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The Company
Veryday, formerly Ergonomidesign is a global design and innovation consultancy with offices in Stockholm and New York and representation in London and Tokyo.

Veryday has 75 employees and the CEO is Krister Torssell. Veryday is a multidisciplinary consultancy that develops physical and digital products and services for most industries such as Life Science & Health, Software & Telecom, Consumer Goods, Professional Equipment and Public Service, among others.

Veryday specializes in understanding the users’ physical, cognitive and emotional needs and through research guide and fertilize the design process. Their user-centered innovation process has resulted in over 300 patents [] and over 200 awards [] []. Ranked by the Red Dot [] as one of the top four most successful design offices in the world (2012). And 4th in the 2008 BloombergBusinessweek ranking of leading design agencies.

History
Veryday is a company with a Swedish heritage and a long track record; since 1969 and the foundation of Designgruppen. The founders were a handful of designers with experience from companies such as AGA, ASEA and IBM. Among the first collaborations were customers as ESAB, Flygt, AGA and COOP. Two years later the designer Henry Wahlforss and his Ergonomidesign moved in to the same premises, the old glue factory in Traneberg outside Stockholm. Veryday specialized in working with facilities for disabled and other user-oriented, inclusive design projects. The two companies got so intertwined that they decided to merge into a single company in 1979. The common focus was the profound studies of the user. The new company, Ergonomi Design Gruppen, moved a year later into a converted chapel in Bromma outside Stockholm, which still today is the company headquarters. The company was run as co-operative with a rolling CEO.

As several other young design firms in the early 1970s, assistive devices would become an important product area for Ergonomi Design Gruppen. In 1972 two of the founders, Maria Benktzon and Sven-Erik Juhlin, carried out in-depth ergonomic and physiological studies, investigating the grip of bread knives and saws, among other things. This led to pioneering achievements that facilitated the performance of activities of daily living ADL for disabled. . The result was a wide range of ergonomically designed objects that draw great international attention to RFSU Rehab [], Bahco, BabyBjörn [], Pfizer and many others. Many of the products are represented at the Swedish National Museum, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York and the Design Museum in London. One of the exhibits is the world's first angled kitchen knife designed for Gustavsberg in 1973.

Throughout the 1980’s, Ergonomi Design Gruppen continued to work on user-oriented, inclusive products and work environments, with a heavy emphasis on systematic user research, stakeholder collaboration and sustainability.

When the economy picked up in the mid 1990’s, Ergonomi Design Gruppen started to grow, employing young designers that added new and complementary skills whilst still sharing the same fundamental values as the founders; the aim of increasing quality of life for all types of users. In 2001, the company was renamed Ergonomidesign. The same year the company also hired its first CEO, Krister Torssell.

In 2006 the journalist Susanne Pagold and designer Gábor Palotai wrote the book "Function Rules" that tells the story of Veryday and their persistent ambitions of creating functional, inclusive, attractive and sustainable products that improve peoples’ quality of life.

In November 2012 Ergonomidesign becomes Veryday.

Design Ideology
Veryday is one of the pioneers in user-centered design. Over the years Veryday has conducted numerous in-depth studies on people; gained an understanding and empathy of different people, life situations, social and cultural behaviors’, and ultimately how these affect users’ needs in relation to products and services. In order to better understand the complexity of needs residing within users they have created a framework that is partially derived from the Human Factors and Ergonomics discipline and divides the human interactive needs into: physical, cognitive and emotional aspects.

Physical aspects deal with users’ physical needs in respect to products, services and environments. The goal being to facilitate use trough an optimal fit, user comfort, efficiency and safety. And ultimately enhance human performance and satisfaction.

Cognitive aspects encompass the interpretative processes people do in order to understand the outside world. These entail perception, memory, reasoning, and the resulting actions. Understanding cognitive aspects has become particularly important when it comes to designing digital interfaces and developing complex, high-tech and/or automated systems.

Emotional aspects identifies the correlation between personality, mood and affect, and users’ acceptance, liking and attachments to products and services. Emotional ergonomics provides an understanding of how products and services appeal to different user profiles; what users find attractive, meaningful and engaging.

