Posted by
hipstomp | 13 Oct 2009
Adam Greenfield, author of Everyware: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing and current head of design direction for service and user-interface design at Nokia, has a new manifesto on his blog called "Towards urban systems design," based on a talk he'll be delivering in November at the Pompidou. The abstract reads as follows:
The networked objects which are increasingly populating our lives and our cities already generate torrential, unceasing volumes of data about our whereabouts, activities, and even our intentions. How can we ensure that this data is used for the equal benefit of all? What provisions regarding such objects should citizens demand of their municipal governments? How might the juridical order respond most productively to the presence of these new urban actors?
"This is not a talk intended, primarily, for technologists," Greenfield explains, "but for people who understand themselves to be citizens, constituents and co-creators of an urban polity. And it's an attempt to use the appearance of networked informatics in our cities to argue a much larger point: that our times and circumstances call for a conscious art and craft of urban systems design."
Read the entire piece here.
Posted by
Allan Chochinov | 30 Sep 2009
A quick note that I will be joining Project H's Emily Pilloton, Metropolis Magazine's Susan Szenasy, and Cooper-Hewitt curator Cynthia Smith for a panel discussion at the Cooper-Hewitt on Tuesday, October 6th as part of the NYC launch party for Emily's book, Design Revolution: 100 Products That Empower People. Things will start off at 6:30, and the panel will be followed by a reception and book signing. Register for the event via the Cooper-Hewitt site here ($10 members and students/$15 non-members).
Posted by
Allan Chochinov | 25 Sep 2009
Full-on piece from Alex on Wednesday at Worldchanging:
Small steps, personal responsibility. incremental reform, gradually better standards, 50-year targets for action -- most of the solutions offered in the green tool chest right now are, unfortunately, completely insufficient. Not insufficient in the sense that we'd like them to be better in a perfect world: insufficient in the sense that if we do them all, we still face a strong possibility of planetary catastrophe and the collapse of civilization.
We need to challenge the assumption that we can live much as we do today, with improved gadgets and standards (suburban, consumerist life with an electric car here, a green building there, a CFL in the next room). We can't. It won't work. We need to change how we live. If we're smart, we'll end up better off -- with more wealth, higher qualities of life, healthier families, and safer communities -- but we must start to talk not about doing things differently, but about doing different things.
Posted by
Allan Chochinov | 15 Sep 2009
Over at Design-Altruism-Project, David Stairs has sawed off his shotgun and taken out, well, just about all the usual suspects around design for social change. Core77 takes one of the first hits (a little obliquely though, on the shoulder, I think), and then all the king's men fall one by one. It's a great read, and besides the obvious schadenfreude yuks, Stairs has some fine points to make. Here's one near the top:
For all our talk about "planning," human beings don't plan very well in the collective sense--civilization is just too complex. The beauty of the hives' single-minded purpose doesn't translate to people. As Americans we are raised to love independent choice, but this is precisely what leads to disaster when applied on a global scale. And it is no different with social design, where competition for the Internet "commons" is much more prevalent than cooperation. Add to this the fact that 98% of designers when asked say they want only to design, not plan, write grants, fund raise, correspond, or do any of the nine-hundred other nitty little things necessary to helping less fortunate people and you're left with a large, well educated audience wearing blinders.
...and another later on:
If this blur of hysteria begins to make you feel a little woozy, join the club. I'm all about helping people, spend much time doing so, and I agree with Mariana [Amatullo] that there's more than enough pain to go around in this world. The people trolling the net and re-posting RSS feeds for the pleasure of their Twitter "possees" are just engaging in a big circle jerk. But beyond such dim sighted initiatives something else lurks: the sudden widespread enthusiasm for social amelioration through design. It's so terribly trendy to care, about the poor, the environment, and every form of "betterment" that I begin to assume we must be selling more design by fetishizing social relevance.
The comments are just starting to roll in, so by all means get in on the discussion. And for the record, I'm personally involved in several of the organizations and initiatives he discusses in the piece; didn't stop me from enjoying it one bit.
Posted by
core jr | 11 Sep 2009
Link.
Posted by
core jr | 1 Sep 2009
A quick heads-up that the new Designers Accord website just launched, with new features, easy links to facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, and a "What's your greatest sustainability challenge?" box for you to fill in. (Hoping they add in a "How many adopters does it take to screw in a lightbulb?" box!)
