wants a Lead Product Designer
in San Francisco, California

By leveraging top talent and using a no nonsense approach to problem solving, HUGE has attracted clients from small startups, to large forward thinking corporations such as Nike, Microsoft and Google to name a few. They're looking for an exceptional Lead Designer with top design consultancy experience to take their business to new heights.

If you are a talented self-starter that thrives on working in an inspiring, bullsh*t free atmosphere, Apply Now.

At various points when I was growing up, I recall teachers or other authority figures facilitating group discussions with the use of an ad hoc talking stick—a communal object that grants the bearer permission to speak. The concept itself (per the Wikipedia article linked above) originates in aboriginal culture, where it may be used democratically or as a symbol of authority, but they generally serve the purpose of designating a speaker in tribal 'council circle' settings. Thus, the concept has been adapted for a wide variety of contemporary settings, from primary school to corporate committees, making it an ideal starting point for the Smart Interaction Lab's recent prototyping session at the Barcelona Mini Maker Faire.

How can interactive objects encourage inspiration and dialog during brainstorming sessions?

Ideation sessions are part of everyday life at Smart Design, informing all the work we do. When reflecting upon these sessions, we developed the concept behind our Maker Faire project. We worked together as a team of multidisciplinary researchers and designers to explore how we can improve people's experiences of the ideation process through tangible interaction. Our solution was TOTEM—a family of three unique objects that help people get inspired and stay engaged in creative conversations and debates in order to generate new ideas. It is composed of a stack of three separate but complementary objects: Bat&oacuten, Echo and Alterego.

Echo & Alterego

First up is Smart Design's take on the talking stick: "Batón" looks something like an hourglass-shaped bone and is designed to vibrate after a certain amount of time, indicating that the speaker's turn is up and he or she must pass it on to someone else. "This tool allows everyone present in a discussion to be heard and it forces the most dominant speakers to be more concise, but also those that may be more shy to speak up."

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: YBCA+You promotional campaign
• Designers: Volume Inc.

The project was a promotional campaign for YBCA and its new "YBCA:You" initiative.

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

Via an email from Core77. We had a reminder on the calendar to watch the live announcement, but (as is often the case) got distracted by all the work that happens here on a daily basis.

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

The SFMOMA is closing for three years due to the wall of heads' constant taunting from across the street. (Actually they're closing for renovations, but what a great story!) The YBCA + You program is slowing adding more and more members. We continue to hear praise from people of all backgrounds of how much they like the campaign.

- What is one quick anecdote about your project?

After Adam and I finished the initial presentation of this idea to the client, YBCA's executive director (who, sadly, has moved on to a new gig) exclaimed "I've been waiting 20 years for a campaign like this! It's f--king brilliant." Then he gave us both a hug. By far the best client meeting we've ever had.

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

Because YBCA is a cutting-edge arts organization, the initial tendency is to create really "design-y", formally-driven solutions. This idea really popped off the critique wall when we put all of the initial explorations up for review, and that was it, really. Done deal.

The other a-ha moment was realizing how many low-priced, quick turnaround clipping path services there are. These guys saved our asses when it came to execute all the deliverables.

This Wood Species series of entries comes to us from guest writer Rob Wilkey, an Atlanta-based woodworker and industrial designer whose expertise is in small home goods, furniture, and large installations.

Over the past few weeks, we've been looking at a number of common North American wood species. This week's featured species:

The wood of the cherry tree is popular among woodworkers for being a very well-rounded species. It is cheaper than walnut, more workable than maple and oak, and exhibits some of the most beautiful colors and grain patterns of any domestic species. Although it isn't harvested very abundantly, and isn't commonly available in larger boards, cherry is still used for large projects like cabinetry and furniture simply because it is so easy to manipulate and always looks remarkable.

In North America, the most commonly sold species is Black Cherry. A number of other domestic and imported species are sold with 'cherry' in their name, but only wood from the genus Prunus is true cherry lumber. Cherry is a pale, pinkish yellow hue when initially cut. This color changes rather quickly to a darker reddish brown with exposure to sunlight. The images below show a salt and pepper shaker that I built several years ago using Black Cherry. The picture on the left was taken within a week of applying the final coat of finish, and the image on the right shows the same piece one year later.

Looks like the folks at Wacom's skunkworks have been busy. This week they've announced not one, but three new products coming out this fall, targeted at three very different types of users.

First up is the toteable Cintiq Companion, a "professional creative tablet" that runs Windows 8. The standalone machine boasts a 1920×1080, 13.3” display, the 2,048 levels of pen pressure you've come to expect from Wacom, both front and rear cameras, and a 256 or 512 GB hard drive. This is aimed at the user looking for the all-in-one solution.

