Prasad Boradkar, professor at Arizona State, reflecting on the conference.

Prasad often speaks at the IDSA National Education Conferences and if you get a chance you should check out his papers at www.idsa.org (look under "resources" ; "for students and educators").

His work is intelligent, insightful and draws from western social theory and criticism.

This is one that he presented about the iPod.

In catching up on some of the final presentations, here are a few presentation shots from Scott Robertson's Saturday presentation in Vancouver entitled "ID Presentation Tips and a Sneak Peek at Upcoming Design Studio Press Books".

Scott presented some kick-ass renderings from photoshop that are the subject(s) for a handful of his books and dvds. In particular, he showed us renderings and process sketches form "The Skillful Huntsman", "Concept Design I", and "Concept Design II"

The presentation here felt a bit like an infomercial to buy his products (books, dvds, workshops), but it totally worked on me as the quality of the work was quite awesome. He and his Art-Center-days colleagues can certainly impress.

Check out some of his eye candy (his words, not mine) and info on how to obtain his products through:
www.designstudiopress.com
www.drawthrough.com

"Be afraid to die before you've won some victory for humanity"
- Horace Mann

That is a favorite quote of Tucker Viemeister's mom. He says it is our responsibility as designers to make a better world. He says "If you only have ideas and don't make anything, what's the point?" We as designers are the ones that implement ideas into the world, hopefully for good. He showed us some examples of his recent work for Nike and Coca Cola that he did through Spring Time USA. He also showed us a lot of conceptual work like the "People About to Be Liberated By the United States of America Bomb" or PAL USA bomb, it's a canister filled with stuff from the USA that gets dropped on countries about to be taken over, errr, I mean, saved by the USA. It includes things like hot dogs, baseball caps, and bubble gum.

He went on to explain how true innovation doesn't come easy, but after fights, goofs, mistakes, loss of opportunitues, and dead ends, there is a slight chance that a true innovation will emerge.

All of this inspiring talk makes me energized up to go do something super positive for the world and not just dream about it.

Karim Rashid kills nostalgia on Friday.
Dan Formosa brings back nostalgia on Saturday, 1700 B to the C stylee.
His brief history lesson on Zero included how it was invented by the Babylonians in 1700 BC but was never fully accepted until Fibinacci introduced it back again in 1200. Those lonely years without zero was because it was never accepted, Pythagoras tried but I think Dan said he got murdered or something, over math. So anyway, this is all related to design if you think about it. (I'm still thinking about it)

So then he makes this mind blowing statement: technology evolved but industrial design didn't. He used the example above which shows the pocket Regency Radio from 1954 and the iPod in 2005. hmmmmm suspicious in form eh? Dont' worry, it still comes in your favorite flavors:

Which lead to his point he was driving home: that people must be the central focus, not technology. He gave an example of recent history of design starting from the industrial revolution.
It used to be that:
Companies focused on making -> some thing to sell to -> people
Then in the eighties it became:
Companies focused on developing -> technology to sell to-> people
But now that technology is so advanced, and as he puts it "you can only fit so many pixels per inch" before it doesn't matter any more, so if you remove the technology it becomes:
Companies must focus on -> people

It's someting like this:
1930's -> things
1980's -> technology
2005's -> people

For companies to succeed, he says that they can no longer compete on technology or rely on brand. The product itself is what must shine with a focus on people, and his example was the ipod where it is branded by both Apple and HP.

The way Dan's company, Smart Design, did it was through a happy to anger scale used in their research. How happy are you with the product? He says that products need that personal meaning, technology doesn't matter. Happiness is more important than more buttons and features.


In conclusion my understanding is that the Babylonian Gilgamesh is 2/3 God which mean's he is 0.66666666 god, but those 6's go on forever, that means infinite, and infinite and zero are concepts designed by human beings to communicate, Dan has a Ph.D and we do not. Thank you.

Ko covered Cat Chow, the Chicago-based conceptual fashion designer, earlier but i thought I would add a couple more pics and thoughts:

- Cat Chow's fashion work seems to focus on repetition of elements, meticulous details, and purity of concept, with amazing results.

- Some of my favorite designs were her measuring tape dress (a dress made out of woven measuring tapes) and of course the $1 bill dress (1000 donated $1 bills, shredded and restitched).

- She was comissioned to make a dress for Nokia out of cell phone front faces... And what did she name it? "Cell Out"

- Cat Chow talking about her amazing chainmail dresses: "I worked in a chainmail store for a while... and I asked them to pay me in rings...

- I recommend checking out her website for more visuals-- Cat-Chow.com.

Cat Chow dropping science.

A detail of her amazing zipper-dress-- a dress made entirely out of one continuous piece of zipper tape!

So, Tucker Viemeister comes up to me and is like, "Hey, you want to go see the oldest corn patch in America?"

"Um, yes."

Click here to listen to Tucker Viemeister, an industrial design icon: co-founder of Smart Design! founder of the NYC office of frog design! and now head of Springtime USA!

We talk about corn patches, where the name Smart Design came from, secret projects, China, etc. etc. It's about 11 minutes/4MB.

Barry Wylant, professor at University of Calgary, gave an insightful look not into enduring design as objects, but instead enduring design theory. His talk focused on the early 20th century work of Italian Futurism.

He focused on the "ruthless wonderment" of the futurists' fascination and intimate connection with technology. He compared Marinetti's (father of Futurism) seminal encounter with an automobile crash to Ballard's 1973 novel and subsequent 1990's movie "Crash" with James Spader. In the movie the erotic potential of technology and the failure of that technology -- car crashes -- demonstrate this techno-lust.

