You know Heelys, those sneakers with the wheel in the heel that you see kids zooming around on? Starting this month, the company is broadening their product horizons with a new category: A removeable "footboard."

Called the Nano Inline Footboard, the detachable device is not quite a skateboard, not quite a scooter, not quite inline skates. The Nano is designed to correspond with a mating system built into Heelys shoes: by what we can gather from the drawings, it clicks into a cavity left by removing the Heelys wheel in one shoe.

We came across news of this product quite by accident, through reading about the material they're built with: Eastman's Tritan copolyester and then stumbling upon the Azom website, which reports:

"The unique, hybrid skate system of the NANO Inline Footboard and Heelys wheeled footwear is a radical departure from traditional wood and friction tape skateboards," said Ryan Wills, director of innovation, Heelys. "The product design required a material equally as revolutionary. It needed to be extremely strong and rugged, yet lightweight enough for users to easily jump, grind and perform a variety of tricks."

Heelys selected Eastman Tritan copolyester for the inline footboard because it offers durability, design flexibility and ease of processing. Tritan also is not manufactured with BPA or phthalates allowing the board to meet regulations for chemicals in children's products. Additionally, the ability to tint Tritan provided Heelys with increased color options for the product.

The Nanos will hit store shelves sometime this month. Below are two videos of it: The first is a very "produced" commercial, whereas the second gives you a better look (for the first 30 seconds, the last 30 is skippable) at the product.

. . . this column is a response to your post of June 25th, titled, Design Thinking: A Useful Myth? I believe in the utility of design thinking, but reject the idea that it is mythical. Thank you for triggering this rich discussion, with over fifty comments. You always find a way of arguing a case with enough controversy to wake us up and generate responses, but I think your idea of "myth" is in itself only a half-truth.

Design thinking harnesses the power of intuition. It is a process, evolved gradually by designers of all kinds, which can be applied to create solutions to problems. People of any background can use it, whether or not they think of themselves as designers. It uses the subconscious as well as the conscious mind, subjective as well as objective thinking, tacit knowledge as well as explicit knowledge, and embraces learning by doing. I like the analogy of an iceberg that has just a little ice above water level, with a vast mass submerged. Rigorous explicit thinking, of the kind encouraged in institutions of higher learning, limits people to conscious thinking and hence to using just a tiny proportion of the potential in their minds - like the ice above the water. The design thinking process allows us to follow our intuition, valuing the sensibilities and insights that are buried in our subconscious - like the ice below the water. This process is capable of generating solutions to complex problems, developing subtle qualities, and helping us move towards better solutions to "wicked problems." If we try to solve these problems with explicit thinking alone, our heads hurt and we are unable to respond holistically.

There's more to design than design thinking. As you said in the Epilog to your book "Emotional Design," "We are all designers. We manipulate the environment, the better to serve our needs. We select what items to own, which to have around us. We build, buy, arrange, and restructure: all this is a form of design. When consciously, deliberately rearranging objects on our desks, the furniture in our living rooms, and the things we keep in our cars, we are designing." When someone chooses what to wear, how to decorate their home or layout their garden, they are exercising skills of general design awareness. It is about how to choose rather than how to generate new design solutions. Everyone makes design choices, but that doesn't imply that they are fully-fledged designers or design thinkers.

While the world witnessed Plastiki's journey from San Francisco to Sydney, Vancouver has been hosting visitors on the world's first floating dining room. This elegant raft sits on top of 1700 plastic bottles, which are set in a frame made from reclaimed pinewood. Moored at the False Creek Yacht Club, next to its restaurant partner C, this plastic dining room offers twelve guests a six-course sustainable seafood meal and a little bit more. Shannon Ronalds, the founder of The School of Fish Foundation is on a mission to impact the seafood industry by educating the chefs of the future.

When asked how he came up with the idea for the structure, Shannon said he wanted to bring the issue of how plastics were impacting the ocean a little closer to home. After looking at images of outdoor patio scenes, he used his Photoshop 101 skills to create a visualization of the concept he had in his head. By collaborating with Loki Ocean Marine Surveyors and Yacht Designers, he was able to determine how many plastic bottles would be needed to keep this raft afloat.

