Sustainability notwithstanding, the disposable mobile phone is certainly a practical solution for emergencies, travel, children and disaster relief. Insofar as these are the applications of any disposable phone, they're listed as "Use Cases" on SpareOne's website; the true innovation behind the device lies in its shelf life of 15 years, courtesy of a single AA battery.
Of course, the most salient innovation of the SpareOne lies in NextOfKin Creatives' unconventional design, which features the mundane portable power source in lieu of a screen. Rodney Loh of the Singapore design firm explains: "When PSL and XPAL approached Thomas [Tellier] and myself at NextOfKin Creatives to strategize this spare phone idea, we knew immediately that it has to be simple and 'life-proof.' The archetype of a screen was logically used to showcase and glorify this simple but iconic long-lasting AA battery."
According to the website, SpareOne is "the only cell phone in the world powered by a standard AA battery." The lifetime of the charge, if the device goes unused, is effectively the shelf life of the battery (the 15 hour figure comes from the Energizer Ultimate Lithium L91, which yields up to 10 hours of talk time).
We all know fluorescent bulbs flicker; wave your hand in front of one and you see the stroboscopic effect. And even though the lights can flicker faster than the human eye can detect, it can still cause problems: "Although humans cannot see fluorescent lights flicker, the sensory system in some individuals can somehow detect the flicker," says a 1989 lighting research study on the topic. "Ever since fluorescent lighting was introduced in workplaces, there have been complaints about headaches, eye strain and general eye discomfort." I'm wondering if this recent Li-Fi technology will cause the same problem.
Hopefully not, because Li-Fi is a really neat idea that essentially promises to replace your wireless router with a simple (LED) lightbulb that does double duty, both illuminating your room and sneakily transmitting data. By cycling the light on and off faster than we can see, it produces binary. And binary, of course, is data. It's basically fiber optics without the fiber, relying instead on line-of-sight. And it works: Li-Fi researchers at the University of Edinburgh led by Li-Fi pioneer Harald Haas have already transformed standard LED bulbs into 130-megabit-per-second routers.
Touchfoil is a proprietary technology that is designed to turn any large area of glass—a retail display window was their inspiration—into a "huge interactive surface that behaves just like the latest tablet devices." The transparent film can be fitted (or retrofitted) to the inside or underside of any nonmetallic surface to transform it into a touchscreen.
Cambridge, UK-based materials specialists Visualplanet have been refining their flagship product for over a decade now: since the initial release in 2003, "thousands of touchfoils™ have been successfully installed worldwide in public spaces; such as premium brand retail shop windows, office reception areas, bus shelters, street kiosks, tourist information booths and even bathroom mirrors."
Last week saw the launch of their latest product...
Architect-turned-interaction-designer Nitipak "Dot" Samsen first caught our attention a couple years ago, when he'd just completed his MA in Design Interactions at the Royal College of Art. For the 2009 thesis show, he exhibited series of coin flippers, a diverting exercise in iteration and probability if nothing else.
For his latest project, he's shifted his attention from the element of chance to a sort of economic determinism, exploring the hypothetical evolution of currency in the near future.
The short film TRAIL$, produced as part of Samsen's award-winning project "The Money Trailer," is an all-too-timely tale of capitalism in the digital age:
From the UK comes this robot designed with whiskers to "feel" its way around, or towards, obstacles. Maybe it's just me, but seeing the insectoid way this thing reacts totally creeps me out. Take a look:
Earlier today, video sharing site Vimeo announced that they will be rolling out features of the "new Vimeo," their first site redesign since 2007, with a private testing period in anticipation of a public launch in several weeks. As sometime users of the site, we're fans of Vimeo's clean interface and they've retained their overall aesthetic with a host (a "zillion," per their announcement) of minor tweaks; the biggest update to the actual viewing experience is a double-size full-width video player.
Similarly, they've reaffirmed their commitment to high-quality user-generated content with new privacy features, a batch uploader, and even "a new section that enables users to browse videos that are subject to Creative Commons licenses." Additional search filters—"by relevancy, length, credits, copyright license," etc.—and streamlined social features—"following," in keeping with current trends—also represent user experience improvements.
Nevertheless, the most significant upgrades are largely technical:
Vimeo rebuilt the site from the ground up using current programming languages and open web standards to deliver optimized site performance and easier, faster browsing. The cleaner codebase allows for more rapid development so the team can release site updates and new features in less time.
