4 ms·

This seems to be part of a type of brand marketing where a brand claims it has invented something, but the only thing that ever exists of significant economic v

by Coeur 6mo ago

This seems to be part of a type of brand marketing where a brand claims it has invented something, but the only thing that ever exists of significant economic value is the attention raised by the promo video / article. Not the thing/service. Examples: - Samsung safety truck https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GNGfse9ZK8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GNGfse9ZK8 - Citroën motion sickness glasses https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aco63dlq_WE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aco63dlq_WE - Amazon Prime Air https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AVVTBmtDdo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AVVTBmtDdo - IBM Smart Ads https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbEMVdzXiCY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbEMVdzXiCY (implies they created lots of ad posters, but they only made 3 posters for this video) - Lexus Hoverboard https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFf7Meqkim8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFf7Meqkim8 I wonder if there is a term for this. "Vaporware marketing"?

mkesper 6mo ago
There's at least a paper to download: https://cdn.skoda-storyboard.com/2026/04/Skoda-DuoBell-Research-final_cf127752.pdf https://cdn.skoda-storyboard.com/2026/04/Skoda-DuoBell-Resea...
mynameisvlad 6mo ago
I'm not sure IBM Smart Ads were ever an actual product/invention, and Prime Air is a live service (albeit geographically limited): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Prime_Air https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Prime_Air
allenu 6mo ago
I love these types of videos because they create this fiction of how design happens, where people sit around a table with drawings and or come up with beautiful mock-ups (the motion sickness glasses is a good example). Often, a lot of design decisions are super obvious and don't require a lot of sweat and collaboration to come up with, but in videos they're made to appear very difficult as it presents better. And other things are super messy, but you're not going to show that as it's hard to communicate.
- npunt 6mo ago
  Yeah a lot of this is a very very cleaned up, performative version of design process. It's like its own subgenre. Original thinking is wild, feral, messy, often solo tho heavily influenced by the context around you. None of that presents well. However I bristle at the idea that core design decisions are usually super obvious, even when the end results are. Not sure this is even your point so forgive the tangent if not, but this issue is my particular hill to die on, it's 100% the single biggest gap in understanding that I see between those that regularly engage in original creative work vs those who do not. People see something obvious and say "That's simple, I could have come up with that!" But that's all hindsight, like saying "I could have bought bitcoin in 2010!" It's not even wrong, it's answering an entirely different question of capability, not probability. The question is would you have come up with that, were you tasked with the problem and put in the same context? I'd estimate for most great-but-simple inventions, it's not many people who could plausibly say that, because so much of what we bring to bear on problems comes from our own histories and unique perspectives & influences, not to mention talents and predilections. This distinction between could vs would is core to understanding creative output, especially the ideas that are the simplest to use or understand. The delta between understanding vs coming up with there is often vast; simple things are often the hardest things of all to conceive.
  - downthefoxhole 6mo ago
    > People see something obvious and say "That's simple, I could have come up with that!" That's the problem with user interface design as a career. It takes a lot of effort to create simple to understand and simple to use design, and then when users see them, they see it is simple and think it must have been easy to do. Most programmers tend to make programs for themselves and other technical people and has horrible design. The classic corollary example I like is when Apple came up with MP3 players and marketed as 'It can hold 1000 songs' instead of the current marketing at the time 'It has has 1GB of storage'. Technical folks would not be satisfied with 1000 songs becuase they would be doing back of the math calculations on how low of a bitrate you have to get, in order to fit 1k songs in a given space... while the other 95% of the population doesn't want to do any math, and if even if they did, they don't know.. or at least back then, didn't know what a GB was, or how many megabytes an MP3 consumed....