Manoj Kothari, who founded [Indian design firm] Onio Design, and others of his ilk are no longer content designing refrigerators, mobile phones and soap wrappers. They now hope to take on a bigger, more serious role in their clients' businesses--from brand experience and trends research to business process design to re-crafting corporate strategy. In short, they want a seat at the decision-making table.

How? Design thinking is a new philosophy that has helped these firms move into areas traditionally occupied by research houses, advertising agencies and consulting firms.

>> Read article

Good design odds are like rock star odds: Most groups are one-hit wonders, with one amazing piece that gets a lot of airplay before they seem to disappear. It's that rare band who can make an album you'll stick with the whole way through.

We just came across Stockholm-based design collective Outofstock's book, and to us, their furniture section alone is the portfolio version of Radiohead's OK Computer--just fantastic piece after fantastic piece. Here are a few of our faves:

Hues - Inspired by the overlay of colors in venn diagrams, this set of nesting tables is composed of waterjet-cut low iron glass tops that are sandblasted and coloured. Legs and support frame in painted steel.

Easy - A generously proportioned easy chair made of bent laminated plywood, with the front and rear leg structures stacked to form a stable brace support. Finished in maple wood veneer.

Quebec-based artist Sara Lagace's "(Not so) Killer Ring" has a pretty, if ambiguous, design: It looks vaguely weapon-like, yet the would-be point is rounded and soft.

It's made from 13 grams of silver and Lagace sells them on Artefaks, a sort of Quebecois Etsy dedicated to serving artists and designers from that region. Check 'em out.

Attention all industrial design students:
If you're attending the IDSA's International Conference in Portland this week, you can just listen to the topic of DIY within the design profession, or you can roll up your sleeves and get in on the action yourself winning some serious prize and tons of designer cred. Lunar Design, is engaging student members to participate in a competition worthy of your time and talent. Design a DIY food container that helps reduce the amount of food waste thrown away every day by the average person. The prize? A fully loaded 64GB iPad!

Check out Lunar's website for details, and get your maker skills ready to show the ID community how enabling DIY sensibilities can change the world... or at least our landfill.

The ticketing machine of the new Melbourne Bicycle Share scheme. Melbourne, Australia. Photo: Gavin Anderson.

Designers of interactions have the opportunity to move their purview beyond the shallow plane of interaction into the design of systems, organisational capability and culture; to tackle very complex problems and affect profound and lasting change.

Designing the interactions people have with other people, with organisations, and with systems is both a simple and a complex undertaking. Simple in that the mechanics of an individual interaction can be well-defined and articulated. The problem, and the solution, can be narrowed down significantly. Indeed, so simple can interaction design seem at times that the discipline is often collapsed to a plane of request-response interfaces that sit between the participants—the design of a web form; the layout of an ATM machine; or a ticketing booth for a public bicycle share scheme. In this quite narrow and shallow view of interaction design the designer is responsible for little more than the layout of the interface and the choice of means through which request and response can be communicated.

This simplistic view of interactions and their design, is not the only view, nor the most appropriate. When designers apply their more holistic lens to the design of interactions it becomes clear that the practice is a much more complex and deeper undertaking.

A Critical Pillar of Success
Zooming out a little, we can see that an interaction generally forms a part of a much longer series of activities undertaken in pursuit of a goal. The web form represents one step in a purchasing process. The ATM machine is one of several channels through which deposits and withdrawals might be made. The ticketing booth opens the door to a convenient and energy-saving form of transport. From the perspective of the 'user' or 'customer' this series of interactions builds to create an experience in which each interaction is a 'moment'. The quality of the experience is unique to the participant, and draws on a lifetime of experience and expectation.

Looking at this resultant experience, the focus and target of experience design, we see a lifecycle that maps to the participants' end-to-end engagement with a product-service system. In doing so, we see that the design of interactions forms a critical pillar of success for that product-service system and one which directly influences and shapes strategy. The strength of that influence will vary depending on the nature of the product/service, but is always present. For example, a poorly designed online checkout process can act as a critical obstacle to purchasing. The ATM machine forms part of a convenient, and relatively low-cost service channel, where the interface plays a lesser part to the design of the overall network. In the example of the bicycle-sharing scheme, the ticketing machine could cause frustration or worse, but the availability of bikes, and the convenience of both locating and returning them will also play a significant part in the customer's experience.

