T-Mobile G1 (or whatever it's called) takes in some fresh air

Why wait for next Tuesday's grand unveiling? Well, the short answer is that most of us have no other option -- but a small handful of exceptionally lucky individuals are getting their Android on just a little early. This particular example of the G1 (or Dream, Nightmare, Slumber, whatever the hell it's going to end up being called) allegedly hails from a Google staffer, looking a little less... shall we say, "controversial" than other shots have made it out to be. Yeah, we're jealous, we admit. Anyone want to give theirs up for a few hours?

[Via Talk Android]

Design thinking in the New York Times

vía metacool de Diego Rodriguez el 5/10/08

The New York times ran a great article yesterday called "Design is more than packaging". Of course, if you're part of the metacool community, you already know that. But it is great to see this meme getting out there and sticking. I'm very happy to see that the article was published in the Business section. Cool!

Among others, the article mentions IDEO, my employer, and the Stanford d.school, my other employer.

A couple of quotes.

Tim Brown:

Design thinking is inherently about creating new choices, about divergence. Most business processes are about making choices from a set of existing alternatives. Clearly, if all your competition is doing the same, then differentiation is tough. In order to innovate, we have to have new alternatives and new solutions to problems, and that is what design can do.

George Kembel:

It would be overreaching to say that design thinking solves everything. That’s putting it too high on a pedestal. Business thinking plus design thinking ends up being far more powerful.

Well put, gentlemen!

Innovation Universities Are Hot--Rotman, Ziba, IDEO, Continuum, Stanford, Institute of Design.

vía BusinessWeek Online - NussbaumOnDesign de bruce_nussbaum el 28/09/08

I just got off the phone with Roger Martin, dean of the Rotman School of Management at the U of Toronto, who told me that corporations are flocking to his institution to learn integrative thinking (design thinking). I've heard the same thing from innovation consultancies who are setting up their own "universities" to teach design thinking to corporate managers.

The latest is Ziba U that founder Sohrab Vossoughi is establishing. IDEO and Continuum have long been teaching institutions and now demand for their brand of experiential learning is soaring. Consultancies have developed a new form of teaching--workshops, not classrooms, conversations not lectures, interaction not passive listening. It's a new form of educational IP (well, experiential learning has been around a bit but new to the business world) that B-Schools should check out. IDEO even has a new experimental lab.

Social innovation is also building informal universities to teach people the creative skills of using market forces at the bottom of the pyramid. Acumen Fund is starting Acumen U to do just that. And PopTech is offering a three day workshop of social innovation "bootcamp" to people.

This is good news. Even in the face of very deep recession and loss of revenue, companies and civic organizations. are investing in building their creativity cultures. They aren't cutting back. Which is a great sign that coming out of the recession, there will be companies prepared to win.

Kenchikukagu: Apartment Folds Out of a Box (Well, 3 Boxes)

vía TreeHugger el 23/09/08

How cool is this? A kitchen, an office and a bedroom that fold out of these lovely cabinets, designed by Toshihiko Suzuki Architect. ..

Steve Jobs @ Stanford

Ithaa: An UnderSea Restaurant

Ithaa, positioned five metres (15 feet) below sea level is the world’s leading undersea restaurant enclosed by a coral reef, at the Conrad Maldives Rangali Island in Rangalifinolhu, Maldives. Synonymous to Pearl in Dhivehi, the restaurant is sheathed in R-Cast acrylic, which is a translucent acrylic roof providing 270° panoramic view to its patrons. Served with a Maldavian-Western Fusion menu with a price range varying from $120-$250, counted 14 people can dine in one go.

Designed and developed by a New Zealand-based design consultancy company M.J. Murphy Ltd, this $5 million restaurant was constructed in Singapore and was later shipped to the island on a colossal barge outfitted with a massive derrick to enable it dive in the sea. The thrilling experience starts right on the way as the unique wooden walkway directs you to reach the welcoming door of restaurant. Carsten Schieck, the GM commented on the usage of aquarium technology that serves diner face-to-face with the spectacular submarine surroundings of the Maldives.

Via Elite Choice

The Need for Sleep

ZOMG! No Android phones till Q4 2008... right on schedule!

There's a lot of hoopla today over a Wall Street Journal piece stating that Google's first Android device has been pushed back to late 2008 for release -- yet the article fails to mention that this is right inline with what Google has been saying for quite awhile now. Admittedly, the fresh-faced mobile competitor probably is finding itself somewhat mired in carrier demands, which doesn't seem unexpected given the broad swath of partners it's collaborating with and the open source nature of the project, but as phone release schedules go, it hasn't veered off the path much. The breakdown is something like this: from what we've been told, you can expect an Android-powered handset before the new year (i.e., HTC's Dream driven by Google's OS), followed by a crop of higher profile phones showing up in early 2009 (as previously stated by companies like LG and Samsung). So... feel free to switch off the alarms anytime you like.

[Via GigaOM]

IDEO'S TIM BROWN ON HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW

The fact that the Harvard Business Review asked IDEO's CEO Tim Brown to write about Design Thinking in the current issue is as important as what he had to say in the piece. It marks the acceptance and legitimization of design/innovation as an important business process and strategic tool for managers.

HBR was behind for a time in covering innovation and design but it is running some very interesting pieces now and Brown's article brings it up to date/a>. I think that lag reflects the reluctance of business schools to embrace design thinking and innovation process. This is now changing, but slowly. Harvard Business School is making efforts to incorporate innovation, but in the end, we are talking about a sharp paradigm change embodied in curricula and teaching, and that is happening in only one B-School that I can think of--the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto run by Dean Roger Martin.

