COMA

foound at eChelon 2010

We were at eChelon 2010 (formerly known as unConference Singapore) yesterday with foound—Danny and Aung. The two-day event was organized by e27 and the first day featured startup pitches and talks by notable speakers such as Dave McClure—an investor involved in Mint.com and Slideshare, and Gen Kanai, Director of Mozilla. foound was one of the pitching companies in the Launchpad segment and it received overwhelming love from the crowd as we pulled off what people are calling a “World-class presentation“, as tweeted by Dr. Serkan Toto of Techcrunch. The response to our pitch was overwhelming. The Geeks on a Plane folks were all wearing t-shirts and we took some really cool photos together.

Danny (CEO of foound) and our team have been working really hard over the past three weeks to prepare for the event. We wanted to launch foound at the event but due to various difficulties, mostly technical, we decided to hold off the launch and went ahead with a slide-based demo instead. The presentation was planned and designed over the past one week. The slides were deliberately kept simple to reflect the values and messages of the foound brand, which was also developed at COMA. Danny and the rest of the team practically camped in our office for weeks working closely and intensely with us. My role as the head of UX (User Experience) and Branding is to ensure the app is a joy to use and own.

foound will be released some time late June as we iron out the remaining bugs and make more performance tweaks. The team has done a great job preparing for yesterday but there is a bumpy road ahead as we push hard for the launch of foound on the iPhone and subsequently on other mobile platforms. Meanwhile please visit foound.com to sign up for the newsletter and follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

Pics from yesterday courtesy of Kris Krüg

foound + Geeks on a Plane in foound T-shirts

Danny and I with Dave McClure in the background

The slide which got the loudest applause!

Our New Studio

Over the past year we have been operating from a variety of places, Pacific Coffee Company and Starbucks cafes, a borrowed space from Singapore Management University and each others’ homes. It was fine in the beginning as the amount of work we are doing increases, it has become increasingly difficult to keep track of things and properly manage projects. We needed a proper studio where the team can get together on a daily basis and focus without the distractions of home and public places. After much searching and viewing we are now finally moving in to the one we like the most.

The unit is located in Cosmo, a condominium at Guillemard Crescent which is connected to Guillemard Road and near to Geylang, the famous red light district of Singapore. We have rented a duplex unit on the eleventh floor which has bay windows all over allowing the place to be naturally illuminated in the day. The wind is terrific too as the condominium is surrounded by only low-rise buildings.

Work area

View from work area

Stairs leading up to 2nd floor

We spent the past two weeks sketching, planning and buying the things we need, like furniture and supplies. We wanted the office to look real good, sophisticated and designed by designers so we spent a lot of effort and time to get things right. We visited a variety of places such as MUJI and IKEA and purchased some really nice stuff.

White desk chair from MUJI

We found the MUJI chair at ION Orchard. They are priced reasonably, looks minimal but are surprisingly comfortable and do not feel tight at all. We got a pair of matching arms for each chair. The MUJI table which was promoted together with the chair is too pricey so we did not go for that one.

MELLTORP table from IKEA

We got the really nice MELLTORP tables from IKEA Tampines which looked really Japanese and could easily pass as a MUJI product. The simple design and straight lines compliments the space perfectly. We got a big and a medium one to fit a comfortable maximum of three persons.

The other stuff we got

We will upload more images once we have moved in and settled down this coming Wednesday.

We will be watching you and the Indian Premier League

The Indian Premier League (IPL) has engaged COMA to provide social strategy consulting over the course of the 3rd season games which will take place between March 12 and April 25, 2010. The IPL, is a Twenty20 cricket competition created by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and chaired by the Chairman & Commissioner IPL, BCCI Vice President Lalit Modi and has recently been awarded the 22nd place in FastCompany’s list of 50 Most Innovative Companies 2010. It will be the first ever cricket tournament which will be broadcast live on YouTube. The final four Matches of IPL 3 will be screened in 3D across Movie halls in India.

COMA will be providing social strategy consulting services to the IPL which will include real-time sentiment tracking and analysis to help the IPL reach and serve its fanbase more effectively. Not only will we be watching the games, we will also be watching listening to you!

Press Contacts

Email to hello@coma.sg

Say hello to Ben

Two weeks ago we put up a quirky notice saying we are hiring a business development executive. After burying ourselves in a pile of resumes and cover letters, and going through two days of interviews, we finally picked our favorite.

Meet Benjamin Belieu, a charming hearththrob from Seattle, USA who has recently completed the S3 Asia MBA, a joint degree between some really prestigious colleges in Asia, and now the officially the hottest guy in COMA. He is our head of business intelligence, which we thought was a really cool title that spawned from one of our late night discussions. Ben will play both business development and strategic roles at COMA and we think he will be a really great member of our team.

Need COMA’s services? Or just say hello, Ben can be reached via email at benjamin@coma.sg.

Shashi Tharoor Website in Official WordPress Showcase

We are thrilled to have Shashi Tharoor’s website, which was designed and developed by us being featured in the official WordPress showcase. The website has been one of the bigger scale sites we had the pleasure in developing and the feature in a showcase of good WordPress-powered sites as prestigious as the official one comes as a pleasant surprise. Here’s what WordPress.org says about tharoor.in:

“Shashi Tharoor is a promient figure in Indian politics and has a well-designed website that serves as a hub for his online presence.”

Source: WordPress Showcase
Visit: Shashi Tharoor

Shashi Tharoor New Web Site Launched

COMA, Singapore based design agency, is engaged as communication design consultant for Shashi Tharoor’s office.

Indian Member of Parliament Shashi Tharoor has launched a new web site—http://tharoor.in to replace two previous sites.

The new site, created by COMA, offers simple access to information and connection to Tharoor, who was elected in May, and his office. A key function is to promote open and transparent governance and to help people seeking to address their concerns. The web site is, hence, kept simple to navigate to encourage participation and to create an open communication channel between Tharoor and his constituents.

Previously, Tharoor had two web sites: his personal site, which included interviews, his biography and information on his books; and a campaign site, which played a pivotal role  in his election to India’s Parliament for the Thiruvananthapuram constituency in Kerala in May 2009. With Tharoor’s new political responsibilities, it became evident that a new portal was needed to combine the two ponderous sites into one with good information architecture that will serve to fulfill his campaign promises. COMA, with its forte in user interface design and communication design, was approached to create a web site with clarity and easy accessibility to information and services.

Tharoor, a well-known humanitarian and writer—currently also serves as the Indian Minister of State for External Affairs. Previously, he served as the United Nations Under-Secretary General for Communications and Public Information. In 2006, he was nominated by India to succeed Kofi Annan as U.N. Secretary-General, a position that ultimately went to Ban Ki-moon of South Korea. Tharoor’s United Nations career began in 1978 in Singapore. He was assigned as Head of the UNHCR office in Singapore (1981–1984) during the peak of the Vietnamese “boat people” crisis.

COMA is a design agency founded in 2009 in Singapore with a focus on using design strategically to achieve business success for clients. COMA’s expertise encompasses communication design, identity & brand design, interactive media, and information architecture and design.

Press Contacts

Lynne Toh
COMA
lynne@coma.sg
+65 96286279

COMA
coma.sg
Red Dot Building
28 Maxwell Road, #03-05
Singapore 069120