Posted by
Allan Chochinov | 25 Aug 2009
I am very excited about the upcoming book written by Emily Pilloton and published by Metropolis Books, entitled Design Revolution: 100 Products That Empower People, still on pre-order from Amazon but shipping imminently. I was honored to write the foreword for the book, and having seen an advance copy--it was designed by the amazing Scott Stowell of Open)--am really psyched about the potential of the project. It's filled with a collection of some of the most inspiring designs and design initiatives imaginable, and I believe it will serve as a great sourcebook for designers everywhere looking to make a positive impact. Core77 will have an exclusive interview with Emily coming up in October, but in the meantime, check out the book online, and learn a bit more about it at the Project H page.
Posted by
Allan Chochinov | 24 Aug 2009
If you missed it, be sure to grab a copy of yesterday's NYTimes Magazine for the cover story and related pieces. "The Women's Crusade" is a cut and paste of Nicolas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn's upcoming book, "Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide" out next month, but it sure does make us look forward to that book. Check out the site here.
Posted by
Allan Chochinov | 13 Aug 2009
Juliette LaMontagne has an awesome essay up on Change Observer today discussing the potential role of the cellphone in education. It's hopeful and clear, and for those of you who think that there's no way to make a marriage here, there's just enough to move you to the other side. Here's the pitch:
But advocating for cell phone use in education is about more than cost, sustainability or parity; it's about accessing points of entry. When it comes to technology integration, you need to meet students (and teachers) where they are. When you begin with a tool they already know and love, you're less likely to be met with the kind of resistance you might otherwise get to institutional hardware or software. For teachers, eliminate the fear factor and you've empowered a previously disenfranchised group of self-professed Luddites. For students, who treat the cell phone like an appendage, you're capitalizing on an existing passion for the technology.
and the hit:
We design inquiry-based curricula that send students out into the world to investigate, collect, report, reflect and engage. In doing so, students gain a sense of themselves as producers of knowledge. They become part of a continuous learning loop of inputs and outputs mediated by teacher and student alike. With basic mobile functions like voice, text and camera coupled with web 2.0 technologies, students' knowledge can be shared locally and globally, all the while developing critical communication and collaboration skills. Audiocasting, photoblogging, polling, surveying and language acquisition are just a few of the activities that utilize mobile devices for learning. These are context-specific opportunities for students to share with authentic and limitless audiences.
Read the whole thing here. (Or better, of course, on your mobile browser!)
Posted by
Allan Chochinov | 5 Aug 2009
So proud to announce the launch of The Prosthetics Project, the completed website for the prosthetic arm design project my SVA graduate class completed last fall. The designer of the site, Jackie Lay, did a fantastic job, and there's a ton of great work to take a look through. Here's the backstory from the site:
During the fall semester of 2009, 21 students embarked on a journey to conduct design work around upper limb prosthetics. Through readings, research, and an incredible group of guest critics including Aimee Mullins, Jon Kuniholm, Frank Wilson and Elliot Washor, the students attempted to put a dent in what may arguably be one of the most daunting design challenges imaginable--to design a better prosthetic arm.
The students took different approaches to the problem: some attacked it directly with mechanical improvements to existing prosthetics. Others offered devices and garments that introduced alternative modalities or provided new functionality. Some students took a more abstract approach, creating formal, often sculptural, gestures as a way to help us think about the notion of 'prosthetic,' while others took an extremely conceptual approach to investigating the paradigms and cultures around prosthetics and amputees.
Many of the projects were targeted at kids, arguing that there may be wider leeway in what would be deemed acceptable to the user. Some of these push the definitions of function, providing devices that are playful and life-affirming. The more sobering investigations in the group try to address the realities of arm amputees--as much as is possible by designers with both limbs.
Celine Bouchez | silver arm
James Yang | The other palm
The project was extremely demanding on the students, who were at turns humbled, discouraged, and ultimately elated with the work. As a design teacher, it was similarly humbling, since this was new territory for me as well and I was unsure how to scope and stage the project. (You can watch my reflections of the project in a talk I gave at the CompostModern conference in San Francisco a few month's back here--lots of anecdotes and asides in that one.) In the end, the results were an inspiration--Aimee Mullins was generous enough to return for the final presentations and remarked that "there was more diverse creative thinking here in 10 weeks than there has been in the field in the past 100 years." Quite a compliment to the students, who were proud...and ready for some sleep after many all-night charrettes.