New York City welcomes Webvisions this week, a 3-day conference to explore the future of design, content creation, user experience and business strategy. Webvisions kicked off yesterday with a series of workshops covering topics from building HTML5 games to Adaptive Web Design. Conference goers ranged from hard-core developers to visual designers and the workshops seemed to offer something for everyone.
Three morning workshops held simultaneously initiated the conference. Aaron Gustafson led Adaptive Web Design, guiding us through different ways to think about how a site works in a variety of browsers, on a range of devices.
Small teams set out to define the information hierarchy with a single content set on four different devices: an iPhone, a 7" tablet, a 10" tablet, and a desktop computer. Gustafson questioned our placement navigation on a mobile device, asking, "Would it be better for the user if the nav was as the bottom of the page, after they looked at all the content and are ready to move to another area?"
Gustafson introduced us to Progressive Enhancement (PE), a methodology that encourages web developers to tackle issues based on each user-agent. PE follows the principle of starting with a strong default foundation and if a user-agent can handle it, the developer can add enhancements to improve the experience.
Gustafson is passionate about about this, "Progressive Enhancement isn't about browsers. Browsers and technology come and go. You have to think about your users," he says.
The Interaction gurus at the Foundry research group of London's Mint Digital are pleased to announce that their brainchild—or nosechild, as it were—"Olly" is now available through a Kickstarter campaign.
We made a big stink (and yes, a lot of puns) about it last fall, when they first unveiled the device, which is programmed to emit a scent as a cue for a web notification. The USB-connected object, which consists of an Arduino hooked up to a 12V fan within a simple white injection-molded enclosure, starts at $50.
If only there was a way to add a compelling olfactory element to the pitch (after the jump)...
This year, California-based Ekso Bionics will begin shipping their eponymous product, a robotic exoskeleton that will enable paraplegics to do the unthinkable: Walk. New York's Mount Sinai Hospital and other rehabilitation clinics in the U.S. and Europe are expected to purchase commercial models once performance and reliability trials are cleared--trials overseen, interestingly enough, by America's Food & Drug Administration.
Ekso Bionics began as Berkeley Bionics in 2005, and early military cooperation helped the firm produce the HULC, a militarized version of the exoskeleton designed to help able-bodied soldiers tirelessly lug heavy payloads through rugged terrain. Lockheed Martin (whose somewhat creepy company motto is "We Never Forget Who We're Working For") licensed the technology in 2009, freeing the company now known as Ekso to begin focusing on its civilian version. The company's work has since earned it a 2012 Edison Award nomination.
It's hard not to be moved by the video of an early product tester, a woman who has not walked since sustaining a spinal injury nearly 20 years ago. For some reason Ekso has rendered the video unembeddable, but it can be freely viewed here.
By now, you might've already looked over the five winning entries in the Fast Track to the Mobile App design competition, and seen the list of the 95 finalists who impressed judges with their combination of practical, creative and fun concepts. Over the next month, we'll follow the winners as they pair up with developers to turn those designs into workable apps.
Three winners (Black Belt, Bridge, and car pal+) will be paired with well-known Windows Phone developers or MVPs (Most Valuable Professional) who expressed an affinity to work on a specific winning app. Two of the winners (Social Mints and Rhythmatic) will be doing their own development. Winners and finalists will be connected to a Microsoft Mobile Phone Champ—Windows Phone mavens who are developers in the winners' regions with intimate knowledge of the ins-and-outs of app building, to help them along. Then, it's on to making a to-do list of necessary steps to ready their designs for launch in the Windows Phone Marketplace by February 15th. We want to encourage everyone who entered the contest to go through as much of the app development process as they can to bring their proposals to life. In this special series, we'll be exploring that process as the winners prepare their apps for entry into the Windows Phone Marketplace.
No one really seems to actually know what the vaguely named Motorola Solutions does, but Frank Lawlor is working to change that. As Global Brand Creative Director, Lawlor is taking Motorola Solutions from misunderstood anonymity to a company known for developing cutting-edge public safety and industrial communications... as well as bad-ass police cars.
Judging from Lawlor's case study, he had his work cut out for him when rebranding Motorola Solutions. The old identity was centered around cheesy, staged photographs that look culled from a stock images website, while the supporting graphics are more like sci-fi interpretations than reality.