Designs and clients
Life Science & Health Life science is one of the major industries for Veryday, the company has developed several medical solutions, e.g. Pfizers Genotropin Injection Pen, the ventilator Servo-i for Siemens/ Maquet and the asthma inflammation monitor Niox Mino for Aerocrine [].

And due to their industry knowledge they have developed the integrated health care concept “Helping Hands”, in order to envision the future of Life Science and provide scenarios the users can test, use and reflect upon. The concept postulates that through embedded sensors in our clothes, wrist watches, necklaces, shoes etc. it will be possible to constantly monitor biometric data. Data that is accessible through a network of ‘smart objects’ e.g. mobile devices and ‘smart’ homes, furniture and environments. In other words our biometric data will be accessible everywhere, at all times, by ourselves and doctors, family members etc.

Software & Telecom The boundaries between products and services, and between physical and digital experiences, are becoming increasingly blurred. Consequently this has a profound impact on how Veryday innovates. Today they design seamless user experiences across mobile, web, devices and other experience environments. One of which is the application “Music Quiz” for the Microsoft PixelSense using Multi-touch and Multi-user techniques.

The Spotify App for Windows Phone 7 is the result of collaboration between Veryday, Microsoft and Spotify []. The app helps users find and listen to music from the extensive Spotify music library on their Windows Phone. It is designed specifically for the Windows Phone platform, WP7.5, and differs significantly from earlier Spotify apps for other mobile platforms.

Other innovations are the mobile phones designed especially for seniors, for the company Doro. The designers specifically addressed factors that would increase ease of use and usefulness when suffering from common age related impairments.

Sustainable Solutions During a Climate Conference in Namibia 2009, Veryday met representatives from Creative Entrepreneur Solutions, a nonprofit organization. Their discussions lead to the idea of an affordable wood-burning stove that replaces the open fire. A solution that offers less fuel consumption, less risk of burns, less negative environmental impact and also provides job opportunities through local production [] []. Consumer Goods The collaboration with BabyBjörn goes back over 30 years. Håkan Bergkvist, the designer behind the original design of the BabyBjörn carrier, came up with the baby carrier concept when returning from paternity leave in 1991. In addition to the carriers Veryday and BabyBjörn have developed children stools, children's cutlery, bibs etc. Their prior knowledge on physical ergonomics resulted in the bicycle handlebars Ergo [] and the bicycle saddles Terry Fly, for the German company RTI Sports [].

Professional Equipment Veryday also design equipment, work protection and machine constructions for industrial enterprises, for example Speedglas, for 3M and some 400 different products for Bahco [] and the working gloves “Tegera Pro” for Ejendals []. One of Veryday’s oldest and most famous products is the drip-free serving pot for SAS from 1988, designed by Maria Benktzon and Sven-Eric Juhlin. In 1992 the pot was followed by an ergonomically designed service set and a juice jug in 1994.

Public Service Veryday collaborated with SIAT [], the Swedish Institute of Assistive Technology, and Klara Mera, the Center for Cognitive Support, to respond to a government commission to make people with neuropsychiatric disorders more involved in the community. The project was named C.O.M. to highlight on the themes of Concentration, Order, and Memory. A multi-disciplinary team developed new and effective tools for everyday life tasks that leveraged from the users’ strengths rather than weaknesses. For example a calendar app for smartphones and tablets that visualized the users energy levels during the day and thus helped them match activities accordingly. Another project within public service was one where Veryday helped the Swedish National Post [] to develop their overall service offering for private customers. Their goal was to create a service offering that users on both side of the counter found valuable, easy to use and easy to understand.

Literature and sources

 * Svenska formrebeller 1960- och 70-tal, Historiska Media, 2008
 * Scandinavian Design, Taschen GmbH, Cologne, 2002
 * Swedish Industrial Design, Norstedts, 1997
 * Function Rules, Arvinius Förlag, 2006
 * Why Design Now?, National Design Triennial, Smithsonian, 2010