Jonathan Ota and Ethan Frier are the brain and brawn behind Project Aura, a lighting system for the wheels of your bicycle. What once started as a design school experiment is now a product. They are finishing development of the prototype and are currently looking for another company to partner with to produce and distribute Project Aura.

Part 1 // Part 2

A Conversation between Jonathan Ota and Ethan Frier

Jonathan Ota: Remember when we first received that SURG check? What was it, $865 for something that we didn't even understand what we were doing?

Ethan Frier: Yeah, I mostly remember being shocked that we actually got the check, and thinking how much money it was. That was the first time I had ever really thought about how development and funding we really tied together, and being excited to actually get to develop this project with that funding. Neither of us really had the money to buy the equipment and supplies we needed for the prototype, so without that funding we never would have been able to even start this.

That was also the point when I started to recognize how much of an idealistic bubble schoolwork was—presenting renderings and mock-ups. When we actually tried to build a working prototype, we were forced to answer to the technical, physical and economic constraints of the real world.

JO: Ha, I think that has been a trend of the project—us applying for money, then winning it and not know what to do with it. I remember thinking, "I think we just conned our school into giving us free money." The physical prototyping was definitely the hardest part of the project, given how ignorant I, for one, was about that thing called electricity and LEDs and stuff like that. In the beginning, it was very much a technical and design exploration, though presently it's interesting how the focus on pure technical development has become just a part of the bigger strategy of trying to run a successful business.

EF: How did you feel after the Core77 wrote about the project, and the upshot of that? I remember feeling like I somehow cheated, that we didn't really deserve it in a way.

JO: I did feel like a bit of a cheat, because it didn't feel intentional. I remember thinking that getting anything published on Core was the pinnacle of every industrial design student's dream and the stamp of success on a school project, but to deal with the feedback and comments from hundreds of people? It was absurd! I couldn't believe it and I was immediately overwhelmed. Plus, I also thought I cheated because the video looked good—too good—when in fact the prototype was just barely functional. (moral of the story: learn how to make good videos).

It was only after this Internet "success" that I thought we could do something more with Aura—it proved that there was some sort of demand for it. Except, here I was, just a 19-year-old kid with a cool video, a half-functional proof-of-concept and nary a clue of what to do next.

At least two of the challenges of designing a current-day electric car are based on infrastructure limitations. One, electric cars need to have relatively large, expensive batteries—the one in Chevy's Volt reportedly runs a whopping $6,000—to deliver the kind of range that people want. Two, the car still needs to have an entire gasoline engine wedged in there too, as there aren't enough charging stations to see mass electric car uptake from those who want to cover large distances. But a recent development in the South Korean municipality of Gumi may have an impact on electric car design that far exceeds the public bus system to which it's currently being applied.

The resident eggheads at KAIST (the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, something like South Korea's MIT) developed a technology called Shaped Magnetic Field in Resonance, or SMFIR. It consists of power cables operating at a specific frequency, which then generates an electromagnetic field. A coil placed within a certain proximity to that field can turn that resonance into electricity. It's essentially wireless charging, but due to the intricacies of the KAIST design, they can achieve an astonishing 85% transmission efficiency.

What Gumi has done is lay SMFIR cable underneath select stretches of road, and then kitted out two electric public buses with the SMFIR coil. The batteries in the buses are quite small—about a third the size of what you'd find in a regular electric vehicle—and planners calculated that due to the high efficiency rate of SMFIR, they only needed to wire 5% to 15% of the bus' route to provide the requisite juice.

This week's collection of space savers includes items notable not only for their economy but also for their ability to perform a big reveal. Like a micro-apartment that brilliantly transforms to suit a certain household occasion, these items shift, fold and squinch in one state and then stretch out, unfurl and pop open in another. Overall, the accordion effect is delightful.

Beyond removing table leaves and unfolding a sofa bed, our big household purchases typically resist adaptation. But the Austrian-born, London-based designer Stephanie Hornig suggests, with her Set expanding shelving unit, that more flexibility should be baked into our furniture. Her powder-coated steel and beech bookcase can rest in three widths that, like a child-proof gate, will adapt to the parameters of a space.