He suggests that this "almost religious" relationship with technology is still prevalent today. Along the way he also introduced the continuum between wonderment and banality (from Heidegger), suggesting that the continual quest for wonderment is a manic endeavor. This leads to the question for all designers regarding "the appropriateness of wonderment" in relation to technology.

Katherine Bennett, IDSA VP of Education and Art Center faculty member, began her provocative talk with a photo of a toilet brush with disposable heads. She reminded us of the fact that this is the majority of the industrial design that is being done. And she suggests that this is not a bad thing. Indeed it is meeting some need of many, as it is a huge seller.

She questioned whether designers have a quiet contempt for low-end, mainstream products: "Do we know what these users want -- do we even want to design for them?"

She then focused on the magnificent body of work by Eva Zeisel and told stories of her visits with the 93-year-old designer. Bennett focused on Zeisel's words: "Design is a benevolent gift of love" from the designer to the user.

By designers taking an elitist stance and giving short shrift to the unglamorous design assignments, they are not truly giving these "benevolent gifts of love."

The gist of the talk was that the world depends on design to create objects that respect their banal, mainstream needs and desires. As designers we need to "get over ourselves, stop designing to impress our friends, and focus on what matters."

In the early afternoon we all pile into the auditorium for a Karim webcast via the Midwest Conference in Urbana-Champaign. This is already blogged by Ko, but since it is Mr. Rashid speaking I can't help but add in my 2 cents in here...

In attempting to succinctly convey the subject matter of Karim's talk, the thing that comes to mind is that I have no idea what the hell he was talking about. Although, the one thing that is apparent is that I do know he was not talking about enduring design.

In trying to structure a blog on this talk and make some sense of his story, I take notes. But just as he says he is going to talk about/explain one thing he jumps to a completely tangential topic. He seemed to begin many thoughts, and then not finish them. His talk was scattered, to say the least. And nothing he said was in any way insightful or novel.

He begun with a failed attempt to define design, went on to discuss consumption (unsuccessfully), said he would come back to consumption, and never did as far as I could tell.

Here's some stuff i took from the talk:

inspiration.
what inspires him in terms of the world in which we live?
- "materials"
- "digital tools that allow new forms of decoration"
- "the way we produce goods"

design of the time.
If he were to live in the future he would want to know what 2005 was really like? "What denotes the time in which we live?" "Not Plaid" - he says. It was clear that he does NOT think plaid defines our time - I think he is right about this one.

globalization is happening.
He thinks that our world is shrinking... "What will differentiate what gets produced in one country from another?"

we need differentiation.
"How will we differentiate ourselves?" within the global marketplace.

the casual age.
He thinks we are living in "the casual age". (perhaps he is living in the casual age, as he makes $10,000 for an hour long talk that sucks. I think if this were true for me, I'd be living in the casual age too). "It is important to me (him). It is now here. What is it? A world that is more relaxed and seemless. A world where you have more time to think and participate in culture." (I am skeptical that he knows what culture means.)

customization is happening.
"Mass production and non-serialization - the digital craft"
Instead of creating the same object - how can we create 'craft' (one-offs) with mass production techniques? "We can begin to create very, very diverse things."

some other good quotes:
"designocracy movement."
"the one language we have globally is the binary language ...a language of 0's and 1's."
"I would like to live in a life with less and less obstacles."
"... the technology is very seamless... this is what I desire."
"He believes that design is about shaping the contemporary world that we live in."

In commenting on his relevance to enduring design... Eames had a good quote last night that stated Charles Eames philosophy on design: "The degree to which one has a style, is the degree to which one has NOT solved the design problem." I would enjoy hearing Karim's response to this comment.

I think Karim should stick to his blobjects, and leave philosophical blather to better-read, more-articulate members of the design community.

[Editor: Watch the streamed webcast here.]

Julie Lasky (ID Magazine) + Davin Stowell (Smart Design) + Eric Chan (ECCO Design) + Manuel Saez (HumanScale) + Walter Herbst (HLB) = an awful lot of ideas.

Davin
"People don't want photographs, they want to share memories with their friends."
(reminiscent of Starck's "People don't want lamps, they want light." And yet we keep making lamps and photo printers.)

"We don't have very many clients coming to us saying 'You know, we don't really have a deadline. And you know, just bill us when you're done.'"

"The rest of the world has designers, and they're just as good as you and will do it for a lot less money." (those of you who've been following along will recognize this as a recurring theme)

"A brand is nothing more than a memory of an experience."

Eric
"The world is the factory now." (third time this weekend someone has referenced Thomas Friedman's recent NY Times magazine essay)

"People care about their own actions before thinking about a company profile."

"People are ready to pay more." (examples: Prius, American Apparel, Whole Foods)

Walter
"We're all anxious about competing in a world where there's so much free and low-cost design."

"Go to the printer aisle at Office Depot and what do you see? It's all grey, it's all pretty good, but it's all just stuff."

And for the 1253rd time: "We buy experiences not objects."

"But what's beyond experience is tribal identification." (example: the Roomba robot vacuum -- not that it vacuums better, but that it makes you one of the Hi-Tech Early Adopter tribe)

"I don't really give a damn what my client thinks....The reason I say that is, I'm not in the business of making things for my client, I make things for the market. If you're going to tell me you like pink and green, that's fine, but unless you're gonna buy the entire run, I'm going to do what the market is telling us."

Remember November 7, 2000? The fateful day when the voting system failed us, bad design failed us, which ultimately lead to the court determining who won the US election? The ballots in Florida that failed to count each citizen's vote was a failure on design, which failed humanity. Design For Democracy is about to bring true democracy to the United States by bringning good design to the voting system.

