Mark Dziersk in Fast Company: Design, meet Business. Mark Dziersk, Core77's business practices forum moderator and longtime design evangelist, is now the Business meets Design editor for Fast Company. His first column, Design meet Business: "Business, this is...Design" is a great primer on the whole topic. Here's a taste:
Here's a visual story borrowed from a friend and colleague, the noted designer Richard Seymour. When describing the innovation process Richard asks his listeners to imagine a building being imploded, coming down through controlled explosive charges. The debris cloud that results is a metaphor for the beginning of the design process. A time in which interesting, unpredictable connections are made and where ambiguity is prevalent. Now, visualize running the film backward and making the building. A compelling analogy for the process of design. Controlled chaos leading to clear and finalized end point. Without the risk of letting go in the "debris cloud" original ideas and connections will not be made. With the understanding that the film can be run backward and with faith in the process, break through innovations can happen.
Stanford's Design and Medical Schools team up on Respira paper asthma spacer. In order for asthma inhalers to perform effectively, the discharged medicine must be taken in coordination with a deep breath. This action can be very difficult for young children gasping in the midst of an attack. In these cases, supplementary devices called spacers are used to capture and hold the medicine until the user is ready to inhale. Over 8 million children in Mexico suffer from asthma who are without proper medical care or preventative measures and spacers, at more than $50 a piece, are far too costly for Mexican health centers to stock.
Stanford's Design and Medical Schools teamed up to face this obstacle, creating a super cost-effective and easily distributed solution. With a cost reduction of over 99% (dang), the flat-pack, foldable paper Respira spacers can be shipped by the hundreds for the cost of a stamp.
In the long term, we believe this innovation is sufficiently affordable and easy-to-use that it can be distributed directly to patients and their families. Used in the home, this device will enable not only the rapid treatment of acute attacks, but also a more comprehensive prevention strategy. Patients would use the spacer together with an inhaler to give the preventive medication that is known to dramatically decrease the number of acute attacks.This rethinking of asthma management will yield savings and improvements in quality of life for patients and their families. The reduced cost will benefit the Mexican health care system, which will avoid unnecessary, expensive emergency room treatments, as well as patients' families, who will save bus fares and lost wages. With the knowledge that treatment is easily accessible, or even in the home, the anxiety and limitations in activity that plague asthma sufferers and their families will be greatly diminished. Importantly, this simple device empowers asthma patients and their families to take an active role in managing their disease.
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Luckey Climbers. Family-owned business Luckey & Luckey designs and builds Luckey Climbers for children's museums, malls, zoos, and other kid-centric locations that welcome rambunctious rugrats who like to climb, jump, and hang. The net-and-platform structures spell out adventure with playfully curved surfaces and daredevil heights--how could a kid possibly resist? Each installation is unique, ranging from vast, uniform, and structured mazes to vertically-configured jungle gyms.
thanks steve!
Americans, really workin' it. Ugh.
Sustainable Housing Moves Forward in New Orleans with Innovative Design and Materials. Global Green tours the first home at the Holy Cross Project today, a zero energy affordable housing development in the Holy Cross Neighborhood of New Orleans' Lower 9th Ward. workshop/apd won a design competition chaired by Brad Pitt from over 125 entries. Dozens of green products and systems will also be showcased at today's event.
iDSA presents Digging Deeper. Digging Deeper is a two-part event that will feature a tour of the Bay Area's waste disposal and recycling facilities followed by a panel discussion at the new, sustainably designed, San Francisco Federal Building on September 12, 2007.
As the dialogue around sustainability expands and points of view proliferate, distinct courses of action become ever more blurry. With every choice there is a trade off. Getting smart while designing green means understanding context. Join us for a day of Digging Deeper into the context of sustainability. We will demonstrate how understanding inherent tensions can reveal design opportunity.
Sony takes back the waste. Sony hops on the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) bandwagon and announces their take-back recycling program. Here are some details from their online statement:
To encourage consumers to recycle and dispose of electronic devices in an environmentally sound manner, Sony has established a national recycling program for consumer electronics. The Sony Take Back Recycling Program allows consumers to recycle all Sony-branded products for no fee at 75 Waste Management (WM) Recycle America eCycling drop-off centers throughout the U.S."Providing the highest level of service and support doesn't stop once a purchase is made. We believe it is Sony's responsibility to provide customers with end-of-life solutions for all the products we manufacture," said Stan Glasgow, president and chief operating officer of Sony Electronics. "Through the Take Back Recycling Program, our customers will know that their Sony products will be recycled in an environmentally responsible manner."
via machinist.salon
Book Review: Higher Creativity for Virtual Teams: Developing Platforms for Co-Creation, by Steven P. MacGregor and Teresa Torres-Coronas. Reviewed by Robert Blinn.
The information superhighway that was much lauded in the 1990s is undoubtedly here. Indeed, developing countries are leapfrogging the traditional wired modes of communication with cellular systems that require far less infrastructure. At the same time, packet-based modes of communication such as instant messenger and Skype are becoming the de-facto standard for communication between overseas buyers and suppliers.