We also need to acknowledge that products and services are utilised by people differently—at different times, at different volumes, in different places. And yet, if our target continues to be a consistent and coherent experience, then we must also design the transitions between interactions. The role of the interaction designer becomes one of system design, where the agents of the system may be individuals, organisations, or technology.

Continuum continues their series Open for Branding, where they are sharing, from start to finish, their latest branding project for the new, nomadic Design Museum Boston. They're asking for your input, so don't hesitate to leave your feedback in the comments below.

Now that we've kicked off the project, where do we begin? If you jump right into design, you could go anywhere—the world of possibility is too big. First, you need to take a step back and establish some parameters.

At Continuum, we develop thematic approaches to do this. By having a conversation around several approaches, we start to set boundaries to focus the creative direction. In this week's post, we're presenting three approaches that we've developed for Design Museum Boston.

Each of the theme boards dials up two of three brand pillars to show how emphasizing different aspects of their identity would translate visually. The themes are expressed using found images, typography, and key words. We also show examples of other museums and analogous brands that have similar styles. This is an integral part of the design process because it allows us to understand what's out there and where this museum fits in—ultimately helping us to craft their voice in the market.

The museum's organizational pillars are to educate, unite, and demonstrate. They aim to educate the public on the role of design, unite the public and the design community, and demonstrate examples of strong design. Our brand pillars are dynamic, smart, and bold. In choosing these pillars, we hit on words that visually express their organizational pillars.

Later this week, we'll share the thematic approaches with museum directors Derek Cascio and Sam Aquillano—engaging in a dialogue around different visual styles and learning what resonates with them. Given the museum's mission, we'd like you to weigh in on which direction you feel is the strongest and which elements you think resonate best. What else would you add?

Through the course of the meeting—coupled with your strategic feedback—we'll hone in on a cohesive approach to take the identity to the next phase of development.

Follow the jump to check out excerpts from our theme boards, and be sure to click on each image to view the full board at a larger size.

This post is part of the Inspiration series, made possible by Veer.com.

With so much time spent hunched over computer monitors, the Core77 office pondered whether an LCD monitor with a full-spectrum backlight would soften the pain of a sunless day. Sadly, the retinas of our eyes would be worse for the wear. While grueling computer sessions have long been normal for World of Warcraft enthusiasts (well, maybe normal's not the right word), digital tools for art have become so functional that much of the creative process now begins and ends with ones and zeroes.

When we were first introduced to the Wacom Cintiq monitor, the industrial designer demonstrating it quested for the perfect line by scratching his pen across the monitor in arc, pressing undo and repeating the process until he got exactly the curve he was looking for. It was nice to be gazing over his shoulder, but by the end of the demo, there were no crumpled papers, no errors and no record of work. What the designer was trying to achieve was the line quality of a madly sketching artist, coupled with the precision of a draftsman. Before Ctrl+Z, the mashup of those two characteristics was unthinkable, or would have left a trail of abandoned sketches in its wake. Our Wacom pilot, however, had none of the frenzied enthusiasm of an artist discovering the image as it appeared on the page. Instead, he'd become focused on a perfecting a repetitive task, and making his image look exactly the way it did in his mind's eye. Sadly, this approach seems to be rewarded for the individual worker, but thankfully when creatives gather, things look decidedly more old-fashioned.

The hallmark of innovation in most design offices is not a lone designer toiling amid crumpled sheets of paper or in front of a computer screen, but instead a group of people gesturing, shouting and occasionally laughing at a wall of sketches and photographs pinned to corkboard. Although a collage of images that imperfectly represent the product seems an unlikely focal point for innovation, the visual message that they projects can inspire in unexpected ways. While a perfect finished model suppresses insight, loose sketches, unfinished models and unrelated photographs allow the brain to fill in the blank. The humorless intensity with which CAD jockeys focus on their work allows for iterative improvements, but rarely inspiration and certainly not laughter. A team, however, gathered around a collage of visuals, from fast sketches to barely related found photographs, can find a vista open enough to really fuel or divert the creative process, and that that's a value worth preserving, even once the thumbtack is forgotten.