Maybe I'm just bitter that my hopes for immediate 3D-sculpting artistic genius were dashed (see above), but there is something really strange about sculpting through a computer, even more so than just about any other method of 3D modeling. In an attempt not to delve too far into the pencil-vs-mouse debate (although really how can we avoid it?), the new 3D-sculpting web apps SculptGL and counterpart Sculptfab (essentially updated with a nicer UI) have the faint scent of nostalgia for a generations of hand crafters given the ol' middle finger by technology.

The SculptGL app was developed by French student Stephane Ginier, drawing inspiration from the research on self-adaptive topologies done by Lician Stanculescu. With no word on the availability of Stanculescu's 3D sculpting app 'Freestyle' for general consumption, we've been playing around with Grinier's version. The application—while super fun—is perhaps more interesting in concept than in actual use.

User Interface of SculptGL (top) and Sculptfab (bottom)

Three years ago Michael Abramson was at a nightclub in Boston. Shortly after taking a sip of his drink, he knew something was wrong. It was his first drink of the night but "started to feel much more like my 15th drink," he reported. Before he knew what was happening, the suddenly legless Abramson was thrown out of the club, presumably for being overintoxicated; his friends had to carry him out, and he remained unconscious until the next morning.

Abramson had been "roofied," having drank from a cocktail that someone had spiked. It's possible he was the target of a potential robbery, or that the drink was intended for someone of the fairer gender—a shocking 400,000 women are rendered unconscious and subsequently raped each year after unwittingly ingesting GHB, Rohypnol or Ketamine, colloquially known as "date rape drugs." (And that number only reflects the cases that are reported.) Even worse, you don't need to be Walter White to whip up a batch of GHB—it's easily created out of commonly available chemicals, and the resultant drug is odorless, flavorless and colorless, making detection just about impossible.

Abramson, who had studied engineering in his undergrad years, resolved to make it detectable. After enlisting the help of two of his former professors from Worcester Polytechnic Institute, he formed DrinkSavvy, a company dedicated to producing cocktailware—cups, straws, cocktail stirrers, and drinking glasses—that would change color in the presence of date rape drugs.

The team successfully worked out the chemistry, and next month DrinkSavvy's first batch of drinking straws and 16-oz. plastic cups will begin shipping. The first recipients will be the crowdsource backers that helped launch DrinkSavvy through IndieGogo, where a modest 50 large was enough to get the initial products manufactured. The company expects to have units ready for sale to the general public by 2014.

Here's a demonstration of a prototype:

Fashion and music have always had a close ties when it comes to mutual influence (and often consumer), so it comes as no surprise that many of the smaller independent labels—which sign musical acts outside of what would be considered the typical consumer tastes—also operate merchandise stores that err on the design-y side.

Taking a leap from the sweaty house show merch tables in college, many of these online stores are pushing beyond promotional and branding and into the realm of artistic collaborations aided by the same technology that so influences the production of its musical artists. Most obvious Music meets Design collaboration is the label Ghostly International promoting designers such as Matthew Shlian and collaborating with to experiment in digital music delivery.

More recently, indie label Electric Deluxe out of the Rotterdam, commissioned designers behind Studio Hands in Arnhem to create merchandise as experimental as the music.

Thanks to some creative coding by Martijn Mellema, Studio Hands created an installation that would transmit sound between two computers in order to generate a unique T-shirt design. Mellema's application takes the respective designs (including the wire framed face of Speedy J), sonifies theml and plays the result through a speaker. The series of beats act as a Morse code that is reconstituted after being picked up by a secondary microphone and translated back into a 3D model. The resulting image appears with unpredictable glitches occurring in the unconventional transfer method.

Max Lipsey's studio

For the past ten weeks, I've been talking to a variety of American design entrepreneurs about the realities of running an I.D. business today. The designers I interviewed work on a diverse range of products, from antler lamps to gaming headphones, lawn darts to wine-bottle carriers, stacking chairs to Mushroom Insulation. But their day-to-day work lives have a lot in common. This was especially apparent when I asked them to share some advice for other design entrepreneurs—over and over, certain common lessons (and warnings) cropped up in their answers.

