Around the Campus: Lapo Ceccherelli on Filo’s design strategy

You know when your heart stops beating when you try to reach your phone in your pocket but it isn’t there? Or when it starts racing when you can’t remember where you parked your car? I’ve got worse. That embarrassing moment when you go to the supermarket and find out you left your wallet somewhere else. God knows where.

Well, to avoid those traumatic events, a group of 5 Italians created a start-up named Filo back in 2014, that developed a Bluetooth device to help you keeping track of your things. It all started at InnovAction Lab, a program that introduces young people to the world of startups. That was where Lapo Ceccherelli, CCO and Co-Founder of Filo, met his other partners.

Recently, Filo has redesigned its logo and launched its latest product – Filo Tag – both developed with the awarded Emanuele Pizzolorusso, an Italian designer who created the product that won the Compasso D’Oro Award in 2016. The redesigning of the product comes from a wider strategic approach, that sees design as key in the product development. We talked with Lapo about it, about his vision, and about the new ways of thinking about the creative process.

The company is entering a new maturity phase, and those changes only came naturally. “After one year and a half collecting feedback about our product, we understood which were the needed improvements in terms of user experience, which refers not only to the App but to the product itself”, says Lapo.

Filo first hired a Design Agency to work for them, but they soon understood they wanted to be part of the process. The old agency style of working wasn’t the right one, and Lapo felt they needed to choose a different road: “We understood that we didn’t need someone to think for us, we needed someone to work together with us, integrating his knowledge and skills with ours.”  So they started working with Emanuele Pizzolorusso.

“Working with Emanuele was like working in a creative team, we passed inputs from one to another, working together in every step”. Together, they brainstormed about the positioning of the product, as experience told them to rethink their target group, and they decided to redesign the logo accordingly.

“It was extraordinary not to work as a client and consultant, but exchanging skills and knowledge to build together a product of design”, which means taking in account all the aspects such as the use or the cost of the product.

The design strategy of Filo signs a new chapter for the company, one that comes from the experience of the product and technology. The next pages will include more growth within the same philosophy: “We want to continue creating products that help people having under control what is more important to them. At this moment we are working with the Bluetooth technology, but our R&D team is studying new options to create new products that can go beyond what current Bluetooth technology can offer.”

Next, Lapo will be at Pi School for the Creative Incubator, bringing his solid experience as CCO and his view on the ways of working beyond the traditional agency models. Filo innovative way of conceptualizing design is only the beginning of disruption in the creative world.

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