Brown's HBR piece is an excellent primer. He begins by showing how

Design Thinking is a formalization of the methodology used by none other than Thomas Edison who not only invented the lightbulb but envisioned and built a whole electric industry (we'd call that an ecosystem today) devoted to meeting the unmet needs of consumers (needs they couldn't yet visualize). He used a team-based approach to innovation in his famous lab, iterated famously (his "99% perspiration" comment), failed often and learned from his mistakes.

The HBR piece has great stories on medical service innovation at Kaiser and the Aravind Eye Care System in India. There's another on the Keep The Change program at Bank of America.

At the end of the article are two short takes. One is A Design Thinker's Personality Profile (Empathy, Integrative Thinking, Optimism, Experimentalism, Collaboration). The other is How to Make Design Thinking Part of the Innovation Process (check out the piece).

I also like Brown's definition of design thinking--"it is a discipline that uses the designer's sensibility and methods to match people's needs with what is technologically feasible and what a viable business strategy can convert into customer value and market opportunity."

Does that work for you?

vía BusinessWeek Online - NussbaumOnDesign de bruce_nussbaum el 25/06/08

Micro-Interactions: Making The Experience Portable

Update: Coverage on our panel in Ad Age (Digital Next)
Last week I went to a local gathering in Chicago where people in the industry were meeting informally over a few drinks. It's the typical scenerio that we keep seeing more of—most people had been meeting for the first time even though they had heard of each other from some type of social network or another such as Twitter.

Mike, an Apple employee was one of the first to greet me—and he extended a simple gesture. As he introduced himself he held up his iPhone which was displaying a digital name tag generated on the Web that he had just personalized moments ago. Within minutes, nearly half of the attendees of this small gathering were doing the same. it had gone "viral" so to speak—each person found our where they could customize their own "badge" and some were even adding "@" symbols so that their "Twitter friends" could recognize who they were.

And this I thought was a simple but relevant example of how we are having "micro-interactions" in ways that we we can take with us.

Today I'm moderating a panel on this very topic with Steve Rubel, Ian Shafer, Matt Dickman, Stephanie Agresta, And David Malouf. It should be a lot of fun as we'll be discussing how indivisuals and brands are making content and functionality "micro" and designing it "to-go". And of course a conference like this had to have both an iPhone and a Widget version (below). If you are going to the event, hope to see you there.

Source: http://darmano.typepad.com/

Brand Interactions Are the Future: But Are Interaction Designers Part of Your Agency?

"Call them information architects, experience designers or Jack or Jane -- they are the design geeks who love to sweat the details. They care about "micro-interactions" and toil away at the building blocks of what actually results in a "lovemark" in the end. We love to use applications that help us do things like plan vacations, find old friends and share our passions with the world. The ad industry has made a big mistake in the past by thinking technology was for geeks. Technology, in fact, is a love affair."

Read The Full Article at Advertising Age (Digital Next)

Design Thinking to Finance Skyscapers

In her comment to my post on the recent HBR article on design thinking, my friend HK writes, “What the article is missing is some concrete examples — what do designers do at strategic phases of projects, when the problems they’re solving aren’t explicit design problems?” She goes on to describe three of her own examples.

I suspect it’s both very hard and very easy to show examples. Very hard because applying creativity to what are normally analytical activities is a design problem in itself. I’ve found that inventing even rudimentary tools is hard. It’s reinventing how we’ve done business for hundreds of years, and it’s going to take years to build a more creative practice as reliable as our current methods.

But finding examples of design thinking applied to business problems is also easy, there are examples all around us. Financial deals can be quite complex and structuring one requires creativity. I was reminded of this last night while reading Adam Gopnik’s Through the Children’s Gate, stories about living in New York. In one scene he tours midtown Manhattan with a property tycoon…

It was a cold, crisp fall day, and as we looked at all the great glass skyscrapers of Park Avenue — the Seagram Building and Lever House and the Citicorp Center — he unraveled for me the complicated secrets of their financing and construction: how this one depended on a federal bond, and this one on a legendary thirteen-year lease with a balloon payment, and this one on the unreal (and unprofitable) munificence of a single liquor baron and his daughter…

We can imagine the sort of creativity needed to solve a problem like financing a building costing hundreds of millions of dollars involving several parties, credit instruments, commitments over time, tax structure, and so on. I’d like to know if anyone in finance is studying these deals as creative activities to help us understand how to design them better (and if traditional designers will be interested in this sort of design!).

vía Noise Between Stations

Google Health--Who Can You Trust With Your Medical Records?

BusinessWeek Online - NussbaumOnDesign de bruce_nussbaum el 20/05/08

I've been looking at the new Google Health site. It can organize all your health records and link you up to other people with your own medical problems.

So the question is how much do you trust Google and other folks to protect your medical privacy? Or do you even care about medical privacy?

Privacy is one of those big issues that cleave the GenXers and Boomers right down the middle. Over 50=worried about privacy. Under 30=not worried about privacy. Yes, of course, with caveats and all. But members on our Innovation & Design team who are in their 20s put stuff up on their Facebook page that I would never reveal. It's just culture.

And maybe that's it. Culture. But maybe it's more than culture. Insurance companies still restrict coverage to people who have genetic dispositions to certain diseases. Lots of men and women hesitate to marry and have children with people who have genetic dispositions to certain diseases. And we're talking about a 3%-5% higher risk, nothing major.