So to cap off this profile series, I wanted to share the following seven key recommendations for aspiring and practicing I.D. entrepreneurs. These tips can't guarantee success (nothing can do that), but they should at least steer you in the right direction.

1. Make a business plan . . . eventually
A surprising number of the entrepreneurs I interviewed admitted to having no traditional business plan at the start. "My studio was totally organic," Jason Miller told me. "It started from nothing and became a small but functioning business." What each person did have, however, was passion for their work and a clear vision for what they wanted to achieve. Eventually, a business plan becomes a necessity—but at least at the outset, don't let your ideas get straightjacketed by a too-rigid focus on business objectives.

2. Let focus be a priority
For hungry young designers bursting with ideas and enthusiasm, one of the biggest challenges is forcing yourself to not pursue every idea. "When you're starting out, you can do any project," says ODLCO's Lisa Smith. "Learning to say no and pick your projects is really important." Max Lipsey expressed a similar sentiment, ticking off all the questions he asks himself before he pursues a new design idea. Jenie Fu of OgoSport would agree: "Whenever we have these new ideas, we compare the concept against our mission and quickly realize which will work and not work." Built NY also uses a mission statement to stay true to its core values. And Just Mobile is a good example of a company that has found success by relentlessly focusing on a specific niche.

Models for Jonathan Olivares's recent OAC chair for Knoll

3. Find another way to make some cash
Most new design businesses do not make much money at first, so you'd do well to figure out some other method of paying the rent—especially if it complements your design enterprise. Jonathan Olivares has financed his design office largely through writing and research projects. Max Lipsey stays afloat by taking on occasional welding jobs. The founders of ODLCO both teach. Laurene Leon Boym teaches and does consulting work for businesses and cultural organizations. Kevin Williams ran a product-design consultancy while launching OgoSport. Having another source of income can also keep you from rushing a product to the market or otherwise moving too fast in your business venture.

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Industrial designers solve lots of different problems. One of them is controlling the intent across a portfolio of products across product generations. New core77 forum poster Proe-warsztat from Poland asks how one goes about creating a language. From my perspective, there has always been two approaches to creating a design language, "prescriptive" and "descriptive."

The first is the traditional "prescriptive" language, with a clearly identified set of elements, treatments, materials and sometimes even radii. These often make for great designer books, but can be messy in application as they don't really foresee the types of problems a future product might have to address nor do they tend to scale. Early in the conversation, poster Modern Man brought up BMW's "Hofmeister" which is a great example of a perscriptive design element that has withstood the test of time.

The second type of language is a "descriptive" language, which is a loose set of guidelines that drive toward a desired end state. It has more to do with a feeling that a strict rule book. This is much harder to document and maintain, but the result tends to be richer and easier to evolve. The above example, designed by forum poster Jim Kershaw for Irwin Tools, is a great example of descriptive language in execution. Each product has slightly different material mixes and constructions, and varied feature sets, yet they hang together as a whole nicely.

Above is an example that my team developed that mixes the two for BOOM, our lifestyle audio brand. A set of guiding descriptive design principles were created to focus innovation around a particular type of problem set for a particular type of end user to achieve an overall feeling. We then layered over top of that prescriptive elements like particular disintegrating hole pattern to drive home the family connection.

Join in the conversation HERE, we'd love to hear your thoughts and experiences in dealing with design languages!

Hand-Eye Supply has always had a comprehensive array of storage for tools and design utensils, but it is until now that we've released our own bag - The Hand-Eye Supply 16" Canvas Tool Bag crafted in the U.S.A. Buyer's choice of traditional natural canvas with a top grain natural moccasin leather bottom or black canvas with a matching leather bottom, both iterations being double stitched to their respective bottoms. The bags are adorned with sturdy sewn top grain saddle leather handles, and sturdy steel bottom pegs for the oft unkind environs of the shop floor.

Available in Natural Canvas and Black from Hand-Eye Supply.