But the promise of the videophone, trumpeted by IBM at the 1964 New York World's fair has never taken hold, despite the best guesses of Stanley Kubrick's 2001, Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, and James Cameron's Aliens, to name a few. In part, the lack of counterparties with similar technology held it back, but it is equally likely that many people were simply uncomfortable with the prospect of the other caller seeing them disheveled or unwashed. Purely auditory conversation masks non-verbal cues, and sometimes that little obfuscation is comforting.
It is often cited, however, that nonverbal communication makes up the bulk of information flow between individuals, and the perplexing popularity of emoticons provides ample testimony that words aren't always enough to get the point across. For creative teams, these adages hold even more fully. Any design meeting likely includes: hand waving, gesticulation, volume changes, uncomfortable silences, glares, sketching, annotating other peoples' drawings, and hopefully healthy doses of laughter. Something magical happens when you pack a room full of creatives, and that spark is often lost on the phone or in multimedia conferences.
In Higher Creativity for Virtual Teams, Steven MacGregor and Teresa Torres-Coronas have compiled a comprehensive assortment of scholarly papers on the subject of virtual teams -- collaborative creative efforts between people who happen to be separated by oceans and time zones. Between international sourcing and free trade, the problem of virtual teamwork is rapidly becoming a major one for large corporations and is beginning to trickle down to working designers. While virtual collaboration seems functional in concept, however, coordinating such efforts remains a massive problem. The persistence of creative centers like Silicon Valley, Hollywood, and even Bangalore and their respective real estate markets provide testament to the fact that human beings still like face-to-face meetings, and the astronomical prices of business class airfare as compared to coach demonstrates that they are willing to pay for them too.
Shoot From The Hip. Some nice local coverage for Brunner and upstart-grise Ammunition.
With 12 product and five graphic designers on his team at Pentagram, and now with him at Ammunition, Brunner is ready to work like Behar within a broad client range that includes technology companies, ventilation companies and even manufacturers of simple tools, such as his Heavy Hitter Hammer, made for the Chinese market. "I want a product design firm that is multidisciplinary but one where the product is front and center," said Brunner. He said when he is financially invested in a client's product, he feels a bigger sense of partnership. He develops designs in exchange for an equity share in the company that hires his services and sometimes requires a royalty percentage of the sales.
Marriott to get hip designs. With designers like Philippe Starck and Michael Graves having breathed life into formerly dowdy housewares chain Target, it was only a matter of time before the trend extended to formerly dowdy hotel chains. It's just been announced that hip hotelier Ian Schrager, the founder of the concept of boutique hotels, is partnering up with Marriott:
Their plan is straightforward enough: Schrager will design about 100 boutique hotels for the as-yet-unnamed brand in major cities across the United States, South America, Europe and Asia, and Marriott International will operate them. By tapping a range of renowned architects and designers, Schrager plans to give each property a distinct character.
While there's not yet any word on who those "renowned architects and designers" will be, Schrager says,
"...believe me, I'm not going to have a book of standards. It will be..." He paused for effect. "The anti-chain."
Click the link below for more details.
via international herald tribune
Bookswim beta. Yes!! It's like Netflix for books!
via lifehacker
Nature Design: From Inspiration to Innovation. Nature is an endless source of inspiration for everyone, especially for us designers. For instance, here in Germany the magic word 'Bionik', or biomimetics, leads us to a new world where products are designed upon mother nature's smart systems and methods.
Accordingly, the connections between nature and the various design disciplines have once again become far more intensive in recent years. A good reason for The Museum für Gestaltung (The Museum of Design) in Zürich to feature the exhibition Nature Design - From Inspiration to Innovation
The exhibition (10 August - 02 December, 2007) including symposium, discussions and tours, presents an international selection of objects and projects from the fields of design, architecture, landscape architecture, art, photography and scientific research which do not simply depict or imitate nature but use it as a starting point and a reservoir of inspiration to present innovative answers to the relationship between man and nature [image from "Sixes Last" video by 1st Ave Machine].
Ding 3000's S-XL Cake will hook you up, or not. If equally cut cake pieces work your last nerve, Ding 3000's got your back. The new S-XL Cake pan mold gives you a sweet selection of slice sizes to choose from. The only drawback is when you've arrived to gather dessert a bit too late and only a M is left when you had hoped for an XL. Oh well.
And finally, Bluetoothbrush.\ It's just a concept for now, but we're chuckling about recent ASU grad Erik Hernandez and ASU senior Kevin O'Leary's design for a Bluetooth-powered electric toothbrush with hands-free headset called Bluetoothbrush. It's not clear whether you're to chat with other Bluetoothbrush users while brushing or if you're meant to get a super-sonic audio feed of your teeth getting squeaky clean...in any case, it looks hysterical and the name can't be beat!
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