Over at BuzzMachine, Jeff Jarvis has joined Google Health and revealed his atrial fib. Jeff is talking to others with this condition and finding good information and support.

So....Google Health? Not for me yet. You?

PARC Develops Low-Energy, Membrane-Free Water Filtration Technology

Leave it to the brainiacs at the renowned Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) to devise a water filter that manages to do away with two of the technology's most vexing problems: a high energy requirement and the need to constantly replace used up membranes. Their device, called a spiral concentrator, is a 50 cm long, 1 mm in diameter piece of plastic tubing that separates particles as small as 1 micron in size by centrifugal force, reports Technology Review's Lee Bruno. Those particles are in turn moved out of the ...

Green Roofs for Healthy Cities Awards 2008

California Academy of Sciences green roof

Green Roofs for Healthy Cities has just announced the Awards for Excellence 2008 honoring projects that exemplify the aesthetic and environmental benefits of green roofs and living walls. The winning installations are a showcase of innovation and awareness-raising ideas that standout among the growing field of building integrated green space. Honorees were recognized for several important aspects including design, research and policy development in seven award categories. The distinguished designs among this year’s winners are engaging examples that successfully deploy economic, ecological, aesthetic and functional considerations in gorgeous green form.

(more…)

MIT reinvents the Post-It note... with Post-It notes

We've seen countless attempts to re-invent the Post-It note, but no one's ever really managed to improve on the basic design -- which might be why MIT's "Quickies" concept doesn't even try. The electronic note system is instead based around a digital pen and special pad, which saves your notes as you jot them down on RFID-embedded Post-Its. Software on your PC then does some quick OCR and, according to the inventors, "uses its understanding of the user's intentions, content, and the context of the notes to provide the user with reminders, alerts, messages, and just-in-time information." Since the database can also store location information, sticking the note on a book or other object allows you to locate it later using the RFID tag, and you can even have notes SMS'd to their recipients. Pretty wild -- but we're more impressed someone finally found a good use for all those digital pens out there. Check a video of the system in action after the break.

Continue reading MIT reinvents the Post-It note... with Post-It notes

Foster + Partners’ New Green Complex for Singapore

A new green complex from world renowned architecture firm Foster + Partners will be adding more than a dash of green to the Singapore skyline. As sustainability becomes an essential ingredient to development in this island nation, the UK-based firm is leaving no stone unturned to make good use of alternative energy sources in this 150,000 square meter mixed-use project. As the winning design from an international competition, Singapore’s new eco-complex from Foster + Partners is pushing the green envelope from top to bottom in this sophisticated downtown design.

(more…)

EvolutiV by Olgga Architectes

The 70 square meter Maison evolutiV was shown at the Salon Européen du bois et de l'Habitat Durable in April. It looks like a few container projects we have seen but is made from wood. (that is the point of the Salon) It was designed by olgga architectes. ...

vía TreeHugger

Is New York The New Innovation And Design Center?

I hear that San Francisco-based innovation consultant Stone Yamashita Partners is opening an office in New York City in a few months on West 12th street.

San Mateo-based Jump Associates, another innovation consultancy, is rumored to be heading to New York soon as well.

Palo Alto-based IDEO, the biggest of the innovation/design consultancies and most global, opened their New York office last year.

And while not in the "innovation" business, Yves Behar, founder of fuseproject, is a brand and product strategist, and he spends half his time in New York these days. So does Jeneanne Rae, co-founder of service innovation consultancy Peer Insight.

So what's up with this eastward migration of design thinkers doing innovation strategy work? I think it's the realization among big consumer goods companies such as J&J, Pepsi and Coke, plus the financial services folks on Wall Street and in Boston, plus the old-style media and marketing people on Madison Avenue that they really need

the tools and methods of the New Transformationalists to get them closer to their consumers where they live (social networks) and shop. The old mass marketing using focus groups, making products and services in-house and throwing them at consumers is dead. Nike's motto of Running Together is where it's at. Co-habiting and co-creating with people, not for them, is the new paradigm.

SYP, Jump, IDEO are in New York to do that. Boston-based Continuum is another big player in innovation on the East Coast.

R/GA, the hot interactive design company that did the Nike Plus site, has been in New York for years.

And Smart Design, also New York based, is buiking up and moving into strategy as well.

IBM is also emerging as a powerful innovation consultancy and it, of course, is New York state-based. It's work on social networking, collaborative innovation, user-based idea generating and more is making IBM is big player.

Something's cooking.

vía BusinessWeek Online - NussbaumOnDesign

Words of wisdom from Jeff Bezos

BusinessWeek recently ran a wonderful interview with Jeff Bezos on the subject of managing and leading innovation. Thoughtful and illuminating, he had me nodding my head and saying "yes", "yes" and "yes" again. Some highlights:

On the liberating nature of constraints:

"I think frugality drives innovation, just like other constraints do. One of the only ways to get out of a tight box is to invent your way out. When we were [first] trying to acquire customers, we didn't have money to spend on ad budgets. So we created the associates program, [which lets] any Web site link to us, and we give them a revenue share. We invented one-click shopping so we could make check-out faster. Those things didn't require big budgets. They required thoughtfulness and focus on the customer."

On cultivating a purposeful portfolio of innovation:

"With large-scale innovation, you have to set a very high bar. You don't get to do too many of those [initiatives] per unit of time. You have to be really selective."