Steven Melamed, from Tres Design is a member of the board of directors for Design for Democracy, an all volunteer non-profit organization.
They are solving problems through graphic design, industrial design, and interaction design. They are redesigning the entire voting systems with grants awarded by the government. One such example is the instruction manuals for election judges at the voting centers that explains setting up the the voting machines. They reduced a complicated 10 step instruction booklet to 4 steps. There was also a law whcih stated that the names on voting punch cards had to be written in all-capital letters. Steve and his organization were able to change laws like this so that the entire voting system is easier and more intuitive to use for voters.

Their success has lead to more opportunities - including education. They are exhibiting the new designs that were made for the state of Illinois, Oregon, and Maryland in the Smithsonian. This August they will be part of an exhibit at the Pompidou center in Paris. The international impact that US elections have had will certainly interest the global populace how our voting system will be improved. Design for Democracy is looking for volunteers to design and participate in this problem that affects the entire world.

I'm going to rant for a moment.

John Hamilton from Steelcase just finished talking about the Think chair. The same Think chair that was presented at last year's Design:Green workshop in New York, the same Think chair featured in Metropolis Magazine recently, the same Think Chair that has its own mini website extolling its sustainable virtues and multiple awards.

I think the chair is great. As John and all of the above sources will inform you, it's designed for disassembly in 5 minutes, is almost completely recyclable and had enormous though put into its environmental impact in production and disposal.

It is, however, a showpiece. While Steelcase does have an excellent track record in taking environmental impact into account across the board, it's interesting that the Think chair is the only one they seem to talk about in terms of sustainability. The website gives you a whole section relating environmental details on the Think, and a few of their other chairs, but there's clearly been some picking and choosing as to which are their "green" chairs and which ones aren't.

...you are taking up too much room."

Native American saying quoted by Mary McBride (Columbia University) in her presentation on ethics and design strategies.

Her talk was on design as a risk management tool, "a way to shape or sabotage the future." Business is risk adverse and doesn't like the uncertainties of dwindling natural resources and changing environments, but they haven't learned better practices.
Designers can use this risk aversion and lead the way to more ecologically and socially sound products and processes. But designers too have to change the practice of design: think more long-term about materials and think about life cycles and process flow.

More socially conscious companies talk about the "triple bottom line": profits, people, planet. Design can encourage this. You could think of it as an obligation to help heal all the damage done by bad design.

Dress with linked dollars.

There's always a debate about design vs art, but in fashion, there is no longer a debate, fashion is art. Cat Chow creates wearable art with materials not intended for fashion. Astro turf, industrial washers, and dollar bills are not off limits but instead is an inspiration that fuels her hands on approach to her designs.
She showed her work in the presentation along with other artists work that inspires her. Fashion designers and artists likes Paco Rabanne, Tom Friedman, Elsa Schiaparelli, and Martin Margiela all inspires her own work. In turn, her work influences others designers and artists and gets people to rethink art and fashion.
She was super nice and I heard that she's in a punk band? Can she get more awesome!?

Jogi Panghaal, Doors of Perception

Using the context of Indian culture, Jogi Panghaal guided the audience through an inquiry into what it is to make things.

All skills come from food and preparing food, and thus are intimately connected to the senses. Women have traditionally been the preparers of food and have the most intimate knowledge of the body- what they need and what their children need. These food preparation skills transfer to other areas and form the basis of all crafts. For example, working with scrap fabric and embroidery reflects the work women do in the field: planting, sowing rows, repairing the ground.

Jogi said several times that when men perform crafts (and there are 15 million artisans in India) they are discovering the feminine aspect of creation. But he also pointed out that when a craft becomes economically viable, men take it over and push out the women.

This was an interesting counterpoint to Rob Walker's talk about the desire-driven consumption and creation; Jogi asks us to contemplate the more fundamental drives to create: survival and the senses (body identity). In India, where most people live under the demands of survival, nothing is rejected or thrown away.

It also bears consideration in light of Andrew Zolli's revelations about the demographic pressures facing designers of the future.

The first presentation of the day is by Stuart Walker, Professor and Associate Dean at the University of Calgary’s Faculty of Environmental Design. While his research looks at sustainable product design, his talk looks more specifically at enduring objects, their characteristics, and what we can learn/use from them. He presents objects that have existed for thousands of years -- objects such as pottery, tools, jewelry, statues – spanning diverse cultures and crossing the boundaries of time, culture, language and religion. His thesis is that such objects are non-trivial (comparatively to many of the trivial objects made today), and therefore enduring (!).

He (interestingly) divided his talk into the following framework:

inspirational / spiritual objects
objects such as: religious items, fine arts, sculpture
ideas such as: Symbolism, allusion, representation, sacred, profound

social / positional objects
objects such as: jewelry, make-up, identity items
related concepts: symbolism, status and social standing, decoration, taste, fashions, identity

functional objects (fulfills a human need.)
objects such as: tools, weapons, pottery,
related concepts: utility, usefulness, comprehension, safety, technology

CONCLUDING...
Sustainable product design is a function of:
- surpassing social/positional transience
- imbuing objects with inspirational /spiritual qualities
to create a meaningful material culture.

Andrew Zolli is a futurist, and makes a living trying to figure out what happens next. He does this for Popular Science, American Demographics magazine, National Public Radio, and his own company, Z Plus Associates. And he's pretty good at it.