MoonWalk 6mo ago
I think you nailed it. You can't even buy this bike bell, as far as I can see.
- keane 6mo ago
  It may get added to https://eshop.skoda-auto.cz/en_CZ/cycling-accessories/c/cyclingAccessories https://eshop.skoda-auto.cz/en_CZ/cycling-accessories/c/cycl...
npilk 6mo ago
To be fair, I think Prime Air is real, but I've only heard about it when they've had drone crashes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGdOpR-Mv-E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGdOpR-Mv-E AFAIK it's only available in a few very specific places (seemingly for good reason).
abyssin 6mo ago
Any innovation benefiting cyclists and coming from the auto industry is a way to move attention away from the fact that cars are the most dangerous thing on the road.
- lucumo 6mo ago
  Well, obviously. What else did you expect to be the most dangerous thing on roads? Sharks?
  - charcircuit 6mo ago
    A tank.
    - sporkland 6mo ago
      Or a Ford f150: https://www.jalopnik.com/youre-not-wrong-american-trucks-and-suvs-have-gotten-1847370961/ https://www.jalopnik.com/youre-not-wrong-american-trucks-and...
  - xxs 6mo ago
    trucks? Or they still considered cars?
  - cucumber3732842 6mo ago
    Statistically the answer is probably cop cars or motorcycles.
- hofo 6mo ago
  I thought the use case would be for cyclists to alert runners with NC headphones that the cyclist is about to pass them
ale42 6mo ago
I first thought it was a 1st April joke. But the date is wrong.
jameshart 6mo ago
Innovationwashing, maybe?
deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]
rorychatt 6mo ago
Why is significant economic value the metric for success? Skoda publishes the research and design openly (no patent, no product for sale), to solve a real problem (increase in bike-related accidents from noise cancelling headphones), to ensure that the safety outcome can be spread as quickly and easily as possible. We should be celebrating companies that open source material findings related to safety, not lambasting them for not exploiting it for maximum value. it feels disingenuous to lump this in with most of the other items you listed.
notatoad 6mo ago
i think the slightly less cynical interpretation of this is that it's not marketing, it's an employee morale booster. some skoda employees got to have fun with this. just like the amazon engineers got to have fun building drones for a while. letting the engineers out to play every now and then is cheaper than just giving raises. the shiny marketing videos gives the people who worked on the project something to show off to their friends. i can't imagine the actual marketing value here really does anything for the company.
mikepurvis 6mo ago
The original Boosted Boards Kickstarter video has a lot of this energy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWV8irg64oM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWV8irg64oM
port11 6mo ago
Jokes on them for the wasted resources. If they don’t intend to market, I hope someone will. Where I live cyclists use ANC headphones all the time, and I’m tired of the near misses. Student cyclists that ignore the rules and wear ANC (or even large headphones) should be fined more often.
- jrg 6mo ago
  You seem to have misunderstood the invention. It’s not about cyclists wearing headphones.
  - CorrectHorseBat 6mo ago
    Bicycle bells can be used to warn other cyclists
    - port11 6mo ago
      Not if they wear thick or noise-cancelling headphones.
  - port11 6mo ago
    I haven’t. It breaches through ANC, pedestrian or otherwise, which would help with cyclists as well.
botzi2001 6mo ago
I think the Citroen ones are just a bit different, as in, there are actually products available to buy apparently: https://www.amazon.com/seetroen/s?k=seetroen https://www.amazon.com/seetroen/s?k=seetroen
keane 6mo ago
Their dealers already sell a bike bell, eg. in NZ at https://store.skoda.co.nz/products/bicycle-bell https://store.skoda.co.nz/products/bicycle-bell and in IE at https://www.skoda-accessories.ie/ie/en/p/bicycle-bell/SK-000050305C/ https://www.skoda-accessories.ie/ie/en/p/bicycle-bell/SK-000... There is a Czech shop listing for the old bell at https://eshop.skoda-auto.cz/en_CZ/bicycle-bell/p/000050305C https://eshop.skoda-auto.cz/en_CZ/bicycle-bell/p/000050305C Presumably the new bell will eventually appear among the other items at https://eshop.skoda-auto.cz/en_CZ/cycling-accessories/c/cyclingAccessories https://eshop.skoda-auto.cz/en_CZ/cycling-accessories/c/cycl... and in their bike order catalog PDF at https://www.skoda-auto.com/services/bikes-cycling https://www.skoda-auto.com/services/bikes-cycling
- Chilko 6mo ago
  Thanks for the NZ link - just bought that bell as that's a pretty reasonable price & includes free shipping :)