On the right timing for innovation:

"My view is there's no bad time to innovate. You should be doing it when times are good and when times are tough—and you want to be doing it around things that your customers care about."

via Metacool

Design Green Now Presentation

In honor of Earth Day, here’s a presentation I did a few weeks ago Design Green Now in Washington. This is the slide deck I used to introduce myself and frog for ten minutes or so before the panel discussion itself. It misses quite a bit without the talk over, but you’ll get the general idea!

If you view it on Slideshare, you can see a full screen version.

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Richardsona

When It's Acceptable to Overfill

The extent that overfilling is part of the experience and the infrastructure that is required to support this.

Photos show: sake from a Shimokitazawa izakaya; an Izu Koogen balcony bath wet rooms being the norm in Japan; and for this coffee-junkie at least, the ritualistic filling of a cafetière to the brim to ensure that grits make it into the cup.

Digital equivalents?

vía Jan Chipchase - Future Perfect

McMarketing Drive Thru

Are your marketing initiatives insight led or trend driven?

Via Logic + Emotion

Costco: An Inside Look

I received this heartfelt and disturbing note from an obviously loyal but concerned Costco employee. To give you a bit of context, in The No Asshole Rule, I talk about how placing an over-emphasis on status differences among employees at different ranks is one of the root causes of asshole poisioning in organizations (see this post on how giving power turns people into jerks), and I talk about Costco CEO James Sinegal, founder and CEO of Costco who does things to reduce status differences between himself and other employees by doing things like taking a far smaller salary than most CEOs of big companies ($350,000.00 in 2003, which is only 10 times more than a top hourly employee and twice as much a store manager), how he visits hundreds of stores a year, and despite lots of negative feedback from stock analysts that he is "wasting money," Costco provides far better pay and benefits than other big box stores. Costco long-term financial performance has been impressive, and treating people well has some clear financial benefits (e.g., Costco shrinkage rate -- lost and stolen inventory -- is about 1/10th the industry average, a sign that employees are stealing a lot less and also preventing customers from stealing).

And this does seem to translate into how they treat customers. I've always found Costco employees to be remarkably helpful, for example, more helpful and emotionally engaged with customers than the employees at Draegers, my local high-end grocery store that sells many items at double the cost you can get them at Costco.

Nonetheless, despite these impressive efforts to treat people well and reduce status differences, maintaining an no asshole rule isn't easy in organizations that have even the best of intentions, especially when they face extreme profit and performance pressure. See the email I got below from a Costco employee who claims that asshole poisioning is spreading in the company, and one of the main causes is that known assholes keep getting promoting to managerial positions.

I would be curious to hear any reactions to this email. I wonder of this is similar to the experience of other Costco employees. What about those of you who are customers: Are you seeing any signs that the place is turning nastier? And, finally, I would love to hear from Costco senior management, as I understand that this is just one employee's view, and do admire what you've accomplished, especially given what happens at other big box stores.

Here is the note:

Mr. Sutton,

I just finished your book, The No Asshole Rule, and it's brilliant! My friends and I have had many discussions until late into the night about the very issues that you discuss. Thank you for writing this book! I have to admit that pages 76-78 initially made me cringe a bit, since I have been a Costco employee for over five years now. I'd like to explain further and I hope you'll indulge me.

First allow me to concede to the positive. We are paid very well at Costco and receive excellent benefits. We have a lot of great members and I have become friends with some of my clients! I also admire Jim Sinegal's vision of the company and the limitations he sets on his own salary is a wonderful example to set as a leader. Unfortunately, I believe that Mr. Sinegal has become too far removed from the "store level" to see what’s really happening on a daily basis. Yes, he has visited my location at least 8 times in recent years, but each time has been a quick "walk through" with almost no interaction.

The culture that I and my colleagues have experienced is one of micro-management by intimidation. I have worked with a couple of general managers and dozens of area managers and I have found that with regard to hourly employees’ behavior, they unanimously assume negative intent. Simply implementing #13 on your list of things you believe would alone make a marked difference in this environment. When instructions are given about completing a task, these instructions are always coupled with a criticism. Employees are often told to be team players but management doesn't exhibit a team attitude themselves. I have endless examples of this but I don't want to lose you now, if I haven't already. I know you must get endless emails.

So how might any of this affect the bottom line? I have noticed a trend over the years that I've been with Costco of employees demoting themselves. I have personally known of 6 individuals who have taken up to a 15,000/year pay cut to "step down." In some cases the other management at the store described this self demotion as a "personal failure on the part of the employee." I have not experienced these individuals to be failures and some of them are the most intelligent and productive workers that I have had the pleasure of working with, and they are also Nice! On the flip side of this, managers that have had numerous complaints made about their behavior are continuing to get promoted. One such individual had no less than 10 people about his unprofessional, condescending, and almost downright abusive behavior. Upper management's response was that they would speak to him, but that he will continue on in his current role.

