Carrier Supra Series

ram has a long history working with Carrier and it was an honor to help update another one of its flagship product lines, the Supra Series.

Carrier Transicold is the world leader in transport refrigeration and intelligent cold chain technologies which keep much of the food, medical supplies and other perishables we love fresh and safe. ram worked directly with Carrier’s talented engineering, marketing and sales teams to update the design language for the Supra Series, the industry standard in performance and reliability.

The Supra Series is truly an engineering marvel designed to last for “millions” of hours of reliable service in all sorts of environments. This means they need a timeless design aesthetic and sensible human factors that work across a wide range of truck models, operators and service technicians years into the future.

Don’t let the simple streamlined form fool you, these units are finely tuned machines with a seriously robust chassis underneath. Performance, reliability and quiet long lasting operation are some of the most important features that can take years of development to get just right.

“Carrier and ram are both based in Syracuse, New York and it’s great working with a world class brand right in our own backyard. I get a kick out of every time I see one of these units on the road!”

— Rob Englert, founder of ram

The Supra Series comes in a variety of performance levels for different sized trucks.

These are important products that people seldom think about or even notice at all but these unsung workhorses enable us to enjoy many modern conveniences that we often take for granted including everything from fresh cut flowers, to lettuce, to ice cream, to medicine all year round and in every climate.

The Carrier Vector Series is another product you might recognize. Rob Englert first designed this unit for Carrier over 20 years ago and it still looks sharp!

Modern air conditioning was invented right here in New York State by Willis Carrier in 1902. Carrier Transicold was formed in 1970 when Carrier acquired California based Transicold Co. and merged it with its Special Products Division which had been making refrigerated trucks since 1940.

ram Creates AR Experiences for MINI

Like MINI, ram is small but mighty! The ram logo on the avatar’s hoodie pays homage to some of our earliest work in AR.

MINI USA asked ram to explore ways to reach a younger, more mobile audience through augmented reality (AR). ram developed two interactive AR ad experiences (one for Facebook and one for Instagram) that allow you to drop a virtual MINI into your environment, scale it, spin it, change its color/opacity, pack it with gear and dynamically adjust the height of an avatar that best represents you so you can see just how big a MINI really is. In 1959, Alec Issigonis originally designed the MINI as a car with lots of space inside with minimum dimensions outside. Modern MINI’s are still influenced by this premise where the wheels are pushed to the corners to allow more room for the passengers.

The pandemic forced many people to reconsider their transportation options in order to better protect themselves. Some metropolitan areas saw public transit use drop 50-90% with social distancing and shelter-in-place orders. MINI, on the other hand, was seeing an uptick in interest by a younger audience living in cities looking for vehicles that provided a safe means to commute, were easy to park and still maintained a certain level of cool when they needed to escape the city. The challenge was that many were not sure if a MINI was big enough to fit them and all their stuff.

“The majority of interactions in a dealership today are already replaced or influenced by online” – McKinsey & Company

People need to get into a MINI to see that it is big enough for them; however, people aren’t going to dealers and test-driving cars like they used to. Customers have already decided what they want by the time they go to the dealer; overcoming purchase obstacles through digital experiences are more important than ever.

Creating an element of play to the Pack the MINI AR experience encourages longer user engagement through a simple intuitive interface.

MINI knew AR could provide the results-driven engagement needed to reach this younger demographic having participated in a groundbreaking AR AD study with Meta that helped quantify the value of immersive creative. MINI’s first foray into AR ads allowed users to drop a realistic MINI at true scale into their environment which resulted in “2.9 times greater lift in ad recall and 11.25 times greater lift in favorability for the brand with six times greater lift in recommendation for the brand compared to BAU only campaign.” Now, what happens if we ask users to interact at a deeper level -- beyond just spinning the car and changing the color? This is where things start to get interesting.

Could AR help educate this tech-savvy consumer about these two specific points: Can a MINI fit me? and Can a MINI fit all my stuff? Could this be done as part of a targeted social media advertisement? It was decided early on that we would use Meta’s SparkAR to assemble and deploy the experiences across Facebook and Instagram.

ram was well-suited for this project for many reasons, but most importantly: we have been working with AR for many years (we created one of the first AR T-shirts and AR enabled magazine articles back around 2010) and fully understand the challenges of deploying an interactive mobile AR experience across a wide range of users, devices and software platforms. In many ways, mobile AR technology has not evolved as much as you would expect and is constrained by the lowest common denominator of devices, operating software, networks and bandwidth being used at any given time. High quality AR graphics require more polygons and that requires systems that can handle them (i.e., not everyone has the latest most up-to-date mobile device). This can be easily mitigated by a dedicated app that can provide the user a prompt saying the app will not work on their current device/operating software etc. As a social media ad that scrolls by in your feed, it is a totally different animal. You typically make a conscious effort to seek out and download a dedicated app. You choose to download an app, you don’t choose the ads in your feed. How do you get a user to click on the ad in the first place, let alone interact with it fully as it was intended? None of this is easy.

