be creating a better interface for banking through the web and mobile apps. Their plan is to partner with financial institutions, which will hold the actual deposits. BankSimple is focusing on creating a better customer experience and simplifying the banking process by unifying all accounts into one, accessible through a bank card.

I had the opportunity to be the final speaker at the 2010 Indianapolis Startup Weekend event on Sunday afternoon. For the uninitiated, I’ve included a bit of background from the Startup Weekend website below.

I’ll admit it – I’m a recovering design process deliverables junkie. Historically, the generation of process maps, usability audits, wireframes, site diagrams, application flows, mental models, task-level scenarios, user stories, standards documentation, conceptual frameworks, content audits, navigation maps, and countless other examples of design ephemera, were so central to the work that we created for clients that we began to view them as the work we were creating for our clients. In reality, as important as many of those deliverables may be, they are just means to an end. The end – is a finished product that customers want to purchase and use and a solution that meets or…

Todd Henry, the founder of Accidental Creative, interviewed Kristian for his regular podcast. The interview covered everything from staying inspired and dealing with clients to getting moving on what’s important. You can listen to it here

Over the past few years Indianapolis has quietly been growing into a bonafide  startup hub – boasting an impressive array of tech startups, service providers, funding sources, and industry events and organizations. It’s gotten so robust in fact, that it’s becoming difficult to keep track of everything thats going on. As many of you all know, the gang at KA+A has been working on a really cool project for the past couple of weeks that we’re calling the “Indy Startup Genome Project”. In short, we’re attempting to map the entire Indianapolis startup ecosystem.

We’ve started by pulling together a list of all the tech-oriented startup in Indy. Currently it’s an incomplete list. If you are a founder of an Indianapolis-based startup or you are aware of one that is not our…

One of the most frequent questions I’m asked is “What have you been reading lately.” With increasing frequency, folks are beginning to inquire about what Podcasts I listen to as well. So I thought I’d share a list of my favorite podcasts with our readers. These picks run the gamut from design, to technology, to entrepreneurialism. Some of them are not updated as regularly as I’d like, but they are all thought provoking, interesting, and inspiring. You can find them all on iTunes.

	The Accidental Creative The Accidental Creative podcast addresses how to thrive in the create-on-demand world by instilling practical, everyday practices that

A curated collection of blog posts and web links that address branding, user experience, and interface design.

William Poundstone has written a great book on pricing practices called – Priceless: The Myth of Fair Value. For anyone interested in crafting brand experiences pricing strategies should be an area of deep study and reflection.

We’ll try not to get into the habit of posting blog posts that point to other blog posts, but The Most Relevant Identity Work of the Decade, as chronicled over at Brand New is worth a gander.

Online retailer Zappos has figured out how to actually productize their culture and market their business model to other retailers. It can be yours for just $4,000.

Andrew Chen makes a pretty compelling argument for the virtues of Low-Fidelity

Below is a presentation on Personal Branding that I presented at the Notre Dame Campus Communicators Summit on January 7, 2010, in South Bend, Indiana.

Brand You : Personal Branding

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Let me come right out and say that I think the term “personal branding” is pretty lame, but there does seem to be some common understanding as to what the term means. So in the interest of fostering continuity and establishing a shared vocabulary, that’s what I’m running with. I hope that in 10 years, I will still be using…