Finally, it's important to note that I'm not basing this on only my experience or on the experiences at one location. I've networked with Costco employees in Seattle, Florida and Indiana to name a few and I have found similar environments and similar stories. So why am I still here? Why are some of my colleagues still here? The pay and the benefits no doubt play a part, but so has the idea that we can change things. I must admit to you Bob, for most of us, that idea is wearing thin.

vía Bob Sutton

Airboard laptop stand puts your Reebok Pumps to shame

Go on, admit it -- your day in the early 90s was never complete without reaching down in public and giving those Pumps a solid squeeze. In all honesty, we can't say that Ki-Seung Lee's Airboard is quite on that level, but it's certainly got the potential to be. This laptop stand was designed to reside in your lap or on your hotel room table and give each individual user the ability to elevate it as he / she sees fit. Of course, the usefulness would really take a hit if this thing takes five minutes to get good and inflated, but we could certainly see this becoming ergonomist-approved should it ever hit retail.

vía Engadget

Vertical (Diagonal?) Farm from Work AC in NYC

We love vertical farms and while they may not be as practical as green roofs, the idea of food being grown right in the city doesn't get any more local than this. New York magazine asked four architects to dream up proposals for a lot on Canal Street and Work AC came up with this. “We thought we’d bring the farm back to the city and stretch it vertically,” says Work AC co-principal Dan Wood. “We are interested...

vía TreeHugger

Transformer Patio By Picque

Collin usually covers the transformer beat, but he is on the road pedalling to Epic in Vancouver , so I get to show the Vertical Patio by Seattle's Pique Architecture. It makes the most of a small back yard by transforming from a backyard fence to everything from a picnic table to a bar, complete with folding stool. What a brilliant way of dealing with a small backyard....

vía TreeHugger

Johnny Lee: Wii Remote hacks

Oulu: Raising The Bar To Greener Standards

Sure, you’ve heard of the insular and aesthetic merits of green roofs. How about green walls? Enter Oulu, an eco-chic bar and lounge situated in southern Williamsburg. Designed by architect, sustainability expert, and Inhabitat contributor Evangeline Dennie, Oulu takes a literal approach to fresh design. Wrapped in a herbaceous façade, the LEED gold certified building bears its green cred for all to see.

(more…)

vía Inhabitat

Reversible Destiny House by Arakawa and Gins

Eric Striffler for The New York Times Architect Arakawa (no first name) and Madeline Gins believe that your house should keep you young by challenging you every step of the way. “It’s immoral that people have to die,” Ms. Gins explained. So they designed the Livespan Extending Villa, that "makes people use their bodies in unexpected ways to maintain equilibrium, and that will stimulate their immune systems." “They ought to build hospitals like this,” she said....

vía TreeHugger

Video: The Latest from Potenco's Pull-Cord Power Generator

vía TreeHugger

When we first spied Potenco's pull-cord power generator it was a 3D rendering and not much more. Since then, we got to see one up close at chat with Colin Bulthaup, the startup's CEO, about where they were heading, and were glad to see they were making progress; the device had even been tapped to provide juice for the One Laptop Per Child project (now also known as the XO laptop). It's always a good thing when we see produc...

Design Isn't Dead. Design's Gatekeepers May Be Dying.

"In future there will be no more designers. The designers of the future will be the personal coach, the gym trainer, the diet consultant." ~Philipe Stark

Think about it. We're living in an age where people now have direct access to brands. Starbucks wants our ideas—Southwest Airlines talks to me on Twitter, the role of the modern day brand steward may be a little different today compared to 10 years ago. The meaning of a brand hasn't changed. The way we interact with them has.

So I have to wonder how different this all is for the design community, if you can call it that. Just as brands have their gatekeepers—the same people who told us that Diet Coke was meant to be enjoyed, not mixed with candy for the purpose of making fountains—the design world also has gatekeepers. Or you could call them guardians, hight priests, guru's, icons—take your pick. Indeed Philipe is probably one of them. Design's gatekeepers guarded the secret sauce to what they deemed was "good design". They were quick to point out that not everybody recognized what it was. Some, like Stark brought "design" to the masses, not unlike Prometheus bringing us fire in ancient times. Some brands, like Target helped broaden the appeal of "designer things"—creating a mainstream demand for pretty and stylish things.

Now lots of people can design—and design means a lot of different things to different people (IE, I don't equate design with pretty). But the tools are out there. The techniques are easy to look up. Some have gotten pretty good at design—creating the social platforms that many of us use daily to watch videos, stream content, distribute presentations, share contacts and build personal brands. Scion's automobiles are made to be customized. Actually, were they designed that way? Or was it Scion owners who created a culture out of sheet metal and fiberglass? Apple can't really control the design and development of both native and Web based iPhone applications—even though they give it a good shot. And directors can't control how people choose to watch their movies no matter how much they may disagree with it.

No, design isn't dead, especially the really good design that adds value to our lives. But the notion of design's gatekeepers may need some additional thought as more of us begin to act like "professionals" and take on the sacred role of design. Where once we had Steve Jobs to tell us what design should be—we now have each other to look to as well. It's not a substitute—it's an addendum. For some of us, that's a welcome evolution. For others—it's like having unwanted guests crash your party. Which will it be for you?

vía Logic+Emotion

Sustainable Towers in Malaysia by Studio Nicoletti Associati

Malaysia is no stranger to iconic buildings. Two of the tallest buildings in the world, the Petronas Twin Towers, are located in Kuala Lumpur, the country’s capital. So it comes as no surprise to us that a stunning new residential development is planned for the Putrajaya waterfront known as Precinct 4, just 30km south of Kuala Lumpur. The design, however, is a refreshing and original with unique, marine-inspired structures - which also draw from traditional Islamic designs - arranged in a permeable, radiating block of bioclimatic architecture.

