Skip to content

Designing for tomorrow: MOO, NFC and Paper+

We’re on a mission to support the needs of MOO fandom and customers. So how do we design an easy-to-use, accessible system which helps them interact with our NFC technology, when it hasn’t even been invented yet? We caught up with the wonderful Suzy Willis, MOO’s Experience Designer. She shares some of the problem solving that came into play when designing our new Paper+ platform. Over to you Suzy!

NFC Designing for tomorrow

Firstly, NFC stands for Near-Field Communication. This might sound a bit ‘sci-fi’ but we’re actually all using NFC regularly and probably don’t even realise it! If you have ever used a hotel room swipe key or a contactless payment system you are using NFC technology to help simplify certain tasks.

Each of these products has visual cues to help guide how we use them; like how Transport for London’s NFC ticket barriers direct you to sweep your Oyster cards across the readers. These visual cues are part of what we call an ‘“affordance”.

An affordance is the relationship between an object and its environment. For example, a door handle might ‘afford’ the action of pulling; it’s mounted at hip level and looks like you can clasp it with your hands. The design leads this action. When successfully designed, a person will unconsciously carry out an action with an object.

In the digital domain, affordance is communicated via screen objects (things like buttons, or hyperlinks). How they look sets expectations on how they perform. The more consistent the design, the stronger the affordance becomes. We understand how hyperlinks work now, because it has become a standard design pattern which we’ve been using for a while.

NFC Designing for tomorrow

NFC technology is relatively new, so there is no standardized visual cue to communicate its affordance. With the absence of learnt behaviour, the design needs to work harder to be adopted as intuitive behaviour. Common NFC icon designs are similar to the Wi-Fi logo, with graphic lines that look like active pulses. Much like the way cartoon movement is indicated by sweeping lines, which help to indicate the tapping interaction.

So what does this mean for MOO?

Paper+ is ‘smart’ paper which, when tapped by an NFC reader or smartphone, links to online content or triggers a digital action. As this is a new product and behaviour, the initial use of the card and the platform’s visuals must establish easily understood actions. Metaphors. This is in order to guide users intuitively and to help them feel confident and in control.

The Paper+ symbol aims to communicate the embedded technology and associated action to take upon the product. It follows the common convention of NFC ‘pulses’ with the ‘+’ to contextualise the environment in which the paper is used. Justin Hallstrom, who designed the symbol – together with Millie Davies – describes the design rationale:

“We went through an extensive exploration of various marks and symbols. The main issue was distilling the brief and defining the main purpose of the icon. Was it a stand alone brandmark? Or a symbol to signify the “tap” action? Once this had been established the solution became pretty obvious to us.

NFC Designing for tomorrow

The end result uses the NFC ‘pulses’, which have become a recognised contactless icon. Combined with the + sign, it ties it together with the overarching Business Cards+ branding without sacrificing the user experience”.

What if you could have the ease of NFC technology applied to business networking? We know that NFC might sound like a football team, but it’s actually an amazing way to stand out out from the crowd and get yourself noticed.

Welcome to Business Cards+.

In a world of ordinary paper, one company is breaking all the rules (that’s us), say hello to Paper+.

It’s a new digital platform of super connected paper products from MOO. Not just beautifully designed, but so technologically advanced, they’re basically the sliced bread of stationery. Business Cards that have digital lives, long after you’ve handed them out.

So what’s the secret? It’s the NFC-enabled chip that’s embedded inside every card! The possibilities are endless. Choose the ‘Actions’ you want your chip to perform and as soon as you’ve updated the details on our Paper+, the card is updated! It’s seamless.

Share your information with ONE TAP onto most android and Microsoft devices then log into Paper+ to see how many times your card has been tapped (and even watch as it’s happening!).

It’s amazing! It’s INCREDIBLE! And it’s not in the future, it’s happening in the real world RIGHT NOW.

Discover Paper+

Phil Thomas, MOO’s Product Designer talks us through the design process involved in creating the packaging for our new NFC-enabled products, Business Cards+.

Packaging at MOO has always been an integral part of the products we sell. As we discussed in a recent webinar on packaging, we always aim to surprise and delight with everything we do, and our Business Cards+ are no different. However, these NFC embedded cards have something extraordinary about them, something we’ve never done before, and we felt the packaging needed to reflect that.

We loved the idea of exploring an 80’s vision of the future.

From the very start we loved the idea of exploring an 80’s vision of the future. There are many iconic films from this time like Back to the Future, Tron and Blade Runner, all of which had fun predicting how our culture would develop. The prop and set design in these films focused on strong angular shapes with flashes of bright neon colours. These combined together gave the films a really forward-thinking feel at the time. We generated some MOOd boards (sorry) by taking inspiration from this, as we pulled tighter images of interesting shapes, colours, textures and patterns we found, that could help dictate the look and feel of the packaging.