Over the next few weeks we will be highlighting award-winning projects and ideas from this past year's 2013 Core77 Design Awards. We will be featuring these projects by category, so be sure to stay tuned for your favorite categories of design! For full details on the project, jury commenting and more information about the awards program, go to Core77DesignAwards.com.

Project Name: Hello, The laundry care experience redefined by peer community
Designers: Benjamin Riot & Valentin Sollier
Ecole de Design Nantes Atlantique

Hello, the laundry care experience is a combination of two products: a washing machine and a clothes basket, working together within a service. Hello is designed to offer a whole new experience of washing clothes, by linking together a person who has a washing machine and someone who is looking to get the laundry done. Hello has been created especially with the needs of the Active Youth generation in mind.

- How did you learn that you had been recognized by the jury?

We learned that our project had been recognized by the jury and won the consumer product student category in front of the computer. We were both in 2 different countries at the time, following the ceremony online and watching the projects being called out one after the other with a little bit more stress each time. Then when the winner's turn came and our project has been named, we jumped on the phone to talk to each other and be sure that we heard well and that we were not dreaming or making any mistake.

- What's the latest news or development with your project?

At the moment the project is on stand-by and we haven't really updated it recently, but having won this competition it really gives us the motivation to have a look at it again and see how far we could push this idea.

- What is one quick anecdote about your project?

To be honest on this project one of the biggest challenge once we found the idea, has been to realize the models. We decided quite early on in the process that we would create a full size model of both the cloth basket and the washing machine, in order to present our concept in the most powerful way and also to be able to realize a video capturing the whole experience that we've imagined.

So one of the strongest memory that we both have about this project is working on the models at home for a long weekend in order to be sure that we would finish them on time. The whole place was a giant mess for 3 days, with parts of models everywhere in the apartment and the bathroom used as a paint booth...

- What was an "a-ha" moment from this project?

To be honest it's hard to think of one particular "a-ha" moment. What we both really like on a project is the discussions that happen during the process when we don't agree with each other. It may sound a bit surprising, but having tough discussions (it can be pretty heated sometimes) and disagreements during the creative process is usually very beneficial. Not agreeing on something forces you to consider this point on every possible angle and think about all the reasons why it should be or should not be this or that way. Going through all of that, there is usually a moment when we actually realize that none of us were right at the beginning and end up finding a new, much better way of doing it : "wait... what if maybe... a-ha!"

View the full project here.

Speaking of cities with medieval layouts, living in a pre-smartphone-Japan was a navigation nightmare. In a city like Tokyo, the lack of right angles, the language barrier, and an insane system of building numbering—they are numbered in the order in which they are built, not in a geographically linear sequence—meant that your average citizen had the cartographic skills of Magellan. People were constantly sketching little maps to offer directions, and any business relying on foot traffic offered pamphlets, business cards or flyers that always had minimaps as a prominent part of their design. I assumed every graphic designer there had a subset of their portfolio dedicated to demonstrating map-making competency.

New-York-based artist Nobutaka Aozaki, who originally hails from the Japanese city of Kagoshima, is presumably well aware of citizen cartography. And having earned his New Yorker stripes with nearly a decade of residency, he started his "From Here to There" project intending to create a hand-drawn map of Manhattan... without ever laying down a line himself. Instead, he came up with a clever way of generating the content:

[I pretended] to be a tourist by wearing a souvenir cap and carrying a shopping bag of Century 21, a major tourist shopping place, [and asked] various New York pedestrians to draw a map to direct me to another location. I connect and place these small maps based on actual geography in order to make them function as parts of a larger map.

We've devoted a fair number of pages and pixels to that singular design object known as the bicycle, and whether you're a leisure rider or all-weather commuter, weekend warrior or retrogrouch, there's no denying the functional elegance of the human-powered conveyance. Thus, when Harry Schwartzman reached out to us about lending our support to the inaugural Bike Cult Show, a celebration of the beautiful machine and a local-ish community of individuals dedicated to building them, we were happy to support the cause.