(more…)

vía Inhabitat

VISUALIZE THE WIND: With wind-powered LED light Firewinder

This might not be the most practical outdoor light in the world, but what the Firewinder lacks in pedestrian utility it makes up for in sheer engaging awesomeness. Transforming wind into light, the Firewinder is a hanging, wind-powered LED light that can be powered by the smallest breeze. Unlike most wind turbines that spin vertically, the Firewinder spins in a horizontal direction, illuminating its LEDs in a spiraling helix of light. The coolest thing about the Firewinder is that it doesn’t just run on or off, but instead is visibly reactive to subtle changes in the environment. How bright the LEDs glow corresponds directly to how fast the turbine spins, enabling observers to visualize the power of wind.

(more…)

vía Inhabitat

Nihon Uni shirts resist stabbing, make you feel like a superhero

Mind you, this isn't the first time we've seen garb constructed to withstand vicious knife fights, and apparently a few Japanese streets are becoming just as frightening as some in London. Reportedly created to provide protection against stabbers following an "increasing number of malicious crimes that have victimized children and late-night convenience store clerks," Nihon Uni has developed a t-shirt crafted from "ultrahigh molecular weight polyethylene fiber." Aside from rendering blades useless, the material is also completely machine washable and lightweight; still, the fabric can be penetrated by "sharp points," so it's up to you to steer clear of rooftop archers. Nevertheless, long-sleeved versions can be had this June for ¥22,000 ($221) to ¥59,000 ($593), while the way less protective short-sleeved variety will run you between ¥19,000 ($191) and ¥52,000 ($522).

[Via Slashgear]

Here's The Future of Advertising. Now Go Do it.

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Kieran Timberlake + Living Homes= LBS

Treehugger readers may recall the Loblolly House by Kieran Timberlake, to which we have devoted much space, including What Makes a Building Green?, Loblolly House: Pictures at Last and more. I consider it to be one of the most innovative and important houses of this century. Readers may also recall LivingHomes, with the first LEED Platinum prefab from developer Steve Glenn. As a cured architect and developer, I could only dream of what the result might be if one mixed the talents and innovations of architects like Kieran Timb...

vía TreeHugger

A wonderful example of a disruptive business model

Here's a great example of a low-end disruptive business model: Psychotherapy for All

The more I work on the creation of disruptive business models, the more I'm convinced that there's almost always room for a disruptive model. One just needs to start with human needs and look hard, work hard for it. The design process needs constraints. A lack of viable solution spaces is more a reflection of poor innovation process than a statement of fact; it is a lack of generative contraints which leads to dead ends.

I can think of no better design constraint for the genesis of disruptive business models than trying to serve the needs of people living on a few dollars a day. What, for example, might happen to pace of innovation in our US healthcare system if we were to take notes on disruptions such as this one, or from the Aravind Eye Care System?

vía metacool

Convergence + The Digital Agency

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Bio-electronic implant seeks to restore partial sight

We've seen initiatives all over the globe created in an attempt to beat blindness, but researchers based at MIT are feeling fairly confident that their development is within a few years of being able to "restore partial sight to people who have slowly gone blind because of degenerative diseases of the retina." The bio-electronic implant, which is about the size of a pencil eraser, would actually sit behind the retina at the back of the eyeball, and images would be transmitted to the brain "via a connector the width of a human hair." As it stands, an FDA grant application is already in the works, and the scientists are hoping to have it implanted in an animal as early as this summer. Still, the solution only works for folks who "were once able to see and have partially intact optic nerve cells" -- those who were blind from birth or suffer from glaucoma are unfortunately ineligible for the procedure.

vía Engadget

Less is More: 300 Square Foot Apartment

This unit gives new meaning to the term "Bed and Breakfast"- You just slide out of bed onto the breakfast table. It is in a 300 SF Maff B&B in the Hague, designed by Queeste Architecten and photographed by Teun van den Dries, via ::Dezeen....

vía TreeHugger

A wonderful example of a disruptive business model

Here's a great example of a low-end disruptive business model: Psychotherapy for All

The more I work on the creation of disruptive business models, the more I'm convinced that there's almost always room for a disruptive model. One just needs to start with human needs and look hard, work hard for it. The design process needs constraints. A lack of viable solution spaces is more a reflection of poor innovation process than a statement of fact; it is a lack of generative contraints which leads to dead ends.

I can think of no better design constraint for the genesis of disruptive business models than trying to serve the needs of people living on a few dollars a day. What, for example, might happen to pace of innovation in our US healthcare system if we were to take notes on disruptions such as this one, or from the Aravind Eye Care System?

vía metacool

From 1984, 4 predictions about the future (3 of them correct)

n this 1984 talk, Nicholas Negroponte foreshadows CD-ROMs, web interfaces, service kiosks, the touchscreen interface of the iPhone, and his own One Laptop per Child project. Oh, and there's also a fascinating project called Lip Service, which is, um, sti

vía TED Talks de contact@ted.com (Michael Glass) el 10/03/08

Business Needs Design, Now!

A presentation of the Design Thinking 2007 conference.

Via Poetpainter

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Time Capsule: everything you wanted to know

So we spent the weekend playing with Time Capsule and we've discovered some interesting answers to all your questions, as well as a few accompanying annoyances. Our main takeaway? It's a solid product, but you shouldn't expect it to do anything more than back up your files -- and Apple really needs to step up and enable general NAS support for Time Machine. Read on!

Continue reading Time Capsule: everything you wanted to know

vía Engadget

Yves Béhar's Kada Multi-Functional Flat-Pack Stool and Table

Yves Béhar, the industrial super-designer with the One Laptop Per Child and LEAF LED light for Herman Miller to his credit (among many others), has definitely been following his own advice. When he was featured in Fast Company's Design Issue, he said, "Design is not a short-term fix. It's a long-term engagement that requires you to think about how design affects everything that touche...

vía TreeHugger

Innovation

"1. Old-school design methods are failing. The pace of change among consumers and competitors has grown so fast that using a conventional process to hatch a marketing campaign, a Web site, or a new product virtually dooms it to being obsolete by the time it’s complete.