The new collection of videos and photographs supporting the rebranded identity works quite well. Lawlor describes the goal as developing a "design language that tells a powerful story of a company that has been 'helping people in the moments that matter' for over 80 years." The working man/woman is the centerpiece of the campaign, focusing on real situations, not sexy ones. Likewise, communications and radios are not terribly sexy technologies, so it makes sense to play them up as the backbones of public safety departments.
Jon Pope's eponymous design firm helps companies such as John Deere, Timberjack, and Gehl create cutting-edge cabs and exteriors for a whole range of construction equipment. Their renderings, though, are the true gem.
Among the more standard pieces of super duty construction equipment, Pope Design also has some really great (and out-there) concepts, like this scissoring Straddle Carrier for shipping containers.
On January 5th, the Rhode Island School of Design will be kicking off their inaugural Presidential Speaker Series "Shared Voices" with a presentation from Juan Enriquez, who researches the impact of genomics on society. His talk "Decoding with Life Code" will explore the newest innovations in digital fabrication: building with genes.
Some principles of design are timeless, but a new language, that of digital code, has fundamentally changed how we make, spread, use drawings, paintings, sculpture, music, photos, video, and film. Now a vast new programming language is becoming increasingly available and widespread, that of life. We can now read, copy and re code life, and this too will fundamentally change how we think of, and how we execute, design...
The rest of the "Shared Voices" line-up currently includes Lisa Randall, a particle physicist at Harvard and an advocate for the "art-science connection in our lives," and Kevin Kelly, co-founder of Wired magazine. Each of the speakers are "a master of his or her domain but is also ready to transcend it." Group discussions will take place after the lectures.
Juan Enriquez's talk is at 7:30pm on Thursday, January 5th in the RISD auditorium, so be sure to reserve your seats here!
Following our series on the story of the modern desk lamp, we now look at what Jake Dyson intends to be the desk lamp of the future—literally: His CSYS LED Task Light is designed with "thermal management" technology designed to prolong the life of its bulb for some 37 years. Unsurprisingly for a Dyson, the technology consists of a vacuum that sucks the heat away from the bulb.
But while that's cool, the far cooler feature is the way the lamp articulates, versus the traditional desk lamp. I myself own a variant on the Anglepoise, mine being a cheapie imitation from IKEA that I use to illuminate the workbench where I do motor repairs and the like. I have it mounted to a fixture in the wall to provide added height, and I find the swing-arm invaluable for getting light into projects from various angles. Unfortunately, the springs wear over time, losing elasticity and necessitating the ugly rubber band fix you see here.
Dyson's CSYS, in contrast, operates with these wicked rollers combined with rotating and telescoping actions.
Sure, everyone's seen the space shuttle before. And NASA's newest moon buggy ride is yesterday's news. So what's NASA's greatest kept transportation secret? Why, the mobile lounge, of course!
Originally built for use with general aircraft, the mobile lounge is mounted on a scissor truck and was used when astronauts disembarked the space shuttle after a mission. The vehicles were designed by Chrysler and were ironically nicknamed "moon buggies" due to their appearance. In this rather uneventful video, you can watch the mobile lounge in action:
GE has put together a quick video with the perfect combination of elements: factories, gorgeous cinematography, and radio-controlled helicopters. Take a trip through a diverse range of manufacturing plants, from giant MRI magnets to regal locomotives to flat-bed trucks with two-story claws holding onto jet engines. You can't make this stuff up. All we can say is, 3D IMAX movie!
Here on Core77, we love to give you a run-down in the best-designed modes of transportation in a wide-range of categories: everything from bicycles to mobile disaster-response HQs to (fictional) Nazi submarines. This time around we thought we'd show you some of the latest high-fashion naval ship designs:
1. Independence-Class Littoral Combat Ship
With the Independence-class, the US Navy is making a move towards developing a fleet that can operate closer to shore in the littoral zone, supporting amphibious operations. The trimaran design is giving us a bit of Waterworld fever, but apparently the triple hull increases stability and passenger comfort. The vast internal space allows the ship to support interchangeable mission modules, Strykers, and Humvees. The last time we saw something this cool, James Bond blew it up. The US Navy already has one of these toys to play with and another one on its way.
