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Tech

Big Idea, Little Printer: Exclusive Q&A with Matt Webb, Principal & CEO of Berg

By Ray Hu - December 2, 2011

The Interwebosphere has been abuzz with news about the very device that may spell—or rather, print—its unmaking: earlier this week, London-based design consultancy Berg unveiled their latest innovation, the Little Printer. The desktop device is roughly the size of a cube of Post-It notes, configured to produce a receipt-sized analogue for a newspaper featuring personalized content culled from the otherwise never-ending newsfeeds that all but define the Information Age.Little Printer lives in your front room and scours the Web on your behalf, assembling the content you care about into designed deliveries a couple of times a day. You configure Little Printer from your phone, and there's some great content to choose from—it's what Little Printer delivers that makes it really special.

In other words, Berg has taken the burgeoning, buzzword-y, possibly made-up notion of 'content curation' to the next level with the Little Printer, which produces a personalized physical document—at once one-of-a-kind and patently disposable—on a twice-daily publishing schedule. The excellent video is set to hit a million views (with your help) within a week of going live:

Of course, the real—in every sense of the word—appeal of the Little Printer lies in the tactility of its output, which transmogrifies two-finger scrolling into a good old-fashioned scroll, of sorts, an escrow in the original sense. It's not so much that we've been desensitized by touchscreens; rather, we're accustomed to them, and the effect of seeing content that is commonly presented under glass (literally) writ small is charming, if not altogether refreshing. Hence, Berg's characterization of the Little Printer as "more like a family member or a colleague than a tool."

Before you ask, it's scheduled to launch in 2012; more on the tech and an exclusive Q&A with Berg Principal Matt Webb after the jump...

Little Printer's brain isn't on a chip in its body, but on the Web where it can reach out and touch other Web-enabled services, and where we can provide updates and improvements without you having to install anything.

In your front room, Little Printer wirelessly connects (with no configuration) to a small box that plugs into your broadband router. It's this same box that will enable our other planned products in the BERG Cloud family. There's no PC required, your phone is your remote control.

Thus, the Little Printer is quite literally the face of the company's other, more abstract product announcement, the first manifestation—or ambassador, perhaps—of the BERG Cloud:We think of BERG Cloud as the nervous system for connected products. It's built to run at scale, and could as easily operate the Web-enabled signage of a city block, as the playful home electronics of the future. Not to mention the smart product prototypes that we work with our clients on, in the other side of our design studio.

This is precisely the beauty of the Little Printer: it creates something concrete from otherwise nebulous computing activity. The ticker is a pleasantly diverting approach to translating digital media to Real Life—I'd even go so far as to suggest that the Little Printer emit typewriter clicks as its inkless thermal printer chugs away at downloaded headlines.

And to the point about wasting paper: frankly, I'd rather have paperless receipts and personalized newspapers than vice versa. Which is not to say that the Little Printer will somehow upend the Point-of-Purchase category, but that there are far more wasteful activities that we indulge in on a daily basis.

Which is a long way of saying that I can't wait until I hear more updates from Berg and Little Printer... via a Little Printer of my very own. As someone who prefers Post-It notes to Stickies and doodling to Angry Birds, my only plaint is that it's not wide enough to adequately reproduce a crossword puzzle, reason enough for the Medium Printer. (Who knows? Maybe they'll join forces with Mint Digital, whose speculative feed-to-IRL device debuted just a month ago, to produce some kind of scratch-n-sniff printer in the near future...)

The Q&A, as promised, with Berg's Matt Webb:

Core77: The Little Printer is a fascinating concept, not least because its formatting seems to be influenced by smartphone displays. What was the inspiration for the Little Printer?

Matt Webb: Little Printer is at the meeting point of many of our interests. One is media, and the characterful voice it has in people's lives. You can see this in BERG's collaboration with Dentsu London, Incidental Media. A second interest is the home, and the difference is makes when technology is designed for that special social place.

Another long-standing interest is Web-connected products and, as a studio, we are constantly experimenting with all these interests. We have a culture of "thinking through making"—or, to put it another way, it's when you get your hands dirty that the invention happens.

But invention doesn't always happen in a straight line. One of our earliest concepts was to think of the printer as a social letterbox—what if your friends and family could control your printer, instead of you?

The "social letterbox" concept didn't pan out. But Little Printer, a similar idea, emerged years later through sketches, experiments, and conversations, when different strands in design, technology, product and platform all came into alignment.

I know you're working with partners such as Arup, foursquare, Google, the Guardian and Nike to create "custom publications." I'm curious to see the results—and whether you see the Little Printer as an entirely new medium, somewhere between an RSS feed and a traditional broadsheet, or something else entirely?

We live in an exciting era for media. It used to be a new medium came along one a generation—newspapers, the telephone, radio, television. But now it seems like there are ten thousand new media. YouTube is so different from Facebook, even though both are social sites on the Web.

Our work with our partners will help us discover what kind of medium Little Printer is. We have intuitions, partly instincts and partly because we've been designing for and living with Little Printer for a number of months. But new perspectives will be valuable.

Our sense is that there will have to be a focus on density—because printing on paper flags any content as valuable—which means the publications themselves will have to take on a more active editorial role. That puts it closer to a broadsheet than, say, Twitter, where the volume of updates is the value of the service. But because of the personalization and Web-connectedness, there's the opportunity for services, not just content, and that feels more like apps.

We're looking forward to discovering what works best!

Skeptics might dismiss the device as a novelty; what makes you confident that the Little Printer will ultimately outlive these criticisms?