2. Innovation is the new currency. The days of a whopping marketing budget or a pretty design equaling success are over, as Blendtec has so well proved. If you’re not creating something that’s genuinely new—as well as useful and delightful—you are screwed.

3. Everyone is a creative. Your next-door neighbor can make a YouTube video or design a MySpace page that sits on an equal media playing field with anything we produce here at Avenue A | Razorfish.

4. Narrative is the experience. As the Web becomes the preferred destination for brand exploration, digital experiences must become richer, deeper, and more able to tell compelling stories. If your brand experience depends entirely on pages and clicks, it’s time to wonder, “What is my story?”

From Avenue A / Razorfish, Digital Outlook Report 2008 (Download full report here)

M-Hotel By Tim Pyne

We are longtime fans of UK architect Tim Pyne, one of the prefab pioneers with his lovely M-House. Now he has gone multi-unit with his M-Hotel proposal. The 500 square foot units plug into a steel frame "a bit like Corb did at the Unite" - I think it looks more like my Kenner Girder and Panel building set. ...

vía TreeHugger

Brand evolutions

Here's some brain fodder to play with the next time you're stuck in traffic: Evolution of Car Logos

Just look at the evolution of the SAAB badge. Amazing how much churn there is on the automotive branch of the tree for a brand which only emerged after WWII:

Myself, I like the 1949 badge the best. Don't like the screaming chicken so much. How does one say "Burt Reynolds" in Swedish?

As I look through this site, I have to admit that many of the older badge renditions are at least as compelling as their replacements, and often more so. Having been a brand manager at one point in my peripatetic career, I sense that the rationale for many brand revisions or logo redesigns are rooted more in internal politics and the need to do something tangible for one's yearly performance review than in market needs. In other words, most customers probably don't care if your new logo is slightly better than your old one, especially if they just finally got used to the old one, because it has only been the old for the three years that have passed since the last redesign. As with management, sometimes the best marketing may be no marketing at all...

Via Metacool

Which Blogs Should I Read?

Friends of mine in the industry who aren’t taken with blogs sometimes ask me which ones they should look at just to stay current. I looked through my RSS reader and picked the five I thought would be most helpful. They are

• Seth’s Blog (Seth Godin)
• TechCrunch
• O’Reilly Radar
• How to Change the World (Guy Kawasaki)
• Edge Perspectives with John Hagel

vía Noise Between Stations

Danish wind turbine eats itself

You know how we love wind turbines around here, but we love carnage even more -- so we can't get enough of this 200-foot tall Danish wind turbine shearing itself to bits after its brakes failed during a recent storm. The 10-year old windmill is the one of two different Vestas windmills to fail in Denmark in the past week -- the company is launching an investigation, but might we suggest selling tickets instead?

[Via BoingBoing]

Continue reading Danish wind turbine eats itself

An Evolution of Tech Company Logos

Neatorama has put together a nice little collection of progression of famous tech company logos.

You’ve seen these tech logos everywhere, but have you ever wondered how they came to be? Did you know that Apple’s original logo was Isaac Newton under an apple tree? Or that Nokia’s original logo was a fish?

The history lessons are nice, though one I’m a bit skeptical of the veracity:

Jobs thought that the overly complex [Newton] logo had something to do with the slow sales of the Apple I, so he commissioned Rob Janoff of the Regis McKenna Agency to design a new one. Janoff came up with the iconic rainbow-striped Apple logo used from 1976 to 1999.

Anyone have verification of whether Jobs actually thought this? While it would be amazing if a logo did have the actual power to slow down sales, I’m rather skeptical of that too.

vía Richardsona

Inflatable Tea House by Kengo Kuma

Japanese Tea Houses are among the most beautiful and serene structures on the planet, and are usually minimalist in design and modest in size. Kengo Kuma has built an inflatable one for the garden of the Museum für Angewandte Kunst Frankfurt. According to the Museum: "Kengo Kuma develops the traditional teahouse architecture further, while at the same time venturing onto entirely unexplored territory with regard to his design. In search of flexible buildings - Kuma uses the term “weak architecture” - he has arrived at a truly ephemeral structure with this project. ...

vía TreeHugger

Casulo: An Entire Apartment's Furniture in One Small Box

It might not look like it, but inside this box, there's an armoire, a desk, a height-adjustable stool, two more stools, a six-shelf bookcase, and a bed with a mattress. Casulo, the brilliant, modular setup designed by Marcel Krings & Sebastian Mühlhäuser, hides furnishings enough for an entire room -- or, heck, an entire apartment -- in a small 31"x47" (that's 80 cm x 120 cm) box. Two people can lift, carry, and assemble (and then disassemble, when it's time to move) each piece of furniture within the Casulo in about 10 minutes -- it requires no tools for assembly -- and every part of the boxy exterior is...

vía TreeHugger

Personalising "Cash"

vía Jan Chipchase - Future Perfect de Jan el 10/02/08

This pre-paid and top-up-able Starbucks card guides the customer to "treat this card like cash" - and log on to their web site to create a personalised design.

