Matternet
Relationship:
External
Consultant
eCommerce, Brand Identity,
Positioning
,
Continual Sprints
Founding
Chief Experience Officer
Product Market Fit,
Vehicle UX Design,
Market Definition
, Go-To-Market Plan
, UX Direction
3 years
Advisor
to CEO
Long-Term Strategy and
Communications
Ongoing
Deliverable
More than a Billion people don’t have continuous access to lifesaving goods and services because they live beyond the reach of all-season roads. Matternet was founded as part of The Singularity University to find a solution.
Andreas the co-founder was about to do a TED talk and wanted to lock down the story and create the corresponding Brand that he could reference. When he called us to help him develop that Brand he told us that he chose the name Matternet because he wanted to do for Atoms of physical matter what the internet did for information. He wanted the seamless transportation of matter to anywhere.
So, we used ‘transportation of matter’ to inspire the symbol, an expression of the intersection of Latitude, Longitude, and Altitude to provide an address anywhere in three-dimensional space.
After we launched the brand, Andreas invited me to become the founding Chief Experience Officer. And in 2013 Matternet, released a network of autonomous aerial vehicles to transport medication and diagnostic samples to communities that live beyond the reach of all-season roads. Matternet received the award of World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer in 2016.
One of the first test of M1, we were told that it could create fear, but the community clearly realized that it was their vehicle which would benefit them.
The experience problem was complex. Communities would own and operate local drones that would be part of a much larger network. Managing a sophisticated machine needed to be cut down into simple tasks divided between hardware and software and the benefit clearly needed to outweigh the existing problem of moving trucks.