Novelty can be a good attribute because it makes complex technology, such a Web-connected products in the front room, more easily understood. But there has to be ongoing delight and utility—which I believe Little Printer has, in part because the publications help it fit in so well. I can't help doing the puzzle whenever it is delivered, and the recipe ideas, the to do list, and the running coach are personal favorites that I can't wait to get into people's hands.

The Little Printer is clearly the first of what will be many projects and products in the BERG Cloud ecosystem. Any hints as to what we can expect in the future?

We've made no secret of Little Printer being the first of our planned family of products for the home, all building on the technology of BERG Cloud. And some aspects will be the same: design, inventive technology, and delight.

But BERG Cloud is applicable outside the home too. We've created a technology that could let us prototype a connected office building or, maybe with partners, develop products for hard-to-wire places like factories. BERG Cloud is a nervous system that spans physical products to the cloud, and we're looking forward to exploring the possibilities.

Ray Hu

Ray is a writer, editor, and researcher

16 Comments

Michael Harrison

6 years ago

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I actually think this is a good idea, the principle of it kind of reminds me of the old telegrams you used to see on the old war films. I guess at first it will create some excitement to see what it will print next.

I can see myself buying one of these little printers, I am always forgetting things and to have a little print out reminder I can stick in my wallet is a plus for me. I can think of a few situations when this would be very helpful in my house, from reminders to the kids to creating shopping lists whatever it is and i want one!...now please.

As with many good idea's this is utilising technology that is already there but just needed tapping into and expanding, thermal paper is nothing new.

For those of you that think its not very green! the paper can be shredded and recycled just like your debit card receipts so no more of an environmental issue than already exists.

For me this is the perfect little to do list generator and every home should have one.
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grace delfino

7 years ago

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how much is this product?where can we purchase paper for this?
thanks

--grace
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ineedlists

7 years ago

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I have to say, I am loving the idea of this, however I know I'd stop using it after a bit, so price will determine if I buy it. I'm also surprised we don't have this service nowdays. In 1999, my printer software used to spit out (at a specified time), daily news, lists of to do's, games, and more (I chose the content).
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KEWLIOSUCKA

7 years ago

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To a couple people above - Little Printer does not use ink, it's thermal paper, like a Polaroid Pogo.
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yanosan

7 years ago

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Very cool. However, the thermal paper is problematic. It is coated with, among other things, BPA...yes the carcinogen named in the baby bottle and nalgene recalls. It is believed that >90% of US dollar bills have been contaiminated with BPA as a result of these receipts. Until an alternative coating can be found, these printers are bound to become useless.
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Cartridge Save James

8 years ago

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It's pretty much a receipt printer with a few mods, I'm sure something like that has been possible for a long time! Although it does seem a bit wasteful to print all your social media out, as it can't all really be that important. Still, it's super handy for making lists!
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fueledbycoffee

8 years ago

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It's amazing to me that people will call the use of paper unsustainable, yet ignore the fact that their mobile phone sucks power off the grid every night. Trees are renewable, folks.
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Tom

8 years ago

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I would consider it a calculated use of paper, rather than simply a waste. The design doesn't appear wasteful considering the function for which it was designed. I think the main waste concern is in the subscription aspect--if you only want to do puzzles occasionally but your LP prints them every day, you'll have a lot of waste. But I think people would turn off the subscriptions that they discover they don't use, to avoid clutter.

Personally I would prefer to read news in the paper (or online) than on a Little Printer sheet, and I would prefer to write shopping lists, directions, and maps in my notebook. But someone would appreciate it.
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Tim-on Web

8 years ago

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Nothing ecologic-intelligent. It is like we are going back to the old times, but with the technology. Waste more paper and kill more trees. Yes I agree, after all the paper n your packet you can see your face.
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Jomy

8 years ago

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I could care less about the cutesy features like the smiley face that seems like a waste of ink and paper.

I do like the idea of a small efficient printer. There are times when it is nice having a physical list or being able to print directions.
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Blake

8 years ago

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This is an ADD kid's dream. Love it.
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Nigel

8 years ago

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I really appreciate that these folks are making a product that reverses the trend of taking something that is physical and making it digital. Sustainability is obviously paramount in our current day, but I think there is something to be said about the increasingly precious nature of a physical piece of paper and how that perceived value can affect our interaction and experience with it.
A lot of things on smartphones and the like are great, but they would be great in a different way if they were on paper too!
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Callil

8 years ago

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This is probably the most exciting product I've seen in a long long time. Beautifully design/executed. Can't wait to try it out. I wonder how long the ink lasts??
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Richard Wanderman

8 years ago

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I agree, it looks like great fun and the design of the software that makes it all happen looks quite good too. That's the key. If it's tough to use to get things going then it will be a dud.
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Hipster Designer

8 years ago

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It's like a fax machine that goes only one way! Now we can have that fun fax spam in a smaller form factor. Definitely a cute concept but not the greatest of ideas. 'Specially when we should be watching our rampant use of paper. I mean, who doesn't hate the half mile of receipts they get when shopping? Now there's a cute little machine making more crap to fill our wallets with. Anyone disagree?
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Scott

8 years ago

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This looks really fun. I've actually thought more than once that I wish there was a mini printer that could print out little lists, etc., since I'd rather hand copy something to a note than use a full sheet of printer paper for a few lines. So I hope that besides the auto updates you'll be able to create custom documents and directly print them. Also, I hope this is accessible with computers as well, not just phones.
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