When the donkey work of transferring a pre-determined and shared value from one person to another can be carried out digitally, to what extent is it desirable to have a tangible representation of that value? In what contexts? And as with this card, to what extent should the customer be able to personalise the tangible representation of that value - to what extent should the customer be able to design and create their own cash?

Thinking about the range of tools to create and reproduce physical things - what are the likely forms this currency will take? And given the degree to which people find comfort in nostalgia, who will be the first to re-introduce the sea shell as a currency?

A New Innovation Index--The S&P/BusinessWeek Global Innovation Index.

vía BusinessWeek Online - NussbaumOnDesign de bruce_nussbaum el 8/02/08

Check out our new S&P/BusinessWeek Global Innovation Index that we launch today. It's part of our ongoing effort to provide innovation tools and methods on the Innovation & Design site and in our Inside Innovation magazine.

Here's the idea:

The index is made up of 25 of the most innovative public companies around the globe, based on The Most Innovative Companies rankings (BusinessWeek.com, 2007), an annual survey prepared by BusinessWeek in partnership with Boston Consulting Group. The Innovation Index's rise or fall is calculated at the end of each trading day, and the results are posted online the next morning.

Each day you'll see how the index has fared and the company whose stock price rose the most—and which fell the most in that 24-hour period. We expect the S&P/BusinessWeek Global Innovation Index to be a valuable resource for investors and the broader business community. Innovation is proving to be the key defining factor for the world's most successful corporations, and the Global Innovation Index is a new measure of that success. Historical data show that the S&P/BusinessWeek Global Innovation Index companies outperformed S&P Global 100 Index companies by more than 7% in 2007 and have done 5% better since the middle of 2005. The index, which can be seen on Bloomberg as SPBWIV (in dollars) and SPBWIVE (in euros), is a vehicle for investors to participate in the growth of innovation-driven companies, as well as a means of tracking the performance of those companies.

Each May, after the Most Innovative Companies ranking is published in BusinessWeek, the 25 companies in the index will be rebalanced. Some companies will fall off; others will be added. The current index is based on the 2007 ranking of The Most Innovative Companies and features the following:

Apple (AAPL)
Amazon (AMZN)
Boeing (BA)
BMW (BMW)

Cisco Systems (CSCO)
Dell (DELL)
Genentech (DNA)
eBay (EBAY)
General Electric (GE)
Google (GOOG)
Honda Motor
IBM (IBM)
Intel (INTC)
3M (MMM)
Motorola (MOT)
Microsoft (MSFT)
Nokia
Procter & Gamble (PG)
Samsung Electronics
Starbucks (SBUX)
Sony (SNE)
Target (TGT)
Toyota Motor (TM)
Wal-Mart Stores (WMT)
Walt Disney (DIS)

Each company's weight in the index is derived from a combination of two rankings. The first is a qualitative ranking based on the company's position in the annual BusinessWeek/BCG survey. The second is a quantitative ranking based on three factors used to estimate a company's innovation—three-year earnings growth; three-year sales growth, and R&D as a percentage of sales. A composite score is calculated for each company by adding the qualitative and quantitative scores. For details, go to www.indices.standardandpoors.com.


We're going to iterate as we go along. Clearly one problem from the getgo is that we are building the index on a survey that took place nearly a year ago. We know that Motorola has blown up and that the cell phone unit is being shopped around Asia (so far no one wants it). Starbucks is in trouble and is trying to get back to the basics of aroma-experience marketing (ending its stinky breakfast fare which interfered with that wonderful coffee smell). Dell is just beginning its transformation from low-cost corporate seller of PCs to higher-priced, stylish, designed machines for individuals. And the whole tech sector is getting hammered as the recession gets nearer and nearer. Apple is down nearly 25% from its high.

S&P will be changing the index right after the next Most Innovative Companies ranking comes out and we publish it--in the next issue of Inside Innovation on April 19. That should rebalance the index to reflect current events.

One of the important lessons we can already draw from the creation of this index is what goes wrong with innovation. We have 25 of the very best global corporations using design and innovation--and a significant number of them messed up this year. Why? What mistakes were made? Design didn't save Motorola (the second rate software of the RAZR that made surfing the net and social networking a horror ultimately undermine the stylish look of the product). Dell's innovation in supply-side sourcing and web-enabled ordering didn't last forever and was disrupted by another innovation--the shift to personal, mobile computing from corporate, fixed-office computing.

What other lessons can we draw from the new innovation index?

Pamelia Kurstin: Theremin, the untouchable music

The Grass is Always Greener with Mindscape's "Peddy" Furniture

Have a green thumb? Need something to sit on outside? Japanese company Mindscape has just the solution for you: their line of "Peddy" furniture creates a truly green place to sit in the garden. In true Chia Pet-style, the couches, benches and seats fro out and grow with a little water and light; like the various chairs and loungers we've seen before, they help prove that green is the new grass. If you like the idea of growing stuff yourself, and need some outdoor furniture,...

Open Architecture Challenge Video

With just one month to go before the deadline for the Open Architecture Challenge arrives we hope all the designers and architects taking part around the world are readying their proposals for submission. While all you guys have been designing and developing ideas the Architecture For Humanity

Anti Smog Architecture: A Catalyst for Cleaner Air in Paris

Architect Vincent Callebaut’s latest project balances public galleries, meeting rooms and gathering spaces over canals and abandoned railroad tracks in the 19th Parisian district. The prototype uses green technologies and techniques but is more than just an example of sustainable design. Callebaut’s ‘Anti Smog: An Innovation Centre in Sustainable Development’ is a catalyst for cleaner air.

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