Bike Cult Show: Save the Date· Ezra Caldwell· Johnny Coast

Johnny Coast has been handcrafting custom bicycle frames in his Brooklyn shop for the better part of a decade now, but he first got his hands on a torch before he learned how to drive. Of course, seeing as his father owned and operated an auto body shop that specialized in custom work for hot rods, Coast was certainly comfortable behind the wheel by then. (As the story goes, his grandfather was also a machinist, and Coast inherited machine tools that have been going strong for three generations now.) "I basically grew up in [my dad's] shop," he says, reminiscing. "As far back as I can remember, he was teaching me how to work with metal, I was welding by the time I was 12 years old." Beyond the work itself, Coast's father taught him "how to work and think about metal, how to safely run a shop... Basically he planted the 'maker bug' in me."

Image courtesy of Johnny Coast

Coast eventually parlayed his longtime predilection into a vocation at the United Bicycle Institute, with further tutelage from legendary framebuilder Koichi Yamaguchi. We recently had the chance to check out his Bushwick shop and hear him elaborate on these experiences and more:

Core77: How you ended up building bikes for a living?

I studied framebuilding at the United Bicycle Institute, a trade school for framebuilders and bicycle mechanics. I also learned fillet brazing and stem building from Koichi Yamaguchi, master framebuilder of the famed 3rensho bicycle company. Both [of my educational experiences] were great and almost polar opposites from each other. UBI has an almost lab like setting, with lecture in the morning and lab hours in the afternoon, very structured, as it is a state-recognized trade school.

The Yamaguchi classes, on the other hand, were one-on-one with the teacher. All of the hours spent at the work bench going back and fourth with the task at hand, I would work for some time then Koichi would take the file from me and show me how to file the coping. It was very intense, always with Koichi over your shoulder either accepting your actions, or rejecting them, and instructing you in his way. He was sort of mind blowing for me because we needed a part for the stem I was working on and not having one in stock, he shrugged and said, "we'll just make one." I kind of realized the brilliance of just fabricating anything you need...

After school, I set up shop and started making as many bikes as possible, putting this knowledge to use. My father used to say that [when kids graduate from] trade schools, they think they know everything but have no experience. It was true: UBI handed me all of these answers, but I had no experience, so I set out to learn some things by doing them.

The Dyson vac I use to clean up my dogs' pet fur is awesome, but one thing about it drives me nuts: It's made from polycarbonate, so during the vacuuming process the unit itself attracts, through static electricity, pet fur. This requires you to vacuum off the unit itself after you've finished vacuuming the floor, and I always asked myself why on Earth they'd selected polycarbonate.

Well, now I know: durability. The frame can withstand some serious abuse, to the tune of a 30-lb. weight being dropped on it. Being made aware of the thinking behind a particular design decision can actually change your perception of that object; while having to vacuum off a vacuum is bothersome, I'd choose minor inconvenience over short lifespan any day.

In this rare and informative look inside Dyson's R&D facility in Malmesbury, we see their machines being put through the paces—and compared side-by-side with competitors' models—while Director of Engineering Alex Knox [who we interviewed last year] walks us through specific design features. Aside from the weight-smashing test, it's neat to see exactly what the designers expect of the machine, from a user standpoint, and the specific solutions they devised to enable those things.

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Imagine you move to a new city and after some time you decide to have your hair cut or get a new hairstyle. For some people, this would be a frightening thought. Based on your knowledge of the consequences of not finding a new hairdresser who is "as good as" the one you used to have, what would your options be in such a situation? You would probably turn to your local acquaintances to hear about their suggestions and experiences. Then, you could personally visit some of the suggested hair salons to see if they meet your expectations in styles and budget. That's a start. But wouldn't it be great if you could present your previous experiences to this new hair dresser, showing images and ratings of those experiences? After all, all of that knowledge you created in your previous visits to the hairdresser is now the most useful asset you could wish for in order to guide you into this new experience.

But the truth is, that knowledge is not easily available. Most certainly you will have to start from scratch. You'll have to test the available options here and there, until you're confident of having re-established your "knowledge base" in this new city.