Business Cards+ Packaging Inspiration

From this we set about sketching out some very quick concepts – one or two minutes per sketch – exploring areas such as shape and proportion. One of the best design tips I was taught is to empty your brain onto the page without being precious about how it looks. This really frees you up and allows you to explore many ideas in a short time. Later you can take these sketches and develop them further. It’s always important to do iterations of your sketches, taking parts of your designs you like and pulling them together with other sketches. This really helps to figure out what works and what doesn’t.

After a few rounds of sketching and evaluations, we chose some ideas we wanted to explore using physical mock-ups. This is the first time you really get a sense of the size and proportion of the design. We often start with thin paper, as it’s a fantastic material to work with to get instant results. Again iterations of each design are important, before you move on to more detailed prototypes that involve colours and textures.

Business Cards+ Packaging Inspiration

In the background we also decided to explore some clever opening mechanisms that would raise the cards out of the pack, reflecting the feeling of magic that’s hidden inside the business cards. Taking inspiration from pop-up origami and spring loaded release mechanisms, we had great fun building prototypes – ranging from the subtle, to the absurd. The above photo is just a small selection of the many models we built.

We reviewed them all as a team and decided on one final design.

Business Cards+ Packaging Inspiration

This design had an instant wow factor to it, with its sharp angular faces that include an element of surprise, when you find it’s made entirely from paper and cardboard. Added to the top of the box are subtle spot UV lines that at certain angles catch the light; a reminder of the circuitry that’s hidden away inside the cards.  The flash of neon colour in the cut off corner instantly draws your attention, which combined with our logo hints at an electronic “power” button. It invites the user to “activate” the box by placing their thumb here to get purchase and open it.

Business Cards+ Packaging Inspiration

On the inside we wanted the packaging to take more of a backseat, let the customer flaunt their fancy new cards. So we included a simple mechanism that raised the pack up at an angle to act as a small podium. This warmly invites any passer-by to take a card. And of course our packaging wouldn’t be complete without a hidden message on the box somewhere, but we’ll leave it up to you to find out what it is…

Discover Business Cards+

What if you could have the ease of NFC technology applied to business networking? Now you can! Welcome to Business Cards+.

Each one is embedded with a near-invisible chip that holds your chosen data, and with just one tap from an enabled smartphone (no app needed!), it’s downloaded in an instant. You can update your details anytime and track activity to see who’s got you on their radar.

What better way to grow your network?

Discover Business Cards+.

As you know, at MOO we love all things print. But we also love the web. In 2012 we signaled our interest in taking paper to the next level, connecting it to the web with a short trial of NFC-enabled business cards.

The response was overwhelming: we absolutely had to bring this product to market. For centuries people have been using business cards in pretty much the same old way. From the footmen of 17th-century French aristocracy, to today’s ‘momtrepreneur’: their simplicity, ubiquity, utility and form have kept them going strong, even in our increasingly digital world.

I’m delighted to announce the launch of ‘Business Cards+.

They’ve been a long time in the making but, today, I’m delighted to announce the launch of ‘Business Cards+’, the first of MOO’s next generation, NFC-enabled line of products and the first major update to the business card for over three hundred years.

These little wonders not only function as the MOO Business Cards you know and (hopefully) love, simply tap them to an NFC-enabled phone and they come alive, performing an unlimited range of digital functions: bringing new life to paper and new possibilities to how we connect, network and share in person.

Business Cards+ can link to your website, your blog, LinkedIn profile or social media account. They can be used to promote your portfolio or online store, download your résumé or even perform simple phone functions. We’ve also partnered with a few of our friends to bring some custom actions to your cards. You can program your Business Cards+ to give the recipient hyper-customised directions to your hard-to-find office with CityMapper, easily schedule meetings with Sunrise, or just tap to join a multi-person instant video conference with Appear.in.

Now, your cards can do so much more.

It turns out, mass producing customizable NFC Business Cards was quite the engineering challenge. But we haven’t stopped there! I’m also excited to announce that supporting Business Cards+ we’re launching an online platform to help you manage the digital actions for your cards. We call this platform Paper+.

Paper+ is your personal NFC customization dashboard that features basic analytic tools. One of the great things about Paper+ is your ability to manage the functionality of your cards even after you’ve handed it out.

With Paper+ you’re in complete control and your cards are never out of date.

The beauty of NFC is you don’t need a dedicated APP, ‘reader’ or QR code. All you need is Business Cards+ and an Android phone with an NFC reader. And with 500m Android phones due to ship – finding someone to tap with should be a cinch.

Here at MOO we are extremely excited to venture into the ‘Internet of Things’ with this new range of smart paper products. We really hope you’ll like them.

Discover Business Cards+

By Richard Moross, MOO’s founder and CEO