Surface is all the rage

Everyone’s talking about it. Interaction Design and Industrial Design is coming to a full circle with Microsoft’s attempt to bring to the market “Surface“. This concept has been in research labs for over a decade now.

In an earlier post I talked about the interactive products surfacing in Milan Design Week. Alot of us who graduated in the past decabe have done a project in some sort of multi-modal or geture interface that does not involve a PC. The “surface” product doesn’t surprise any of us. Way back in grad school, I user tested one of Bean Blain’s projects she did at the ETC called Jamodrum. The challenge academia faced was not having any marketing power or businses driver behind their work. And we all knew one day corporate America will come to realize the potentials of some of this technology but what surprises me is the fact that Microsoft is the one to bring this to fruition. What surprises me more is that given such an interface, there are so many more fun things to do than edit photos and browse a map! Leave it to microsoft to fuck up a design even if the technology and the marketing power is all there.

It’s like you had someone a beautiful piece of jewelry and they decided to put it around a cow’s neck, what’s the saying???

So designers out there, stop bitching and moaning about their sucky demos. Get your hands on this thing and use this TO CHANGE THE WORLD even more! No matter how much money Microsoft has to market this thing, they’ll never design the things that go on it right. THAT is where we come in 🙂

Myers Motors electric cars

Driving down the road in these little puppies will guarantee attention. Myer Motors puts out these blobject-like electric vehicles that are environmentally friendly and will certainly splash our world with color.

Aerodynamic Corduroy pants

Lindland’s Cordorounds fabricated a corduroy that wears sideways, which apparently lowers drag coefficient by 16.24%. Wonder what it feels like to always have a lower draft coefficient when you cruise around the streets? These customer hall of fame pictures suggest that a lowered drag coefficient equal happiness 🙂

Alpha paw dog bowl

There is no such thing as too obsessed with your dog. Absolutely not. Alpha paw’s “Drink Better™ Bowl” is designed by a true pet lover who succeeded at beautiful Form following thoughtful Function.

Living homes – putting modernity and sustainability to practice

We hear a lot about sustainable design. Allan, in an earlier article urged us (designers) to “stop making crap”.

Livinghomes are one of those people who are putting the sustainable design talk to practice. The homes  they design combine modern design elegance with sustainable practices. After giving their website a perusal, they seem to put these ideas into practice in 3 ways: streamlined process, green materials and providing a sustainable living situation for those who will live in the homes.

Milan Design Week 07 – Interactivity

It was good to see some interactive pieces featured in Milan Design Week.

Droog interactive table

Fiat 500 interactive screen @ Cap

For other Design Week videos go here.

Via (youtube)

Nike shoe robot!

I love robots. Well, who doesn’t?! This Japanese company teamed up with Nike to make children shoes that can transform into a robot, the end result looks much like the old transformers. The crazy thing is, once the shoe transforms into a robot, it is still wearing a pair Nikes. Click here for a video demonstration.

Via Reuters.

Branding for emerging markets

 

At the ID conference at IIT Jan von Holstein from Network with Silverlining spoke about “Brand in Translation”. In this interview, he talked about the idea of a networked agency and the idea of a non-sales driven design consultancy unlike the traditional models of the ones we may be familiar with like Ogilvy or Digitas.

He also talked about the Chinese market:

“It became clear to me five years ago that China would become a force to be reckoned with. This meant creating a real portal both into China and out of China. Most global players are already in China and thousands more are scrambling to get in. At the same time, major Chinese companies are about to enter world markets with their own brands. We have already been reading about this in BusinessWeek and other publications in the last twelve months, and the reality is companies like Haier and Lenovo are entering the US markets with a big bang. Most of the others still have no valid brand positioning or marketable brand for any market outside of China.”

Designing sustainable products

A 5-part series of PBS reports on sustainable design:

Go see the other 4 episodes of the design E2 series on Youtube.

For those who work at Liquidnet:

They Sustainability Dictionary’s definition for Liquidity is interesting in that it kind of sums up why Liquidnet’s business model is actually “environmentally friendly” on an economic level. Just like companies that produce physical products and are environmentally aware, Liquidnet is the only financial company out there who is trying to environmentally conserve the economic landscape from a financial approach. Our design approach is also sustainable because GDD is all about deriving the simplest way a designer can help achieve everyone’s goals (the business’ and the users’). Knowing that makes work much more meaningful, not that it isnt’ already.

Telling stories – Gateway to Sweden

The most powerful tool for a designer is the ability to tell a story.

The  swedish portal site, I assume is government supported, impressed me because they use the same technique to tell visitors about their countries.

Instead of selling travel services or just putting up a bunch of pictures of sceneries, they tell stories about Swedish people. Reading the text makes me want to move to Sweden right this second!