Clarity Consulting Wins Microsoft's PhizzPop Design Challenge in Chicago; Advances to National Competition
Local firm beat top Interactive, Web, and design agencies with solution that pushed limits of technology and creativity in problem-solving.
Clarity Consulting Inc. announced today their win at Microsoft's innovative design challenge -- PhizzPop -- in Chicago. PhizzPop challenges software developers and designers to push the limits of creativity by developing unique consumer experiences using Windows Presentation Foundation and Silverlight technologies. Clarity's winning solution, which leveraged Microsoft's Windows Presentation Foundation, offered airline passengers a simplified reservation and check-in process on the Web and personalized entertainment within the aircraft.
Built using a combination of tools from Microsoft including Visual Studio 2008, Expression Blend, and Expression Media Encoder, Clarity's solution was judged the best out of 5 other regional entries. While all entries succeeded in creating applications that were visually impressive, Clarity's stood out based on their ability to bring innovative thinking to their solution --delivering an interactive, personalized, and connected experience for passengers on any device, even their iPhones.
"At Clarity, we pride ourselves on always 'getting it right the first time' and we're thrilled to have proven that again at this week's Chicago PhizzPop challenge," said Jon Rauschenberger, CTO of Clarity Consulting. "The competition is a great affirmation of the power of development and design, personal commitment and innovative thinking -- things that Clarity believes in strongly. We were honored to compete with so many innovators in the industries of design, web and interactive and excited to be able to highlight the benefits of extending our own user experience innovation capabilities -- something we know is becoming more and more important to our clients."
The Chicago contest was judged by an esteemed group of individuals including Jeremy Alexis -- assistant professor at IIT's Institue of Design, Scott Kinkaid -- Vice President of Usability Practices at Usability Sciences and Carlos Segura -- one of the most revered graphic designers of our generation.
"We are very excited about the new Microsoft Expression suite of tools that support the designer -- developer workflow," said Kevin Marshall, Clarity's Director of Product Management and leader of the winning team." With only two days to implement a solution, we were able to quickly create and integrate design assets into our solution with each team member using a different application in the process."
The series of regional PhizzPop contests culminates in a battle against the regional winners at the 2008 South By Southwest Interactive Conference in Austin. Participating regions include New York, Boston, Chicago, Austin, Los Angeles and San Francisco winner AKQA.