After some very long drawn out issues with malfunctioning microphones, Andrew held a large crowd at Memorial Auditorium fascinated well into their lunch breaks by naming four Driving Forces producing change in the world (yeah, its kind of a broad heading, but this is where futurists have to start). Incidentally, if you're familiar with the Pop!Tech conference in Camden, Maine, many of these concepts are distilled from the pile of information presented at the most recent one.

1. The Tyrrany of Choice: While the number of choices available to consumers in the developed world is increasing exponentially, our ability to recognize between them has actually dropped slightly. According to research, there are 40,000 different items on sale at an average American supermarket (including 51 kinds of toothbrush), more than double what was on sale in 1965. The average consumer can distinguish about 160. Zolli calls this Moore's Law of Crap.

2. The Chain of Meaning: For me, this was the most revelatory. Let's use the example of coffee beans --

-Commodity: a small amount of unprocessed coffee beans can be bought wholesale for about 10 cents
-Product: that same coffee ground and put in a can costs about 25 cents (the Maxwell House business)
-Service: that ground coffee brewed in water and served in a styrofoam cup costs a dollar (the Dunkin Donuts business)
-Experience: that same cup of coffee, served with flavorings and foam in a pleasant space with background music costs $4.50 (the Starbucks business)

The margin increases dramatically at each step in this chain, which is why economies move ever away from commodity as they gain the ability to do so. Design is a big part of this ability.

So, the trick is, how do you de-commodify things? Hershey's did it in Times Square, convincing people to wait 45 minutes in line to get into a blinged out Hershey's store so they can buy Kisses at $25 a pound. Directly next door is a drug store that sells Hershy's Kisses for 50 cents a pound. That's a 5000% markup -- Commodity vs Experience.

3. Demographic Transformation. In a nutshell, the developed world is shrinking and getting older. The developing world is getting larger, richer and more urban. The concept of "Design Within Reach" is laughable to most of the world, and will continue to be unless price points drop dramatically, and good design is, in fact democratically accessible to the rest of the planet.

4. Not sure what to call this one...let's say The Long Tail theory. This means that, while information and product continues to be produced primarily by a small number of entities, the number of smaller producers has increased dramatically (think blogs vs. mass media, customized shoes on eBay vs. Payless Shoe Source). And consumers are buying from both ends. The Long Tail also offers unprecedented opportunities for consumer feedback (think X-Files fan sites re-writing entire seasons of the show).

Ze Frank
(Update 11pm- link fixed!)
Start with the classic original "How to dance properly" and turn up the sound!.

And then be jealous that we got to hear Ze Frank in person about empowering regular people to be creative.

here is an Eames sketch from the presentation - I know, not a good photo.... but an Eames sketch nonetheless.

Karim Rashid has a vision for how the world should be, and he spoke about them freely and openly. I felt like I was watching a preacher-man, telling stories, and sharing views for the world, a gospel on design (can I get a Hallelujah! kind of thing)... but in actually, it was more about his philosophies on design, and how he and his studio designs with those ideas and belifs in mind. Because it's a belief, people are disagreeing and agreeing with his views with much passion. More than anything it sparks conversations amongst the audience.
Some discussion that went on were different topics he brought up. Such as how the world is starting to live in a "casual age", a world he calls "more at ease". He wants to design for that age, allowing people to live a seamless life, a world with no obstacles, a place where you don't have to think about the problems. Allowing people to live this way, he says, results in allowing people to think more and contribute to culture.
He also brought up his thoughts on a term he calls "techno-organic", a method in which the technology creates the organic forms; you write the software for what the machine can do and define it's limitations, but the machine itself controls what it wants to make. This focus on machines and technology is based on his philosophies of how nostalgia is dead. New technologies and new ways of life should create new designs, and designing something from the past (examples like the pattern: plaid) should just go away.
This statement sparks so many discussions. Do you disregard the past completely and pave way for the future, push your vision for how it should be? How do we design experiences if we do not know a person's past, their nostalgic past, to gauge what they might enjoy, love? I found parrellels in what he was saying with some religious and spiritual views, like how we should live life in the moment, and appreciate what is in front of them no matter what it is they are doing. It's all a matter of perspective. But a complete removal of nostalgia also removes the awe and respect for the past, where we can learn and then develop a beautiful future without the mistakes from the past. I'm really looking forward to seeing his work in twenty years, when his current designs become nostalgic itself. I want to see where he will be taking the designs at that time.

Herb is Senior Design manager at Kimberly Clark, a gi-normous copy to the tune of $15 billion in sales in 2004. It's pretty big.

Herb was responsible for starting up the design group more than six years ago and has shaped his team into a key part of Kimberly-Clark's product development process. (Inspiring for me to see since I am at the beginning stages of this at my company.)

Listen to Herb talk about starting a business group, outfitting consumers with cameras for research, and what's next for his team.

Speaking with a fever and jet lag, and willing to ham it up for the camera.

Rationality, Relevance, Rey the dog

New York Times reporter Rob Walker's dog, Rey.
www.robwalker.net

Reaching design-driven consumers: find products that appeal to individuality and yet create a "tribe" around them, like the iPod. Interesting products are able to create relevance in completely unrelated populations—Red Bull appeals to clubbers, gym members and Wall Street.
Even a vacuum cleaner or a water bottle can develop a fan base and generate irrational enthusiasm that reinterprets the product, breeding subcltures and customizers.

If you achieve this with your product, enjoy the success but be prepared for the inevitable backlash.