The Cintiq Companion Hybrid, meanwhile, is targeted at the user who works primarily off of a desktop machine. The Hybrid has the same screen size (and a seemingly identical form factor) to the Companion, as well as the same dual cameras, but runs Android rather than Windows and features a smaller (16 or 32 GB) hard drive. This is essentially meant to be the tablet you use for your desktop machine, but it can be detached and carried around for light sketching duty.

Hosted by Don Lehman, Core77's podcast series is designed for all those times you're sketching, working in the shop, or just looking for inspiration from inspiring people. We'll have conversations with interesting creatives and regular guests. The viewpoint of Afterschool will come from industrial design, but the focus will be on all types of creativity: Graphic design, storytelling, architecture, cooking, illustration, branding, materials, business, research... anything that could enrich your thought process, we'll talk about.

We have a special edition of Afterschool out today for the start of the IDSA International Conference starting today in Chicago. We talk with conference chair Paul Hatch about the planning behind the conference, some of the speakers attendees will see, and what to do in Chicago. Even if you're not going to the conference, this is a great behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to put on a show of this level.

A friendly reminder from the Editorial team: We hope our party will be the de facto gathering for our loyal readers, including those of you forumites who will be in attendance... See you there!

Images via Deceuninck / Archello unless otherwise noted

Singer Yulia Chicherina may not be a household name outside of her native Russia, but I was interested to see photos of her country house. Located outside Moscow, the distinctive structure features two rows of triangular floor-to-ceiling windows, uniformly distributed on the faces and edges of the off-white cubic edifice.

The singer's two-storey house has been designed as a cube with 24 triangular openings for mirror-glass windows and a glass entrance door. The Live House, an exceptional project by Yulia Chicherina and her architect husband, gives plenty of room for creativity and leisure. It was originally conceived as an art laboratory to give inspiration, to originate fresh ideas, and to create new songs. Now Yulia Chicherina's Live House is not just a creative laboratory, but a countryside house for back-to-nature recreation far from the urban hustle, noise and stress.

Roughly one-third of the walls are windows (each of which weighs in at 150kg), but the original design included a single exception: an iron door. Frustrated that it didn't match the windows, Chicherina turned to UK-based building materials company Deceuninck—"the world leader in the sphere of production of PVC systems for the construction industry"—who developed a custom glass vestibule to match the windows. "The square-shaped entrance door in the triangular doorway opening is made of shockproof hardened glass and enclosed by a reinforced-plastic transparent prism."

Image via Porter Novelli

wants an iOS Engineer
in Las Vegas, Nevada

It is the year 2020 and the robots have won. Zappos is looking for a few good humans to go back to 2013 and write iOS apps that just might turn the tide of this war before it begins. Your mission is to write cutting edge applications that hit the Zappos API on iOS devices to help prevent the rise of Skynet.

If you accept this mission, you'll not only be saving the world from certain doom, you'll be working for one of FORTUNE's 100 Best Companies to Work For and enjoying extensive benefits with a forward-thinking, "wacky" team.

The future depends on you. Apply Now.

Something very strange happened in the R&D lab of a UK-based electronics engineering company. A research team at Roke Manor Research was working on text-based radio frequency systems when a team member suddenly detected a signal—coming from a random bag of components off to the side. A small movement had apparently turned mechanical energy into electrical energy within the bag.

After figuring out how this phenomenon occurred, a Roke team subsequently harnessed it and created a new tiny tracking device. Their invention works over a greater distance than most existing tags, and here's the killer quality that makes it really different from nearly all tracking devices: It works without batteries.

The device is called Agitate and it's a self-charging miniature device, no larger than a quarter. The agitate tag's signal "can be tracked through walls and up to 20 kilometres in built-up areas," writes the company, "with an estimated range of 200 kilometres in free space."

So how does it work? Basically Agitate is made of two plates, one is metal and the other a charged material. When either of the two plates are moved, even just slightly, mechanical energy is turned into electrical and is used to transmit a radio pulse. The signal only lasts a few seconds but is more powerful than a cell phone. And it's very precise—the shorter the radio pulse, the more precise the signal to a specific location.

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: Visual Data
Designer: Accurat

The project is the "Visual Data" column, a full-spread data visualisation published every week within La Lettura, the Sunday cultural supplement within Corriere della Sera, the highest circulation newspaper of Italy. Accurat studio were tasked with revealing and advancing the use of data-visualisation to provide new perspectives in the newspaper-editorial field. The subject of the project can be described as a new form of non-linear storytelling: info-spatial journalism.

The 16 "Visual Data" visualizations are submitted as Images, and in the Supporting Document.

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

Just from the e-mail! We were traveling during the live stream and weren't able to see it live...