That's how it is, but definitely not how it needs to be. The currently available technologies make it very simple to create a platform that could collect data from your experiences going to a hair salon in a very easy and rewarding way. The development of a system (e.g. an app, a website, etc.) that could collect key points on the agreement between your previous hair dressers and you would be reasonably simple to implement nowadays. For example, instead of doing a simple "mirror walk" at the end of the haircut, there could be a system that would privately collect pictures or videos of your final haircut and upload it to a platform (e.g., using a tablet connected to the internet), along with your name and the one from the hair dresser, making future service provisions much easier.

After that, you could rate the whole experience attributing levels of satisfaction for each of the service phases based on the perceived benefits you think you got from them. The hairdresser(s) could also add the experience they had with you to their profile, classifying it based on the type of hair, your personality and the purpose of the specific hair style.
The possibilities to add all sorts of information are too broad to be presented here, but (to mention a few) even the chemical products applied to your hair could be made explicit and then related to the final perception of benefit, including allergies and other unwanted reactions, that was registered by you and the service provider.

All of those possibilities—or better yet, those potential service innovations—are made clear if you look at them throughout the lens of a new "logic" to the service provisions: the Service-Dominant Logic.

Imagine you move to a new city and after some time you decide to have your hair cut or get a new hairstyle. For some people, this would be a frightening thought. Based on your knowledge of the consequences of not finding a new hairdresser who is "as good as" the one you used to have, what would your options be in such a situation? You would probably turn to your local acquaintances to hear about their suggestions and experiences. Then, you could personally visit some of the suggested hair salons to see if they meet your expectations in styles and budget. That's a start. But wouldn't it be great if you could present your previous experiences to this new hair dresser, showing images and ratings of those experiences? After all, all of that knowledge you created in your previous visits to the hairdresser is now the most useful asset you could wish for in order to guide you into this new experience.

But the truth is, that knowledge is not easily available. Most certainly you will have to start from scratch. You'll have to test the available options here and there, until you're confident of having re-established your "knowledge base" in this new city.

That's how it is, but definitely not how it needs to be. The currently available technologies make it very simple to create a platform that could collect data from your experiences going to a hair salon in a very easy and rewarding way. The development of a system (e.g. an app, a website, etc.) that could collect key points on the agreement between your previous hair dressers and you would be reasonably simple to implement nowadays. For example, instead of doing a simple "mirror walk" at the end of the haircut, there could be a system that would privately collect pictures or videos of your final haircut and upload it to a platform (e.g., using a tablet connected to the internet), along with your name and the one from the hair dresser, making future service provisions much easier.

After that, you could rate the whole experience attributing levels of satisfaction for each of the service phases based on the perceived benefits you think you got from them. The hairdresser(s) could also add the experience they had with you to their profile, classifying it based on the type of hair, your personality and the purpose of the specific hair style.
The possibilities to add all sorts of information are too broad to be presented here, but (to mention a few) even the chemical products applied to your hair could be made explicit and then related to the final perception of benefit, including allergies and other unwanted reactions, that was registered by you and the service provider.

All of those possibilities—or better yet, those potential service innovations—are made clear if you look at them throughout the lens of a new "logic" to the service provisions: the Service-Dominant Logic.

Photography by Mark LeBeau for Core77

The largest outdoor sports show of its kind, Outdoor Retailer takes place twice a year in Salt Lake City, and this year veteran trade show attendee and Core77 reader Mark LeBeau was on the ground to capture all the highlights. In recent years, there's been an explosion of charging solutions for powering electronic off-the-grid, an increase in the use of design as the marketing differentiator (especially in climbing equipment) and a rise in popularity of paddle boards over kayaks, not to mention the rapid emergence of GoPro as a major player in the industry!

See the latest gear for every conceivable outdoor and adventure activity from the top brands in the world in our photo gallery:

» View Gallery

Over the next few weeks we will be highlighting award-winning projects and ideas from this year's Core77 Design Awards 2013. We will be featuring these projects by category, so stay tuned for your favorite categories of design! For full details on the project, jury commenting and more information about the awards program, go to Core77DesignAwards.com.

Project Name: FANs Cam
Designers: Sheng-Hung Lee and Chan Wai Yeh
National Cheng Kung University

FANs Cam is a 'free-angle and naked camera' that can be clipped onto the collar of a sports player's uniform to provide spectators with a live video feed of the game and a perspective they've never had before. The video can be accessed after a simple scan of the QR code printed on the back of the spectator's ticket. Then the spectator chooses their preferred player using smart phone, and immediately they can see exactly what that player sees.