Top image: Dohun Park
More projects after the jump:
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Posted by
hipstomp | 4 Aug 2009
CartoonSmart.com is offering an online industrial design illustration Flash course "focusing on realistic design using imported textures." After two hours of training you'll apparently be able to bang out the product design above, which is supposed to be a cell phone concept (though if someone pointed that thing at me, I'd duck).
To take the class you need ten bucks, plus a copy of Flash and/or Photoshop.
Posted by
core jr | 4 Aug 2009
Nathan Shedroff, who we interviewed earlier this year, has just released the teaching materials for three design studio courses developed around his popular design books Design is The Problem, Experience Design 1.1 and Making Meaning. Published under a Creative Commons license, the material is free to use, and "meant to help design and business educators teach concepts of sustainability, meaning, and experience design."
Shedroff's taken this to the next level—in addition to syllabi, you can find presentations in three file formats, evaluation criteria guidelines and assignment templates, all ready to go (just fill in the instructor name) but also highly adaptable to changes in the design industry and course context. Definitely worth a look for any design educator, and the rest of us could learn a thing or two as well.
Posted by
Allan Chochinov | 3 Aug 2009
The new Design Observer (ver.3.0) launched over the weekend, adding 2 new properties (Change Observer, and Places) as well as a host of upgrades and contributors (Debbie Millman's archive; Andrew Sloat's videos) to the mix. I love density (my ideal site would have EVERYTHING on the homepage), so I'm digging the front, but make sure you spend some time looking around the new sections (Julie Lasky's got a great dialog with Kurt Andersen and Douglas Rushkoff).
Posted by
Niti Bhan | 29 Jul 2009
Yesterday afternoon, instead of sitting down to complete a research paper due for a conference later this year, I suddenly found myself embroiled in an intense conversation about the nexus of design thinking, sustainable innovation and the fuzzy front end. Lotta Hassi of Decode Research group wondered out loud why there weren't any definitions available of design thinking and I couldn't resist piping up. An instant best friendship was born. While some might think of bananas, this experience best describes what its really like to be sitting at Aalto University's Design Factory. You never know when someone will want talk about business or design or technology or simply the challenges of innovating in today's uncertain times.
continued...
Posted by
hipstomp | 28 Jul 2009
As an Industrial Design college student, the only chance I had to interact with Architecture--or Architorture, as they called it--students was when something in their shop broke and they came to use ours. They'd come in, bang out a couple cuts on the tablesaw and go back to their holes. We saw each other at parties, sure, but by then we were all too burnt-out to discuss our projects and the only structures we collaborated on were beer-can pyramids.
Changing times? The Georgia Institute of Technology's College of Architecture is currently looking at restructuring their curriculum, to foment more interaction between Architecture, Industrial Design and Building Construction students.
The proposed changes include a massive overhaul of Tech's undergraduate program to prepare students for a fast-changing work force. A new bachelor of science in design would replace the current undergraduate degrees in architecture, building construction and industrial design.
The idea is to have a sort of second Foundation Year, this one "focusing more on real-world problems and situations within architecture, construction and industrial design," keeping students together for a bit longer before breaking them into their separate disciplines, and hopefully fostering greater understanding of each other's fields.
So far the plan is received mixed reviews; read all about it here.
Posted by
Marcia Caines | 24 Jul 2009
image Solomon Benjamin
In an article entitled Service Design for India: the thinking behind the design of a local curriculum, Professor Soumitri Varadarajan shares his experience of designing a service design curriculum for an Indian University. In a detailed and personal account that begins in India in the 1970s, he unravels the thinking behind his proposal for a contemporary service design course in India, where the location of consumption is out in the field, embedded in the community and its voices.
His curriculum is based on the notion that design is "primarily a dematerialized practice - where technology constituted an instrumentality of this practice". Professor Varadarajan's premise is to achieve with service design what traditional product design failed to do i.e. improve the quality of life of India's unserved poor by incorporating two key approaches to service design - Design for the Service Sector and Design of Public Services. The result is a master's course in design for field workers to acquire design abilities, and for designers who wish to work in the field, which will go through a consultation process later this year.
Here below are the basic principles of his course:
To locate the practice in the field or among the people – creating a link between design and sociology.
To use Ethnography as the primary research method and consultation as the primary design practice.