Bryce Rutter is the CEO of Metaphase, an ergonomic-centered design firm out of St. Louis, MS. Not only is he a huge advocate of user-centered design, but he's also a really really engaging public speaker. (He talked about Kinesthetics and Larry Flynt in the same lecture, but thats besides the point.) A really talented (and really funny) public speaker is hard to evoke in written word, but I'll attempt to capture a few parts of his lecture in bulletpoint form:

- His definition of good design: "I defined great design as cool looking things that work as well as they look. This may seem obvious, but take a look around you and you will see a lot of products dont match up."

- On the fusion of design and research: "In this day and age its very difficult for a product to come to market out of one person's mind and one person's pen. Its also very risky. Bean counters at the companies we work for want something tangible to trust and understand so that they can communicate back to the rest of their company. Research is quantifiable, and is in a language that marketers can better understand. With multidisciplinary design teams, research can help justify design decisions, and at the same time design can get a better understanding of the research findings."

- Dope terminology I'm totally gonna drop in my next concept presentation: Kinesthetic novelty. Material temperatures, finishes, and textures matter too! Check this out: recent MIT research shows fingertips can detect a raised dot 3 microns high. THREE MICRONS. That's, like small and stuff.

- It's the details that matter: "The latest buzz word in design is experience design... well let's not forget about the little stuff! I have 40 coffee mugs in my kitchen, but I grab the same coffee mug every single day. Why? Well I did a little analysis one morning and I realized that the reasons why are that the handle lets me use two fingers, the ceramic doesn't burn me, it has a thinner rim so I don't dribble..." Ah the curce of the designer-- you can't even drink a cup of coffee without thinking about HOW you're doing it.

- On food packaging: "There's a reason you eat the entire package of Oreos-- you can't close the packaging! ...At least that's my excuse..."

- And the coolest product his firm worked on: a 'Cereal-on-the-go' packaging solution that allows you to fill up a special cup with milk, snap on a ceral 'pod', and then make a bowl of cereal IN YOUR MOUTH. (!) They even contoured the cup so you can see over the rim when eating and driving. Can't wait to see if I can use my cell phone at the same time.

Have you noticed how Alias has been pushing their sketchbook software like crazy recently? What's the deal? Well here's why-- their new focus is on innovation-- they want to "shift from tools for making to tools for thinking". This may seem like a bit of an odd statement for a company that is known for it's 3D surfacing software, but maybe it's to be expected in this age of the "Information Economy". In an age where tech support, manufacturing, and engineering have all drifted off shore, we all know design is the next logical victim. It would appear Alias sees this, and believes that a lot of today's designers will be spending most of their future careers in concepting products, and not creating surface data. So, Alias tells us that "ideas and innovation can never be outsourced".

Let's sure hope so.

Bringing designers and manufacturers together is like pairing cats and dogs...or is it? Nypro and Radius coexist and create products for companies with an emphasis on decreasing lead time. Currently, the average lead from design concept to production, for most companies, is 14-20 months. Nypro and Radius have a goal of an amazingly efficient 4 months. Wow.

Today's companies want vendors with global capabilities, innovation, speed, low price, and accountability. Nypro and Radius want to engage these companies at the front end, with user focused design, but from a manufacturing standpoint. It's a really interesting business model, and one that Brian Jones and Steve Callahan spoke to extensively. Industrial design coupled with and outsourced manufacturer hasn't been done succefully...this relationship is unique. The challenge of this integrated scheme hinges on their brand promise: compelling design, manufactured anywhere in the world, for the lowest possible price.

We've all had trouble validating our design directions. Plain and simple.

Those folks in marketing are constantly throwing market research at us as a means to direct our design efforts. It's time to throw a little something back. By blending DESIGN research with market research, we can create touch points to insure product success. Marty Gage (RocketSurgery) and Chris Rockwell (Lextant) put together a stellar workshop discussion centered around the various processes associated with design research. It aimed to demystify the ways to reach out to users with a focus that provides beneficial results.

Design research allows us to get buy-in from the business side of our organizations by providing them with justification for concepts in areas like consumer usablility and product usefulness. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Extremely compelling presentation. Perhaps the best part of the session is yet to come...the attendees will all get a digital copy of the presentation as a reference for future projects!

Mama dropped you too many times as a baby, but you wanna show people your smarts... then when space travel comes up in a conversation, tell them that concepts for using a chemical system to go to Mars is soooo twentieth century. Tell them that instead we'll be using a plasma ion system along with an advanced propulsion system, using the Earth's gravity as momentum to get us to Mars. They'll think yous a genius baby!
Concepts like this and other future concepts for space travel and artificial gravity experiments are being developed by Larry Bell, from Space Architecture. He's using design to conceptualize the future of lunar experiments. Unlike problems on Earth, designed objects in space face different kinds of problems; Solar Radiation, lunar soil clogging mechanical parts, extreme cold and heat that could mean death, and space sickness syndrome (where your body is disoriented).
How do you protect the users? How do you land these vehicles on the moon's surface? How do you design a system for hydroponic experiments in zero gravity? Some future concepts they're developing are inflatable solutions to create the desired area needed for the experiments to be done in space.
Maybe this kind of thing isn't so far off in the distance future...

"Did anyone smell their spoon? Did anyone put the spoon in their mouth? or draw the spoon?" After the participants were convniced that they had described the spoon as much as they could, John Caruso, professor at Notre Dame asked them further questions to truly get a deeper understanding of the spoon.
Generic table spoons were the point of departure for this brainstorming workshop. As the list became massive and the descriptions for a spoon seemed exhaustive, John Caruso started pulling out objects one by one and the audience debated to it's credibitlity to be called a "spoon". Ice cream scoops, serving spoons, ladels were pulled out to break out of the fixed idea of what is actually a "spoon".