by Coeur 6mo ago

mkesper 6mo ago

There's at least a paper to download: https://cdn.skoda-storyboard.com/2026/04/Skoda-DuoBell-Research-final_cf127752.pdf https://cdn.skoda-storyboard.com/2026/04/Skoda-DuoBell-Resea...

mynameisvlad 6mo ago

I'm not sure IBM Smart Ads were ever an actual product/invention, and Prime Air is a live service (albeit geographically limited): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Prime_Air https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Prime_Air

allenu 6mo ago

I love these types of videos because they create this fiction of how design happens, where people sit around a table with drawings and or come up with beautiful mock-ups (the motion sickness glasses is a good example). Often, a lot of design decisions are super obvious and don't require a lot of sweat and collaboration to come up with, but in videos they're made to appear very difficult as it presents better. And other things are super messy, but you're not going to show that as it's hard to communicate.

npunt 6mo ago
Yeah a lot of this is a very very cleaned up, performative version of design process. It's like its own subgenre. Original thinking is wild, feral, messy, often solo tho heavily influenced by the context around you. None of that presents well. However I bristle at the idea that core design decisions are usually super obvious, even when the end results are. Not sure this is even your point so forgive the tangent if not, but this issue is my particular hill to die on, it's 100% the single biggest gap in understanding that I see between those that regularly engage in original creative work vs those who do not. People see something obvious and say "That's simple, I could have come up with that!" But that's all hindsight, like saying "I could have bought bitcoin in 2010!" It's not even wrong, it's answering an entirely different question of capability, not probability. The question is would you have come up with that, were you tasked with the problem and put in the same context? I'd estimate for most great-but-simple inventions, it's not many people who could plausibly say that, because so much of what we bring to bear on problems comes from our own histories and unique perspectives & influences, not to mention talents and predilections. This distinction between could vs would is core to understanding creative output, especially the ideas that are the simplest to use or understand. The delta between understanding vs coming up with there is often vast; simple things are often the hardest things of all to conceive.
- downthefoxhole 6mo ago
  > People see something obvious and say "That's simple, I could have come up with that!" That's the problem with user interface design as a career. It takes a lot of effort to create simple to understand and simple to use design, and then when users see them, they see it is simple and think it must have been easy to do. Most programmers tend to make programs for themselves and other technical people and has horrible design. The classic corollary example I like is when Apple came up with MP3 players and marketed as 'It can hold 1000 songs' instead of the current marketing at the time 'It has has 1GB of storage'. Technical folks would not be satisfied with 1000 songs becuase they would be doing back of the math calculations on how low of a bitrate you have to get, in order to fit 1k songs in a given space... while the other 95% of the population doesn't want to do any math, and if even if they did, they don't know.. or at least back then, didn't know what a GB was, or how many megabytes an MP3 consumed....

MoonWalk 6mo ago

I think you nailed it. You can't even buy this bike bell, as far as I can see.

keane 6mo ago
It may get added to https://eshop.skoda-auto.cz/en_CZ/cycling-accessories/c/cyclingAccessories https://eshop.skoda-auto.cz/en_CZ/cycling-accessories/c/cycl...

npilk 6mo ago

To be fair, I think Prime Air is real, but I've only heard about it when they've had drone crashes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGdOpR-Mv-E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGdOpR-Mv-E AFAIK it's only available in a few very specific places (seemingly for good reason).

abyssin 6mo ago

Any innovation benefiting cyclists and coming from the auto industry is a way to move attention away from the fact that cars are the most dangerous thing on the road.