To replace the 'client' with 'Community'.
To create projects as campaigns to benefit society.
To involve designers in converting their knowledge orientations to align it to the greater community need.
To keep the structure of design education familiar to India.
To substitute technical methodology by engaging with materials and processes.
To adopt a social method that engages people and their practices.
To create a system "under which every teacher appointed would be attached to more than one School or Centre".
To apply a multidisciplinary teaching practice where teachers from the disciplines of Design, Technology, Management and Social science teach into the course.
Read the full article on the Re-public:re-imagining democracy website.
Posted by
Niti Bhan | 22 Jul 2009
John Emerson of Backspace, a design consultancy dedicated to research, development, and promotion of design in the public interest, maintains a great blog called Social Design Notes. Today he posts, for the edification of us all, a list of design manifestos going back a hundred years:
Since the days of radical printer-pamphleteers, design and designers have a long history of fighting for what's right and working to transform society. The rise of the literary form of the manifesto also parallels the rise of modernity and the spread of letterpress printing.
* 1909 Futurist Manifesto
* 1922 Taller de Grafica Popular Manifesto of the Painters' Union
* 1923 Topology of Typography, El Lissitzky
* 1923 The New Typography, László Moholy-Nagy - a call for design against the bourgeois, in support of the proletariat.
* 1959 The journal "New Graphic Design," though not explicitly a manifesto, called for a radical rethinking of design along more scientific lines.
* 1964 First Things First
* 1971 La coscienza del designer, by Albe Steiner
* 1978 Atlante Secondo Lenin- not so much a design manifesto, as a designed manifesto. The innovative infographics visualize theories for gaining power.
* 1983 The Free Software announcement, later clarified in 1985's GNU Manifesto
* 1987 Design memorandum. Dall'etica del progetto al progetto dell'etica.
* 1989 Carta del progetto grafico
* 1991 The Function of the Graphic Designer, Pierre Bernard
* 1996 Viewer's Declaration of Independence
* 1998 Ne Pas Plier statement
* 1998 People's Communication Charter
* 2000 First Things First update - not just about advertising this time, but setting new values.
* 2000 Bruce Mau's Incomplete Manifesto for Growth (though I thought Dean Allen did a tidy job of demolishing this.)
* 2001 AIAP, diseno etica e comunicazione
* 2001 Socialist Designer's Manifesto - a series of ideologically driven limitations along the lines of Dogme 95.
* 2002 First Declaration of the St. Moritz Design Summit
* 2004 The Free Culture Manifesto
* 2006 The Public Role of the Graphic Designer
* 2006 Owner's Manifesto, The Maker's Bill of Rights
* 2008 Metahaven, White Night Before A Manifesto
* 2009 The Repair Manifesto from Platform21
[since he's taken the trouble to link to those he could find online, I'm not going to do that here, click through for his list of resources]
Posted by
hipstomp | 17 Jul 2009
The economy still sucks, so what better time to go back to school, or at least take a workshop?
If it's the latter you're after, you could do a lot worse than the upcoming workshops held in Italy with design legends Ross Lovegrove and Chris Bangle:
"Luminocity"
Workshop with Ross Lovegrove
11th September – 17th September 2009
"Future Personal Emotional Mobility"
Workshop with Chris Bangle
18th September – 24th September 2009
This unique design experience will allow participants from all over the world to work in close contact with two of the most innovative designers of the current scene. Participation to the workshop is open to candidates who have a degree from schools / universities of design or professionals with significant experience and skills in design.
Beside the workshop there will be the possibility to visit exhibitions and design show-rooms to make the stay in Milan even more exciting.
Click here for more information.
Posted by
Allan Chochinov | 7 Jul 2009
On Design Observer today, William Drenttel posted a piece reflecting on his visit to Alabama, with intersections with H.E.R.O. (Hale Empowerment and Revitalization Organization), Project M, Americorps, and some other good folks. (Project M will be coming to Winterhouse this summer; I will be lucky enough to be a guest critic.) The piece is reflective with just a teaspoonful of the critical, and has great links throughout. Here's a taste:
Hale County is ripe to become a national center for design research into rural poverty. It is uniquely positioned, given the convergence of design disciplines already in place there, the consequence of these initial efforts by architects and designers who have already established deep roots in the local communities. To be fair, conflicts may well arise: so many designers working in one zone will raise questions of identity and turf; local communities may be confused by an unexplained and sudden influx of do-gooders; new work inherently raises political issues about existing racial and political structures; and the current focus on housing and architecture does not expand design input to other potentially critical needs in the realm of healthcare, education or social services.