2. Skjold-Class Patrol Boat
The Skjold-class patrol boat is the combination of a whole mess of technologies: a surface effect is generated between the two catamaran hulls, reducing the effects of waves on the low-drag profile. Currently operated by the Norwegian Navy, the US Navy once leased one of the craft a decade ago. Honestly, the shape of the Skjold looks rather like a floating brick, but a rather vicious and striking floating brick at that.
At Autodesk University's Creative Studio exhibit, we received an awesome video demonstration of 123D Catch, a piece of PC-only software that allows you to turn snapshots into detailed virtual 3D models. Our demonstrator walked around a real model of R2-D2, shot photos from multiple angles, then dropped those images into the computer. Autodesk's server farm in the cloud then crunched the numbers, and a few moments later an insanely detailed 3D model appeared on screen. The whole process, start to finish, was about five minutes of doing and ten minutes of waiting for the cloud-crunching.
Sadly, a technical error rendered our video unusable. But we don't want you to miss out on the software—it's currently in beta and available for free download at the link above—so here's the canned demo video. (You can skip the filler and start watching at 0:35.)
The demonstration at Autodesk University of Perceptive Pixel's Multi-Touch 82-incher has blown your socks off, but some of you are undoubtedly wondering what the tech would look like in a more manageable size. Like, say, a 27-inch desktop monitor that you could comfortably sit and draw on.
Wonder no more, here it is. Check out how the demonstrator starts drawing at 1:40 in the video, enabled by Perceptive Pixel's nifty "palm rejection" technology:
When we saw mad scientist Saul Griffith take the stage at Autodesk University's Technology Mainstage, we knew we had to score a video interview. (We'd written about him here and here but had never met the man.) Among other companies, Griffith co-founded Otherlab, an "Engineering, energy, education, math, computation, design" firm with a host of inventions that are probably going to change the world. One of Otherlab's current projects involves pioneering "Pneubotics"—soft, inflatable robots actuated by compressed air.
Here's the basic idea:
That was just a finger. Here's an entire arm and what it can do:
Every year at the Autodesk University Exhibit Hall we see at least one piece of technology that blows us away. This year's socks-knocker-offer was Perceptive Pixel's 82" Multi-Touch Display, which was frequently mobbed and saw company founder Jeff Han endlessly being forced to provide demo after demo to enthusiastic crowds. (There were 8,000 attendees, so you do the math.) The display, by the way, is so large that we swear the tireless Han started getting a tan by the third day.
What's different about this new version of Perceptive Pixel's display is that it combines Multi-Touch with stylus-reading capacity, making this an industrial designer's dream come true. Check it out:
Stay tuned for coverage of Perceptive Pixel's desktop unit.
The Interwebosphere has been abuzz with news about the very device that may spell—or rather, print—its unmaking: earlier this week, London-based design consultancy Bergunveiled their latest innovation, the Little Printer. The desktop device is roughly the size of a cube of Post-It notes, configured to produce a receipt-sized analogue for a newspaper featuring personalized content culled from the otherwise never-ending newsfeeds that all but define the Information Age.
Little Printer lives in your front room and scours the Web on your behalf, assembling the content you care about into designed deliveries a couple of times a day. You configure Little Printer from your phone, and there's some great content to choose from—it's what Little Printer delivers that makes it really special.
In other words, Berg has taken the burgeoning, buzzword-y, possibly made-up notion of 'content curation' to the next level with the Little Printer, which produces a personalized physical document—at once one-of-a-kind and patently disposable—on a twice-daily publishing schedule. The excellent video is set to hit a million views (with your help) within a week of going live:
Of course, the real—in every sense of the word—appeal of the Little Printer lies in the tactility of its output, which transmogrifies two-finger scrolling into a good old-fashioned scroll, of sorts, an escrow in the original sense. It's not so much that we've been desensitized by touchscreens; rather, we're accustomed to them, and the effect of seeing content that is commonly presented under glass (literally) writ small is charming, if not altogether refreshing. Hence, Berg's characterization of the Little Printer as "more like a family member or a colleague than a tool."
Before you ask, it's scheduled to launch in 2012; more on the tech and an exclusive Q&A with Berg Principal Matt Webb after the jump...
Frank Lau, co-founder of Gunner Training and a resident in plastic surgery at Harvard, recently gave a lecture about his philosophy behind medical school education and what the future of education should look like.
Lau described his own course of medical study as a "sisyphean cycle" of having to relearn material dozens of times, often forgetting information immediately after applying it. "A lot of the time I knew what I was doing," quipped Lau, "but sometimes I maybe forgot...so be careful out there!"