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Before we could even begin developing the AR experiences, we had to understand the underlying problem of: Am I too big to fit in a MINI? Can a MINI fit all my stuff? MINIs are well, um…small, but are they too small? It helped that MINI sent us a brand new MINI Cooper S to test with. Driving a MINI is like nothing else and it doesn’t take long to understand why they have such a dedicated following. Essentially, this is an advanced human factors problem on multiple levels and we used our standard phased-based process to solve it. We performed in-depth qualitative interviews with several existing MINI enthusiasts/owners to gain insights into everyday usage and the benefits of ownership. It also gave me the chance to drive a super charged Cooper S r53 (thanks Jon:).

Focus: Adjustable, Animated Avatars

ram is located in the Center for Advanced Systems and Engineering on the campus of Syracuse University and we built a small, dedicated team of talented Syracuse University students from the Computer Art Department and the Industrial and Interaction Design Department to help us tackle this project. We began by interviewing and observing test subjects that were in or above the 95th percentile. At 6’5”, our favorite 95th percentile research subject and long-time collaborator, Prof. Don Carr, was used as the guide to construct our first adjustable, animated test avatar. Building an avatar like this from total scratch would have been a project in and of itself, luckily, Ready Player Me makes this easier; however, custom rigging the model to open the door and get inside a MINI in a realistic manner was no small task.

In addition to the animation for the avatar, we had to sort out the 3D model of the MINI and animate elements of it as well. Something as simple as opening the door and the hatch -- while keeping the polygon count to a minimum -- took an enormous effort. The 3D model had to go through a massive polygon purge for it to meet the requirements of the platforms. Doing this, without sacrificing too much detail when mapping the final graphics, was a serious balancing act.

This was an exciting and challenging project that helps push AR towards more mainstream adoption. I couldn’t be more proud of our team for the effort it took to make this happen. The performance and feedback generated will be extremely valuable as we continue to explore AR for the brand.

This project was a collaborative effort and special thanks must be given to Rah Mahtani and the entire MINI team, Stuart Turnbull and everyone at Universal McCann and Meta and most importantly our Syracuse University team; Amanda Lennes, Hannah Erickson, Griffin Palmer and Matteo Broccolo.

ram redesigns iconic ophthalmoscope and otoscope for Welch Allyn

ram designed the Welch Allyn® PanOptic™ Plus Ophthalmoscope, the Welch Allyn MacroView® Plus Otoscope and new Power Handle for Hillrom (now Baxter).

ram was given the amazing opportunity to redesign these iconic instruments, which have the potential to impact more lives than anything we have worked on to date. Examining the structure of the eyes and ears is a critical part of the physical exam that often leads to early diagnosis and treatment of disease.

Welch Allyn invented the direct illuminating ophthalmoscope in 1915 and it along with its companion otoscope can be found in almost every exam room in the world. The classic Welch Allyn Diagnostic Set consists of an ophthalmoscope and otoscope with interchangeable handles that provide power. These are the devices your doctor looks in your eyes and ears with during physical exams.

One of the most important aspects of the new silhouettes was to make the heads and handles flow seamlessly together visually while providing a grip-able area at the intersection of the head and handle. User centered research revealed that many elite users such as Ear Nose and Throat Practitioners held these tools differently than general practitioners. They wanted a precision grip detail at this intersection, which led us to this being a knurled ring. The knurl is a tribute to the classic 3.5V Nickel-Cadmium Power Handle. These are precision instruments and the detailing needed a jewel like quality, high level fit and finish with authentic materials. The final production units deliver just that, plus they are packed with innovative new features.

The Welch Allyn® PanOptic™ Plus Ophthalmoscope and the Welch Allyn MacroView® Plus Otoscope are revolutionary tools that provide larger, brighter views making exams faster, more efficient and accurate. The new ophthalmoscope has a 20x larger viewing area than a standard ophthalmoscope and the new otoscope has 8x brighter viewing when paired with the LumiView™ Clear Single-Use Ear Specula.

These are the products for which Welch Allyn was founded upon and are often considered the “crown jewels” of their brand. When you are given the keys to something of this importance, you treat it with absolute reverence; creating timeless aesthetics is something ram is especially suited for and takes pride in providing. Welch Allyn is an important part of our region of New York State and being trusted with the flagship product of the brand is a real honor.

“I have wanted to work on this particular product ever since moving to this area over 20 years ago and learning the history of the company. It was a privilege to design a product with such a lasting legacy to a place I hold so dear. ”

— Rob Englert, founder of ram

This was a challenging project for many reasons. Number One: you are dealing with an iconic product with a long history and paying homage to its legacy is important; however, it cannot limit the design. The product line has a serious projected lifespan that must still look relevant 25 years from now. Additionally, each new design needed to be backwards-compatible to the full catalog of existing Welch Allyn power sources; which is no easy task. ram worked directly with Welch Allyn’s extremely talented marketing, design and engineering teams to make this all happen and the final executions of the designs are flawless.

These products also have the ability to switch from analog to digital with the iExaminer® SmartBracket™ accessory that allows you to attach a mobile phone. When paired with the iExaminer Pro App, it creates a pathway to machine learning to help improve early detection of certain diseases.

ram also contributed to the design of the new universal desk charger which can accommodate the Diagnostic Set along with a variety of legacy Welch Allyn Power Handles.

The detailing of the parting line and the slide-in window of the 3.5v LED Otoscope version came out exceptionally refined.

Skaneateles Lake, NY is one of the most beautiful places in the world. The home of Welch Allyn and this vintage Century Resorter!