A friend who works as a toy designer recently told me her new intern--an ID grad--had never used a glue gun! And I wonder if today's ID grads know what graphite smells like. I believe my graduating class was one of the last to learn drafting the old-fashioned way, with an assortment of mechanical pencils.

Nowadays most ID curriculums revolve around the computer, whether for modeling or drafting. I don't mean this to be another "When I was your age" type of post; but I just came across "The Decanter," a promo video from design consultancy Walter Landor and Associates, which details the design process of the titular product way back in the 1960s, before I was even born.

If someone dropped a project on you today to design a decanter, you'd probably look at pictures of other decanters on the web, and do your drafting and modeling on the computer, which you'd also use to e-mail the client for updates and feedback. What the heck would you do in the 1960s when, needless to say, they didn't have any computers to run the design through?

Many of you may be curious as to how they got projects like this done back then. Here's to hoping you're fifteen-and-a-half minutes worth of curious, as this video was edited in the 1960s (the project doesn't even really start until 1:23 into the video). Check it out:

Design story: The Decanter from Landor Associates on Vimeo.

They've designed stacking/folding chairs that resemble manila file folders;

they've populated forests with giant foam "Magic Tree" air fresheners and Lego trees;

for ref-hating soccer fans, they've made a beanbag filled with dreaded, shredded yellow cards.

Studio Rita is a Montreal-based design agency with a cheeky sense of humor and tons of creativity, and The Ampersand's Natalie Atkinson gets in a quick interview with principals Stephane Halmai-Voisard and Karine Corbeil on the eve of Montreal's Festival Mode & Design, which starts tomorrow.

The interview is tightly written, but will leave you wanting more; check out the rest of Rita's book here.

Today the Core77 Hand-Eye Supply store opens its doors!

23 NW 4th Avenue - between Burnside and Couch St.

Months in the making and only possible via many generous contributions of time and effort by friends and family, the store is a labor of love of on our part, one that brings our "core" fascination with the mystery and power of making things into the realm of retail. wwowowowoooo!

We are excited to be located in Portland and to be able to take part in the historic - and accelerating - culture of craftsmanship and creative labor which lives here. The store is for both "creative types" and those who love them (and really, now-a-days, who doesn't?) - it is built to appeal with a selection of the basic tools of creative work - pencils, paper, pens - a line-up of high-quality tools and fabrication implements - foam cutters! wrenches! - and a wide variety of task-specific clothing made for the shop or studio - e.g. more aprons than you've seen in one place ever. It is a lifestyle store but for what you do, so it is a Workstyle store.

We hope to see a wide cross-section of the city's fine citizenry make its way through our doors in the coming days (and beyond!) and relish the opportunity to share our enthusiasm for the creative (a)vocations. For those of you not in the neighborhood we'll see you in the online version (opening shortly!)

Special-special thanks to: Laurence Sarrazin for leading the design of the space and for her positive disposition and vast capacity for work. Special thanks and congratulations, go to the core Core team of Tobias Berblinger, Glen Taylor and Eric Ludlum.

Read on for a quasi-mission statement and more pics - like all Core77 efforts the store is a work in progress!

Video by Paul Fraser.

Another video from this year's SIGGRAPH 2010 Expo: A demo of Organic Motion's motion capture technology that doesn't require a special suit ("No Markers" technology). The technology dramatically decreases the time and costs when creating human animations.

Video by Paul Fraser.

Totally amazing find from SIGGRAPH 2010: a modular LED display that can be written on using a light source, like a laser pointer. Now, instead of programming scrolling LED displays, just write on them and be done with it. The piece is by Junichi Akita, an assistant professor at Kanazawa University in Japan.

The tiles are pretty small, and can be joined together along any edge to create an infinite variety of shapes. Once connected, the tiles act as one, seamless unit. Like any LED display, modes are incorporated, from the traditional side to side scroll to the more unconventional tilt. Watch Core77 correspondent Paul Fraser's video from Siggraph above for a real time demonstration or Akita's video below.

There isn't much information on this out there on the web, but you can read Akita's technical paper here.

Video by Junichi Akita.

Last week, a dazzling display of pixels, technology, and ideas filled the Los Angeles Convention Center for the 37th SIGGRAPH 2010 International Conference and Exhibition. The world's foremost conference on computer graphics and interactive techniques brought together almost 23,000 artists, gaming experts and developers, filmmakers, scientists, and students from around the world, with more than 160 industry organizations exhibiting this year.