lucumo 6mo ago
Well, obviously. What else did you expect to be the most dangerous thing on roads? Sharks?
- charcircuit 6mo ago
  A tank.
  - sporkland 6mo ago
    Or a Ford f150: https://www.jalopnik.com/youre-not-wrong-american-trucks-and-suvs-have-gotten-1847370961/ https://www.jalopnik.com/youre-not-wrong-american-trucks-and...
- xxs 6mo ago
  trucks? Or they still considered cars?
- cucumber3732842 6mo ago
  Statistically the answer is probably cop cars or motorcycles.
hofo 6mo ago
I thought the use case would be for cyclists to alert runners with NC headphones that the cyclist is about to pass them

ale42 6mo ago

I first thought it was a 1st April joke. But the date is wrong.

jameshart 6mo ago

Innovationwashing, maybe?

deleted 6mo ago

[deleted]

rorychatt 6mo ago

Why is significant economic value the metric for success? Skoda publishes the research and design openly (no patent, no product for sale), to solve a real problem (increase in bike-related accidents from noise cancelling headphones), to ensure that the safety outcome can be spread as quickly and easily as possible. We should be celebrating companies that open source material findings related to safety, not lambasting them for not exploiting it for maximum value. it feels disingenuous to lump this in with most of the other items you listed.

notatoad 6mo ago

i think the slightly less cynical interpretation of this is that it's not marketing, it's an employee morale booster. some skoda employees got to have fun with this. just like the amazon engineers got to have fun building drones for a while. letting the engineers out to play every now and then is cheaper than just giving raises. the shiny marketing videos gives the people who worked on the project something to show off to their friends. i can't imagine the actual marketing value here really does anything for the company.

mikepurvis 6mo ago

The original Boosted Boards Kickstarter video has a lot of this energy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWV8irg64oM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWV8irg64oM

port11 6mo ago

Jokes on them for the wasted resources. If they don’t intend to market, I hope someone will. Where I live cyclists use ANC headphones all the time, and I’m tired of the near misses. Student cyclists that ignore the rules and wear ANC (or even large headphones) should be fined more often.

jrg 6mo ago
You seem to have misunderstood the invention. It’s not about cyclists wearing headphones.
- CorrectHorseBat 6mo ago
  Bicycle bells can be used to warn other cyclists
  - port11 6mo ago
    Not if they wear thick or noise-cancelling headphones.
- port11 6mo ago
  I haven’t. It breaches through ANC, pedestrian or otherwise, which would help with cyclists as well.

botzi2001 6mo ago

I think the Citroen ones are just a bit different, as in, there are actually products available to buy apparently: https://www.amazon.com/seetroen/s?k=seetroen https://www.amazon.com/seetroen/s?k=seetroen

keane 6mo ago

Their dealers already sell a bike bell, eg. in NZ at https://store.skoda.co.nz/products/bicycle-bell https://store.skoda.co.nz/products/bicycle-bell and in IE at https://www.skoda-accessories.ie/ie/en/p/bicycle-bell/SK-000050305C/ https://www.skoda-accessories.ie/ie/en/p/bicycle-bell/SK-000... There is a Czech shop listing for the old bell at https://eshop.skoda-auto.cz/en_CZ/bicycle-bell/p/000050305C https://eshop.skoda-auto.cz/en_CZ/bicycle-bell/p/000050305C Presumably the new bell will eventually appear among the other items at https://eshop.skoda-auto.cz/en_CZ/cycling-accessories/c/cyclingAccessories https://eshop.skoda-auto.cz/en_CZ/cycling-accessories/c/cycl... and in their bike order catalog PDF at https://www.skoda-auto.com/services/bikes-cycling https://www.skoda-auto.com/services/bikes-cycling

Chilko 6mo ago
Thanks for the NZ link - just bought that bell as that's a pretty reasonable price & includes free shipping :)