Read the whole post here.
Posted by
core jr | 7 Jul 2009
The School of Visual Arts in New York City will add a Master of Professional Studies in Branding to their degree offerings beginning fall of 2010. Focusing on "the intellectual link between leadership and creativity", the department was co-conceived by core-friends Debbie Millman and Steven Heller.
The one-year, 36-credit curriculum will offer a unique course of study in four distinct but related disciplines: cultural anthropology, behavioral psychology, commerce and creativity. Students will gain a broad understanding of branding as taught in leading MBA programs including diverse branding strategies, brand valuation, and brand development life cycle. Areas of study will include brand theory, cultural and behavioral science and market research methodologies. Courses will explore package design, cross-cultural demographics and corporate-level discourse. Through a summer thesis project, students will develop and launch a real world brand, either with an existing organization or as a sole proprietor.
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Posted by
Allan Chochinov | 3 Jul 2009
Valerie Casey reminded me to reread Paul Hawken's commencement address given at the University of Portland on May 3rd. It is impossible to pick the best sections here; the speech builds upon itself in the most beautiful way, and seems blasphemous to pick out any one or two paragraphs to paste right here.
Get inspired. Read the speech now.
Posted by
Mark Vanderbeeken | 29 Jun 2009
Design education is not keeping pace with the growing demand for new design professionals able to operate in a range of service-based environments.
The paper, Social Animals: tomorrow's designers in today's world by Sophia Parker, published by the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA), argues that design education is still largely hinged on industrial principles.
Students need to be equipped with a broader range of research and communication skills, alongside their more traditional design skills, and encouraged to think more laterally about the sites and spaces where these could be used.
The report outlines six challenges for design educators.
via Dexigner
Posted by
Mark Vanderbeeken | 24 Jun 2009
Why is it important to bring students of different expertise and from different disciplines together for creating 'good ideas'? This is the fundamental question that Professor Jayanta Chatterjee from the Indian Institute of Technology (ITT) has tackled at the Design Factory of Helsinki's new Aalto University since March '09.
During his sabbatical year, Professor Chatterjee's aim is to develop a manifesto for problem-based learning. Chatterjee has previous experience of project-based and problem-based learning, as well as student-centric learning from various courses in India.
The Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur recently designated an area at the campus for the creation of a Design Village where students may interact with local people, respond creatively to societal needs and ground their solutions in local realities while thinking globally.
>> Read article
Posted by
Mark Vanderbeeken | 23 Jun 2009
Becky Bermont, Vice President, Media + Partners at the Rhode Island School of Design, explores in her latest column for the Harvard Business Publishing blog the foundational tools that designers employ to do their work and wonders what kind of applicability those have to business.
"I see now that designers are people who can make information emotional and visceral, who can make a bigger impact by thoughtfully marrying form and content. They are "experience perfectionists," the ones who always ask about the space a meeting will occur in so they can arrange the room and have music or images playing when people walk in. They are obsessed with materials; they can have a completely literate and thoughtful conversation about the width of a rubber band being used as a book binding, and how it will change the way the book is perceived."
>> Read article
Posted by
core jr | 19 Jun 2009
@designersaccord is a great source of information and provocation on all things (and practice) sustainable. Won't overwhelm your client, and will give you some great links, inside info on upcoming events, and new content on the site. Adopters and lurkers all welcome!
Posted by
core jr | 15 Jun 2009
Seymour Chwast will be in conversation with Steve Heller tomorrow night to launch a new Chronicle book, "Seymour". There are still tix available, so if you're in town you won't want to miss this.
URL: http://www.aigany.org/events/details/09SC/
Tuesday 16 June 2009
6:30–8:30PM
SVA Theatre
333 West 23rd St.
New York, NY 10011
DUTCH DESIGN WEEK 2009
PRAGUE DESIGN DAYS 2009
LONDON DESIGN FESTIVAL 2009
GIZMODO GALLERY 2009
EUROBIKE 2009
MAKER FAIRE AFRICA
NEW YORK INTERNATIONAL GIFT FAIR
ISTANBUL DESIGN WEEKEND 2009
BAUHAUS SUMMER SCHOOL 2009