John Caruso holds up a scoop with holes and asks what is a spoon?

Karl Williamson and Ryann Pajzko, third year design students from Millwaukee Institute of Art and Design analyze the 'spoon'.

Loosely interpreted quote from Bruce Nussbaum of Business Week:

"Companies are not just manufacturing in China because of the cost savings. The Chinese governemnt has invested a lot of time, money and energy into building a very large infrastructure to support manufacturing commerce. It's not just because they're cheap-- you've got to give them more credit than that."

In an effort to bring loyal Coreviewers to the action I'm posting mp3 interviews with people here at the Midwest Conference. First up: Paul Hatch.

Currently the head of Teams Design in Chicago and the Midwest district, Paul is a low key, highly energetic guy with a British wry sense of humor. His personality is infused into this conference. The speakers here are humble, intelligent and extremely curious with the world around them.

Paul gave a talk this morning on visual perception and design details. In the process, he broke down aesthetics in a way that I have never seen at a design conference.

Click here to listen to Paul talk about aesthetics!

Paul Hatch, the infamous and outspoken director at TEAMS Design in Chicago, kicked off the first lecture here at the Midwest Conference with his lecture on naked design... since it's really hard to write and watch another lecture, I am going to let the photos do the talking:

That's Paul.

I agree. Paul started his lecture with the outline of a sportscar. When he asked the crowd to name the car, they were unable to-- without seeing the details and surfaces of the vehicle. His main point was that the many designers sketch by defining the basic outline of a product, but the essence of the design lies in the surface details.

Paul illustrates the power of the visceral in recognizing form-- in the above image George Bush was flipped upside down, with his eyes and mouth right side up-- he was still completely recognizeable, in both instances.

Jacko is a freak in either orientation!

The basic elements of controlling form-- which he continued to elaborate on throughout his lecture. We all know these basic elements, but do we take the time to pick them apart and really consider them?

At this point in the lecture Paul began to illustrate the use of the basic elements of building form by doing some PRESENTATION SKETCHING. I've been to a bunch of business conferences, but this is the first time I have seen this done in a way that was more than demonstrative. Paul brough up various generic CAD forms or product forms, and sketched over top of them on his tablet PC to illustrate his point.
I think it's safe to say that the death of paper in ID has fully arrived-- and not a moment too soon. Now if only I could convince my boss that I *need* a tablet PC...

In only two years the designers at Built NY Inc. is already influencing the housewares accesories market into a positive direction. Co-founders, Aaron Lown and John Roscoe Swartz spoke about the "Mojo Majic", the success of their company and brand. Their quick rise to the top is entrepreneruialism at it's finest. They attributed their success to three things: Style, Press, and Sales. For them, the product has to have style, "the style factor is more important than anything else, it's gotta have mojo." Their second key to success, press, got them exposed to over one hundred magazines. Their concentration on style was because function was a given, they said. "What's more serious than industrial design?" says John with a smile and adds "Hey, what's the radius on that!? We're not into that." But with success comes immitations and they frequently face intellectual property issues. 13 companies have already tried to sell the same product or a derivative of it. Hardship doesn't get them down though, because they've seen it before. REI wouldn't carry their products. They sent samples multiple times and was rejected every time. They're presistance paid off when the store finally took the product last year and it became their number one selling accesory last holiday season. They're suggestions for people starting out they said, is to never accept no.

Bruce Nussbaum started off the conference and now we are on to the discussion panel who are answering varying question from the shift of manufacturing to Asian countries, education of the designer, and innovation innovation and some more stress on the importance of innovation. From left to right Dan Formosa, David Kohler, Larry Bell, and Bruce Nussbaum. (if you want me to ask them something post in the comments in the next ten minutes!)

Karim Rashid visisted Chicago last week to speak at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Because of his views on Nostalgia, I thought it might be appropriate to ask him some questions from the past, the very same questions Charles Eames was asked by Madame Amic in 1969... Come back again in a few days to read more about his work and his vision for the world, at the IDSA Midwest Conference!

*What is your definition of design?

Today design is based on an plethora of complex criteria; human experience, social and global issues, economic and political issues, physical and mental interaction, form, vision, and a rigorous understanding and desire of contemporary culture. Manufacturing is based on another collective group of criteria: capital investment, market share, production ease, dissemination, growth, distribution, maintenance and service, performance, quality, ecological issues and sustainability. The combination of all these issues shape our objects, informs our form, our physical space and culture, and our human experiences. These quantitative constructs together shape business, its identity, its brand, its value. This is the business of beauty. Every business should be completely concerned with beauty - and a designer must be fluent in the business of beauty - it is after all what is a collective human need. Design is a modus to contribute to shaping a better more beautiful, more poetic, more intelligent, more aesthetic, more experiential world. The built environment needs to be perpetually improved. Design does change our everyday lives, our commodity, and our behaviors. There are several points that define design simultaneously - production methods, materials, human interface, technologies, comfort, behavior, form, aesthetics, costs, mobility, shipping of goods, ease of assembly, context, use, and most importantly the culture of the company you work with. If it is not a marriage of the designers ideology and the brand, then it will not be successful. Design is not a selfish act, it is a collaborative one, deisng is for everyone, not an elite group.

*Is design an expression of art (art form)?