Core77 correspondent Paul Fraser was on site to capture the photographic highlights of the conference, from sketch matches to interactive touch screen installations. He's also appended a few of the best media shots to help you suss out what couldn't be photographed due to permissions restrictions.

>> VIEW GALLERY

Because the best of SIGGRAPH is best shot on video, don't miss Paul's live captures of some of the expo's most mind-blowing tech demos:

SIGGRAPH 2010: Sony's 3D display doesn't require glasses
SIGGRAPH 2010: Robotic Gigapixel Photography
SIGGRAPH 2010: Real sand, virtual bugs
SIGGRAPH 2010: An LED display you can write on with a laser pointer
SIGGRAPH 2010: 3D motion capture, without the suit

Design Researcher
Radius Product Development
Clinton, Massachusetts

The ideal candidate will have experience conducting primary and secondary research in the healthcare, consumer packaging and/or consumer electronic segments, while utilizing contextual and qualitative research techniques. We are looking for experts that are inspired by emotions and engaged in all of the senses.

» view

The best design jobs and portfolios hang out at Coroflot.

IDEO has just launched OpenIDEO, their new platform to solve global challenges through a community of creative thinkers, which, of course, you are invited to join. They've made a nice video explaining how open innovation works, above.

This community will receive a string of design challenges, beginning with Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution challenge, posing the question "How can we raise kids' awareness of the benefits of fresh food so they can make better choices?" The challenge ends October 8th, but as the whole process is collaborative and open from start to finish, better to get involved now by joining here.

And finally, a short video from Jamie Oliver about his challenge:

Design Observer has just posted a comprehensive (and inspiring) report on April's symposium in Bellagio, sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation and organized by Winterhouse Institute. Here's the start:

Organized by William Drenttel, director of Winterhouse Institute and editorial director of the Design Observer Group, and Julie Lasky, editor of Change Observer, Reasons Not to Be Pretty: Symposium on Design, Social Change and the "Museum" grew out of the observation that scores of museums throughout the world showcase contemporary design and architecture. Such institutions remind the public of the skill that goes into making functional objects and their power to influence daily life. And yet, despite efforts to highlight design as an outgrowth of custom and a vivid reflection of community, very few museums concern themselves with social change. Instead, they are traditionally associated with high aesthetics, encapsulated in everything from Mackintosh chairs to Alessi teapots. Of the cultural institutions that have taken the lead in social change, museums of science and natural history seem to be well ahead of their design colleagues.

This is not only a missed opportunity to educate a museum's constituencies about important contemporary themes and to promote actions with social value. It also casts a distorted perception of design's actual and potential contribution to the world.

Read the entire report here.

(I was privileged to be the moderator of the symposium; you can find my reflections here.)

What kind of dead technology do you have in your cupboards?

I recently found two old instant cameras in the back of a drawer-- with half-advanced rolls of film still in them. The local photo developer was able to develop only some of the shots (the film was around a decade old) and I was treated to some grainy, red-tinted photographs of my old apartment in Japan. The time stamps were shortly before I bought my first digital camera.

I've also got a stack of blank CDs and DVDs in a drawer; I used to stockpile them to burn things for friends, but now the flash drive has rendered them useless. I hardly even watch DVDs from Netflix anymore, though I get plenty of usage out of their "Watch Instantly" service.

In an effort to clear domestic clutter I recycled the film cameras last week (thanks Best Buy, for offering free in-store electronic goods recycling), along with a pair of once-extremely-cool landline phones I'd purchased while living in Japan.

I may recycle the unburned discs next. If anyone needed a sure sign that they'll disappear, Apple is allegedly dropping iDVD from their next version of iLife. Remember when they dropped support for the floppy disk? Yes, most of us thought they were crazy, but months later I regretted stockpiling a crapload of the useless squares that a local store had slashed the price on, and I won't make that mistake again!

In any case, I originally started this post to point out that Best Buy offers free e-recycling at their brick-and-mortar stores. Bring in a bag of whatever you've got and they'll take care of it, so you can clean house and get those dust-gathering precious metals back into the product stream, hopefully saving a modicum of natural resources.