Intense Listeners

From the moment the studio opened its doors, Antenna Design has made a profession of listening. In high-tech, interactive art installations and even public transit, Sigi Moeslinger and Masamichi Udagawa have always found a way to meet their clients’ needs. “Of course their design is excellent,” says Sandra Bloodworth, director of arts for transit and facilities design at New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority, for which Antenna has done significant work. “But what made my mouth drop open was how well they accommodated all our user groups: riders, maintenance staff, our other designers. The things they made weren’t foreign objects. They suited our needs perfectly.”

But in early spring 2008, listening no longer seemed enough. The couple, partners in life as well as business, were tripping over details in their most ambitious project to date: Antenna Workspaces, a postpanel, postcubicle office system they’d been developing with Knoll since 2006. Paying close attention to their client’s brief, Moeslinger and Udagawa slogged through a swamp of details: power and data-supply issues, ergonomics, aesthetics, BIFMA requirements, the limitations of Knoll’s manufacturing capacity. The economic meltdown forced them to pay even closer attention to costs and shipping weight. But the harder they worked to knock down office walls, the harder they rammed into their own wall, one big enough to postpone Antenna Workspaces’ scheduled June 2008 launch at NeoCon.

“We were trying to design a system that would do so many things,” recalls the Tokyo-born Udagawa, scrolling through some computer renderings on a laptop in the sparse single-room Chelsea office the studio has occupied since it opened in 1997. “It just got too complex, with way too many parts and functions,” he says. “And as disappointed as we were, we decided along with Knoll that it was time for a pause.”

The pair met in California in the early 1990s. He’d recently graduated from Cranbrook Academy of Art and was a senior designer at Apple Computer before moving on to IDEO. She was working in San Francisco with IDEO. In 1997, living together in New York, they decided to pool their savings and set up shop together. Shortly afterward, Antenna landed its first big project: designing the user interface for the MTA’s MetroCard vending machines. Udagawa had worked on the MetroCard interface while running a one-man New York satellite for IDEO. The job migrated with him when he and Moeslinger opened Antenna. The MetroCard vending machines needed to serve the five million New Yorkers who rode the subway each day. But more than half of them had never used an ATM, let alone a computer. It was quite a shift for designers used to fashioning sophisticated electronic devices for expert users—Udagawa at Yamaha, Apple, and IDEO, and Moeslinger for clients like NEC, Matsushita, and General Motors during her time with IDEO.

To streamline the user experience, Antenna color-coded the touch screens and corresponding hardware. A green prompt for money directs the user to the green-colored cash bezel. The work was so well received that the MTA invited Antenna to design the interiors and exteriors of several new subway cars. The cars feature light-colored walls and ceilings that create the illusion of greater space, and a dark-patterned floor that conceals dirt. Cantilevered seats allow for easy cleaning, and an electronic map aids passengers during transit. Windows have a “sacrificial” layer that can be easily replaced when scratched.

“Vandalism is always a possibility,” says Moeslinger, who graduated from the Art Center College of Design, in Pasadena. “And of course, it does upset us. It’s sort of like messing up your own living room. But it was also very exciting to ride the subway and hear people talk to each other about our cars. I think good design encourages people to take a sense of ownership and pride in the system.”

Antenna made its first mark on public transportation, but it has also been active in facilitating the flow of data between technology and user. The studio has designed PDAs for Palm, wireless devices for Fujitsu, and an internal telephone system for Microsoft. In 2002, they were invited to develop a new computer terminal and peripherals for Bloomberg. Raquel Tudela, then head of the company’s global design, had visited Antenna while working on a master’s in design at the School of Visual Arts. “I remember being completely blown away by what I saw,” says Tudela, who left Bloomberg in 2008. “They had these beautiful renderings—of the MetroCard machine, the subway cars, but also art installations and computer ergonomics. And they were so eloquent in explaining their work. When it came time to redesign the terminals we were using for hardware at Bloomberg, I immediately thought of them.”

Since Bloomberg leases equipment to subscribers over several years, the units needed to be more robust than most computer hardware, and they couldn’t quickly lose their visual appeal. But for Antenna, the greatest challenge was placating the various stakeholders. “They had to deal with me, with my boss, and with Bloomberg’s troop of engineers, all of whom have strong opinions,” Tudela recalls. “But they could talk circuits and battery life as easily as they could talk aesthetics. Masamichi and Sigi came back two months later with four great options. We didn’t know which one to choose.”