My work is a merging of Art and design and has to be part of the collectible global culture, not removed, insular, elitist, and irrelevant. The 21st. century is about a new energy, of material, immaterial, of formlessness and form of transparency and color; of smell and vapor, a kinesthetic binary hypercontextual existence - a digital nature, a kaleidoscope of elevated experiences. I am in working in a democratic (Designocracy) field where words like class, elite, taste, and mass are all defunct. One world where everything should be accessible, with no boundaries. The digital age represents this place - irreal and real, virtual, meta physical, and physical spaces, layered together where everyone can participate and everyone is equal. Objects smell, taste, breathe, touch, and participate in all our experiences. I am passionate, obsessed, and try to stay as broad as possible so that I can touch every part of our built environment.

Design and architecture will play an important role in intensifying this reality. It can provide and maintain our enjoyment of living and nurture a direct experience with the energy and Modus of the time. I see the future of our aesthetic world crossing all the aesthetic disciplines so that design, art, architecture, fashion, food, music, fuse together to increase our experiences and bring greater pleasure to our material and immaterial lives. Our motivations should focus around our conscious collective memory and a desire to fill it with ideas that are seamless between art and life. As art takes its ideas from everyday life and I hope that everyday life will take its ideas from art.

*What are the boundaries of design?

Although I answered this above I will add that everyday I live I believe that we could be living in an entirely different world - one that is full of real contemporary inspiring objects, spaces, places, worlds, spirits, experiences with ever-changing new traditions and new rituals- replacing the old. Design has been the cultural shaper of our world form the start. We have designed systems, cities, industrialization - we designed everything. My real desire is to see people live in a the modus of our time, to participate in contemporary world, and to release themselves form nostalgia, antiquated traditions old rituals, kitsch meaningless, and that we should be conscious and sensorially attune with this world in this moment. If Human nature is to live in the past - to change the world is to change human nature.

One of the biggest winners of the conference was Apple. You wouldn't believe the amount of coverage they had. I decided to keep a running total of the times Apple, or one of its products came up in lectures and discussions. There were 12 speakers total, and 9 of them worked at least one Apple reference into their presentations. I wish I had the final tally for you, but I honestly lost track somewhere around #24. And if I were to include the images present in the Merit Award presentations, that number would have been higher. I don't doubt the company's influence, but the constant references are becoming rather cliche. It was kind of a letdown that a community full of idea generators and free thinkers coundn't come up with more original reference material.

I'm hoping this spurs some discussion on the comment section. You've got a few days to weigh in before the wave of IDSA conferences begins at the end of the week.

What do think of this Apple-a-day world we're living in?

This is for the Car Lovers out there. Aaron started of by talking about the concept car and its place in car production, giving the audience a much better understanding of what a concept car is, and what it is for. Things got cool when he presented the Jeep Hurricane concept car.

This thing was designed to be the Ultimate Jeep.
Its got:

1. twin Hemi power plants
   
2. zero spin steering (all the wheels can rotate inward 45° to allow the Hurricane to spin around its center
   
3. crab steering (all the wheels can rotate in unison, allowing the Hurricane to move sideways or any other direction
   
4. 700 HP
   
5. A very light frame constructed out of space age materials

This is the Ultimate Jeep. There was one sticky concern, which, thankfully was vocalized during the question and answer period: What's the gas Mileage? Why isn't Jeep pursuing concept cars that are Green?

To their credit, Aaron did show a concept Jeep called the Treo from a few years back that ran on fuel cells. He also admitted that Jeep has no choice but to pursue Green technologies in the future.

Robert hasn't given another lecture, but I'm weighing in with a little more info and my take on things as bonus coverage to what Yanni posted earlier...

Brunner says that going with the flow is not failure, it's just reality. That's not to say things can't, and won't change, it's just that change takes time. Design means something different to each company's culture. He says that in order to find out how to move forward, you have to ask yourself, and your clients these questions:

Where did the company come from?
How did it start?
What are the core competencies?
Whay and how has it been successful?
What is valued most?
How is design perceived?
What is considered blasphemy or failure?
Who's opinions really count?
What are people rewarded for?

If you can ask yourself these questions regarding your clients, you will be able to address their needs. He makes comparisons to Dell and Apple, showing how these corporations operate in totally differnt markets, and are trying to reach totally different consumer mindsets. To put it simply, what works for an Apple product, will not meet the needs of a Dell product.

Bruce is an inspiration.
He covered so much ground that I may miss a number of his points. To start, he makes it very clear that there are huge opportunities for designers. The state of the world economy right now requires risk, innovation and good design.

The points that really stuck.
1) The global design market is leading to a homogeneity of design. Do not try to compete in this market; diversity is key. It brings depth to life. Conclusion: design for a regional audience. Understand them, and make things solely for a specific location.

2) Do not fear Globalization. It will change how we do business, and it generates huge opportunities. These opportunities create room for designers, because designers innovate and take risk.

3) In the future, corporations will have a Chief Design Officer.

4) We should support China and help them succeed. (The trick is to make sure everyone in the world can be successful.) As China succeeds and attains more wealth, they will consume more, and open opportunities as a new large market.

There was a lot more, but leaving his talk it was clear that the future needs good designers who are willing to innovate, think globally and locally, and take risks.

The future for designers is bright.

Dan went from being a Director of Design to Chair of the Industrial Design Department at the Cleveland Institute of Art.

Why did he make this change? Because he loves design and was tired of the poor quality of design students coming out of American ID programs.

His focus:
Develop Knowledge supported by skills.

Prepare students to work at the highest level within their field of choice.

Have students engage in the community and take leadership roles.

Design is about creativity and innovation, which is teachable.

I am most impressed by the idea that design (and art) is a knowledge based endeavor. Training of Industrial Designers should focus on their ability to think and what they know. Granted, these have to be coupled to skills, but skill is there to express thought.