- How did you learn that you had been recognized by the jury?

We love the comments from juries. Especially the potential of this project gains a wide ranging of commercial interest. That's the mainly reason we take a football player as an example as a potential user of FANs Cam.

- What's the latest news or development with your project?

We try to make the structure of FANs Cam much more smaller and lighter to fit into athlete's uniform when they exercise. In order to reach the goal, we make delicate IC design and more advanced design production research. What's more, we want to explore about the viewer experience and how it might fit into the current sports media ecosystem just like juries comments.

- What is one quick anecdote about your project?

We believe the most interesting part as well as challenging mission is in the midst of product design filming. Please check it out our YouTube address as the following. After you watch the video, you definitely will understand the anecdote about our project.

- What was an "a-ha" moment from this project?

Originally, FANs Cam project mainly focus on the topic of algorithm of long-distanced communication surveillance technology. Through the continuous discussion and hard teamwork, we found that we can actually apply the technology of the project to the daily application wearable device. In the end, FANs Cam became our brainchild and the rest is history. However, we would say there is no specific "a-ha" moment during the process instead we view the whole design development as a highlight and a fantastic adventure.

Project Name: Plinko Poetry Machine
Designers: Inessah Selditz, Deqing Sun
New York University- Interactive Telecommunications Program

Plinko Poetry is an interactive gaming installation that lets users playfully create poetry from our current news headlines.

The machine's program pulls and displays source text from NY Times and Fox News tweets. The user can then create a poem from the tweets by dropping a chip down the interface, which looks like a plinko board. When the chip comes to a stop, a trail of blackout poetry is created. The poem is then automatically published by being live tweeted to @PlinkoPoetry.

- How did you learn that you had been recognized by the jury?

A friend from school emailed us about it because they submitted to the same category.

- What's the latest news or development with your project?

We are looking to reinstall Plinko Poetry this summer and are currently looking for a venue! We want everyone to be a poet. Maybe we'll change the input- NY Times vs LA Times? Vogue vs Wired? National Geographic vs National Enquirer?

- What is one quick anecdote about your project?

This was a final project for our Spatial Media class at ITP. We actually pitched a totally different idea before Plinko Poetry that involved turning Alamo (the giant metal cube at Astor Place) into a touch based Rubik's cube. The idea was almost heavily criticized by the class and coincidentally another group pitched a really similar idea. We went back to the drawing board and came up with Plinko Poetry. We still like the Rubik's cube, but lesson learned always be open to feedback and you never know, your second idea might be a winner.

- What was an "a-ha" moment from this project?

The initial idea was very simple- to make an interactive pinball machine that creates blackout poetry. However, we changed it to a plinko machine because we realized it would be difficult to convey the interaction length to the user. A pinball game can last one minute or ten. It was really important to us that it was a fast, accessible interaction for the user, hence changing its original ideation into its final form now. Because of that decision a person can play, generate and publish a poem in 5 seconds.

After a year of teasers, Elon Musk has officially unveiled the extent of the thinking behind his Hyperloop concept. In a Tesla Motors blog post, by interview with major media outlets, and via a 57-page proposal with images [PDF], Musk spells out how the vaunted high-speed transport system would whisk passengers from L.A. to San Francisco in a half hour. Many media predictions (including ours) about what the Hyperloop would be were wrong. Here are some of the surprises:

The Hyperloop will not be underground. Instead the proposal calls for an elevated track, presumably cheaper to erect than tunneling, and better than a surface-borne system as it leaves farmland largely intact. Conventional train tracks, in contrast, require bisecting the land and providing crossings that are miles apart.

It will not be a giant vacuum tube, nor one operating at normal atmospheric pressure. While the Hyperloop will consist of independent pods enclosed in a steel tube and riding on a cushion of air, it will be a low-pressure tube. Cheaper than creating a vacuum for the length of the tube, yet provides less friction than it would at atmospheric pressure.