Lau continued to elucidate four main challenges to medical education:
1. Teaching Patient Shortages
2. Teacher Shortages
3. Conflicting Institution Systems
4. Financial Problems
Lau ran through proposed solutions, including national medical curriculums, simulations, standardized patients, and the adoption of competency-based education. The latter has students "sit in the classroom just long enough to show you know the material." The individualized system allows brighter students and hard workers to move through the material at a quicker pace than those who need extra help.
The most serious issue, though, is that often students move through medical school absorbing "critical knowledge" just long enough to perform well on tests. Retaining this knowledge, however, is another story entirely. A 2009 study of Basic Life Support (BLS) skills at prestigious Johns Hopkins of 70 pediatrics residents showed that two-thirds failed to start CPR in a timely manner, while the vast majority made errors during defibrillation. When the most highly trained doctors cannot perform skills anyone can learn at their local YMCA—well, then there must be a serious problem with the education system.
"There are a lot of sub-optimal fixes" to this problem, said Lau. "Every few years you hear about some technology revolutionizing education." But this is not the appropriate solution. "What's wrong with education cannot be fixed with technology," said Lau quoting Steve Jobs from an interview over a decade ago. "No amount of technology will make a dent."
With the stage set, Lau proferred his own set of principles which formed the basis of his Gunner Training business:
A talisman is a physical object that purports powers and meaning beyond the physical. Humans have been making talismans for centuries, we are wired to give physical objects meaning. Take for example an engagement ring. A band of metal with a polished stone mounted on it. It has no hard drive, no 4g connection, no moving parts and yet I can't think of another object that has a higher amount of meaning per ounce. It is the physical embodiment of a promise, of a future together. It embodies all the complexities of love, trust and hope in a single object. It is a tribal indicator to all who see it and a reminder to the wearer. Few gestures mean more than putting on an engagement ring.
I believe we have the ability to infuse a measured amount of meaning into more of the things we use everyday. We live in a world of products. Most people don't a own Picasso, nor do they live in a Frank Lloyd Wight home. They do however own watches, wear shoes, use toothbrushes and interact with their phones countless times per day. What would happen if we were able to put one tenth of the meaning from that engagement ring into the most common objects around us? How would that shift our behaviors? How can we expand our process for innovation to include meaning?
We were lucky to get a tour of the Patient Safety Training Center in the basement of the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center (DHMC) in Lebanon, NH. Although the name sounds rather banal, the Center actually operates like a "hospital within a hospital" used for medical simulations. The purpose of the facility is to train any hospital employee who might come in contact with a patient during their stay, whether it's a doctor, a security guard or even a janitor.
Since opening three years ago, the Center has seen between 5,000 to 10,000 educators and trainees pass through each year. The main hallway is lined with a nurses' station and an assortment of rooms, including an ICU, clinic rooms, a neo-natal room and an Emergency Department which can be reconfigured into an operating room. Likewise, each of the various rooms takes on a variety of roles depending on the simulation's needs, akin to a television set. A room used for clinic rotations for Dartmouth Medical School students in the morning might be transformed into, say, a living room for training nurses in home care in the afternoon.
The Patient Safety Training Center has also taken their simulations outside the fake hospital hallway. For the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Advanced Response Team (DHART), the hospital's medical transport helicopter crew, the Center put together a simulation of more theatrical proportions. In order to recreate a fire in the patient compartment of the DHART helicopter, the Center's staff put a helicopter on a moving lift inside the DHART hanger and added in dry ice, recorded sounds, and a strobe light to simulate the spinning rotors. While helicopter fire training sessions may be few and far between, the staff at the Patient Safety Training Center "like to think we can do anything down here."
NeverWet is a truly amazing "superhydrophobic" coating that, once applied, completely repels water. Developed by Ross Nanotechnology, the coating's applications seem endless: It makes things super-easy to clean; it completely prevents rust, as water never actually comes into contact with the surface of the material; it prevents ice from sticking to things like power lines or airplane wings; it even reduces friction of water flowing through pipes coated with the stuff, meaning less energy would be needed to pump that water. Check it out:
DESIGN MIAMI 2011
TOKYO DESIGN WEEK 2011
DUTCH DESIGN WEEK 2011
VIENNA DESIGN WEEK 2011
Reporting by Yin Ho