He has already started to implement this thinking at CIA's Industrial Design program. The success he and his students have already had are a strong indication that his thinking and message is dead on.

Chris Rockwell gave an insightful talk on how to successfully use Design Research.

I like his point that Design research is replacing Market research, and that Designers need to have closer access to the consumer and the end user of his products.

He also answered questions on ethics like a pro.

All in all, he was very insightful about a successful Design research process, and how to work within existing corporate culture.

Oh, and he understands the use of good video clips. His COPS knock off to demonstrate a design research results was a crowd favorite.

Anne is the Access Technology Director for the National Federation for the Blind.

Pure and simple, I was very impressed by Anne.

So far, she has had the best presentation. Here is a small blind woman, who through the power of her voice, her passion, and her sense of humor kept the audience engaged.

Anne talked about the Moral Responsibility of Technology Developers

Her main points:
1) the current state of technology should support better accessibility for the blind.
2) Inventions specifically for the blind have already changed the world.
a) the Typewriter
b) Optical Character Recognition
c) flatbed scanners
d) text-to-speech
e) First PDA is in brail
3) It is an economically viable thing to do. As our population ages, there will be more and more people with visual impairments.
4) If you are going to design with the blind in mind, involve blind people as early as possible.

Anne is clearly someone who cares about helping people, and she inspired the audience with her passion. (And with facts that logically support her passion.)

Automblox is the invention of Patrick Callelo.
http://www.automoblox.com

Damn these things look cool. I'm glad there are people like Patrick out there who are making cool things for kids. I'm also glad that people like Patrick are willing to give their time and share the lessons they have learned from their experiences.

In the end, he boiled it all down to the following lessons: (Given to him by someone else)

the 3 rules of success

1. be smart
   
2. be motivated
   
3. bring things to COMPLETION
   

Robert spoke about crossing the cultural gap. It wasn't what I expected: when people speak of culture, generally they discuss other countries and other habits. But Robert spoke about having to work with corporations and crossing over into other cultures.

His main points:
- If you are going to be successful in working with a client, learn to understand their culture; work through that understanding
- Going with the flow=failure
- Changing culture requires working with a lot of people (if you want to make the change fast)
- Inevitably though, changing culture is a very, very slow process
- Changing culture is always painful

He then when into a long breakdown of the difference between Apple and Dell cultures; you can imagine the rest.

The question I'm left with: Am interested in being someone who changes and affects culture, or do I want to be someone who goes with the flow?

With the conference's focus on Design Business, it was appropriate that the first speaker of the day was Bill Taylor, a great businessman himself, and President of the full service design consultancy, Kaleidoscope. It was refreshing to listen to a "non-designer" talk about the design biz. He makes a believer out of you when he speaks. He treats his clients as partners, and expects the same relationship out of them in return. He also looks at the much talked about Chinese ODM's as an great opportunity, not as the imminent threat that so many designers believe them to be. Perhaps the aspect that I enjoyed the most though, was that he wasn't up there selling himself, or Kaleidoscope, or a new book...he was just sharing his experiences and the choices he and Kaleidoscope have made in order to get to where they are today.

Apologies for the lack of a picture of Bill, the lighting in these conference rooms is terrible...

On on unrelated note, I find the lack of people sitting in the front row to be an kind of amusing. It doesn't matter how old people get, no one wants to be called on by the teacher...or in this case, the speaker.

My first session. Thomas Mulready discusses his creation, Cool Cleveland

Truth is, Thomas is one of the Coolest people in Cleveland. Why? because he really cares about Cleveland. This is a guy, who is really trying to make a positive change in Cleveland. His strategy? Use the web and e-mail, focus on informing people about the positive things going on in Cleveland.

Thomas is not a designer, so, you might ask, why he is talking here. Honestly, I'm not sure why he was chosen, but I'm glad he was.

1. He is not afraid to embrace information technology
   
2. He is really thinking through how to use it.
   
3. He is interested in real information, not flash, bells and whistles.
   
4. He really wants to do something truly good.
   

Bruce Claxton, Senior Director of Design Integration at Motorola, spoke to a room full of excited attendees this morning at the Cleveland Institute of Art. It was the first in a series of lectures at the CIA entitled Making Art Work. His presentation centered on creating a model for innovation within companies in order to create "WOW" products. One of the more compelling concepts touched on referred to the "joy" of using a product. Too often we hear of designing for the consumer's "ease of use" in today's design world, but that is a requirement all designs should address. The "joy of use" factor is a powerful differentiator. It's something that can really make a product stand out from the crowd...

MIDEAST : Headliners
Robert Brunner, Pentagram
Bruce Claxton, Motorola
Bill Taylor, Kaleidoscope
Patrick Calello, Automoblox
Chris Rockwell, Lextant

MIDWEST : Headliners
Karim Rashid, Karim Rashid Inc.
Jim Wicks, Motorola
Bruce Nussbaum, Business Week
Stefan Andren, Nike
Velma Velazquez, IDEO

NORTHEAST : Headliners
Peter Arnell, Arnell Group
Andrew Zolli, Z Plus Partners
Rob Walker, The New York Times Magazine
Tom Hennes, THINC
Davin Stowell, Smart Design

WESTERN : Headliners
Eames Demetrios, Eames Studio
Alan Boykiw, Emily Carr
Katherine Bennett, Art Center
Inventables
Bruce Tharp, University of Chicago

SOUTHERN : Headliners
Brian Jones, Nypro Inc.
Richard Tait, Cranium Inc.
Marty Gage, Rocket Surgery

Check back beginning April 1 to see ongoing coverage from the five IDSA District Conferences.