“nunchaku
helpS clear my
head, looSening
up my armS and
ShoulderS and
increaSing my
concentration
and adrenaline
levelS.”
oliver bao /
Depth Analysis
“There’s nowhere to hide,” says Sydney-
based Oliver Bao about MotionScan,
the advanced animation technology
he built. “Reality can be cruel.” Devel-
oped for Rockstar’s L. A. Noire video
game, due this spring, MotionScan
consists of 32 NASA–quality cameras,
$24,000 worth of lighting equipment,
and a healthy set of servers to process
and store the output. The result is
more-lifelike digital faces—crucial
for a game in which players have to
determine who’s lying—produced far
faster than traditional animation.
(Bao says his team shot more than
2,000 pages of script in 82 days.)
Early response has been exuberant
from not just gamers but also the film
community: L. A. Noire was the first
video game to be featured at the
Tribeca Film Festival.
Trevor edwards
Nike
Trevor Edwards sounds
more like an existential
philosopher than a market-
ing chief. “You bought a
running shoe, a football
boot, for a reason. Now,
who do you want to
become?” he wonders.
To respond—“to make data
more motivational”—
Edwards, Nike’s VP of
global brand management,
has launched an array of
simple tools (like wearable
sensors linked to social
apps and online communi-
ties) that record workouts,
offer sophisticated coach-
ing, and encourage
support from friends—for
everyone from future elite
athletes to regular folks
seeking well-being.
rebekah cox
Quora
Rebekah Cox is the product
designer and manager—and
employee No. 1—at Quora,
the community question-
and-answer site started by
her former Facebook col-
leagues Adam D’Angelo and
Charlie Cheever. Cox built
the front end of Quora from
scratch. One of her man-
dates: Bake design thinking
into every part of the devel-
opment process. “Quora’s
goal is to pull knowledge
out of people’s heads and
share it,” she says. “The
product itself needs to get
out of the way.”
calvin chin
Qifang
“I’ve probably lost more
good, interesting ideas
from not writing them down
than I’ve ever captured,”
admits Calvin Chin. Good
thing Qifang wasn’t one of
them. The Chinese peer-
to-peer lending platform,
which caters to students,
has lowered default rates
by cleverly leveraging
cultural norms—requesting
borrowers to provide family
details, for instance, so
they’ll feel pressure not to
shame the family name. So
far, Chin’s site has funded
more than 3,000 loans.