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

We are still working with Corriere della Sera and we regularly publish our data-visualizations on La Lettura; every sunday we analyze and represent a different topic or phenomenon and our visualizations are gaining lots of exposure and coverage on magazines worldwide, like Fast.co Design, Slate, PopSci, The Atlantic Wire, Forbes. Images of this portfolio of visualization will also going to be published on data-visualization books from Harper Collins, Gestalten, Springer.

- What is one quick anecdote about your project?

All of the visualizations of the portfolio are actually conceived, designed, built and finalized in five days each; working with a weekly publication forces us to adapt our workflow to the needs of the newspaper.

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

Corriere della Sera is a widespread newspaper in Italy, it's common to see someone exploring our visualizations in the streets; it's always surprising and fun to spot scenes like the guy next to you on the seaside that tells his wife: "What they did here is amazing, did you know that the Caspian Sea is bigger than Great Britain?"

Project Name: Bozoni
Designers: Wael Morcos
Rhode Island School of Design

Bozoni is a typeface made of a system of 3 stacking fonts. It is based on the original well known Bodoni font. The idea of the Design considers what happens when a vector shape (with curves and obliques) is rasterized into an orthogonal pixel grid of a screen, and what happens when our expectations for beauty and elegance are processed through imperfect technologies.

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

I watched the live announcements.

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

I'm considering the option of actually publishing the font.

- What is one quick anecdote about your project?

I think the name of the font is funny. But that is probably just me having a thing for lame word puns.

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

When I realized that there was something to do with the way the screen changes the appearance of a typeface.

With the cost of bandwidth ever in decline, the likes of Twitter and Instagram have been able to introduce moving images as well as still ones. It's too soon to determine Vine's destiny in the crowded social network space (pun intended), but the Twitter spinoff certainly has potential—and the folks at Airbnb are looking to make the most of it with an ambitious project called Hollywood and Vines. "Help shoot a first-of-its-kind short film made entirely of Vine videos. If your Vine is selected it will be featured on the Sundance Channel and you'll receive a $100 Airbnb coupon."

The team at Airbnb will be calling the shots starting right now, at 8am PT, releasing instructions every hour until 5pm—ten per day—for four days straight (through Sunday, August 27). There is a 48 hour window for submissions for each set of instructions, and they will be judged based on several weighted criteria: Originality & Creativity (40%), Compliance with Instructions (40%) and Video Quality & Clarity (20%). In addition to inclusion in the final film, each of the 40 winners will receive a $100 Airbnb coupon.

We had the chance to speak to Airbnb's Vivek Wagle about their metaphorical journey:

Core77: Let's start from the beginning—how did this project come about?

Originally, we were looking for interesting ways to galvanize our Los Angeles community around the "spirit of Airbnb"—that is, creating amazing experiences and stories through sharing. When we landed on the idea of Hollywood & Vines, we realized that we could create a much bigger, more beautiful story if we invited our global community rather than just Angelenos. We realized that this was something that had never been attempted: not an ad, but a true work of art. It was a chance to use a new form of technology to explore the boundaries of collaborative creation. And we loved the poetry of linking the history of filmmaking (Hollywood) with the future of filmmaking (Vine).

Insofar as the so-called Internet of Things is increasingly regarded as, well, a real thing, the tech and design communities alike have found common ground in pioneering and speculating as to just what those Things might be and how they might work. We've seen a fair share of them—from concept to prototype to final product—but it remains to be seen as to whether, say, Google Glass will see the widespread adoption.

Nevertheless, the connected devices represent the future of technology, and digital agency R/GA recently announced a partnership with startup accelerator Techstars to lead the way: "The R/GA Connected Devices Accelerator is a three-month, immersive, mentor-driven program for ten tech startups. Show us how you combine hardware, data, digital services, and innovative design—anything that adds to the ever-growing Internet of Things—and your company could go from startup to success story."

For three months starting in early December, R/GA will host the startups at their NYC offices, where the teams will have access to dozens of mentors, as well as up to $120K in funding. The deadline to apply for the Connected Devices accelerator is October 11, and the program will culminate with the presentation of the projects at SXSWi 2014. More details are available at RGAAccelerator.com.

Hat-tip to Tech Crunch

We are back with Ron Paulk on the design of his amazing Mobile Woodshop! In Part 1, Ron discussed how he began the design by figuring out where the large, fixed items would go. Here in Part 2, he reveals how he began filling out the rest of design. He also explains the importance of modularity, his take on two different approaches to storage design—deep, dense and invisible vs. broad, shallow and visible—and why one of his goals is to get rid of the plastic boxes that most power tools come in.

We are back with Ron Paulk on the design of his amazing Mobile Woodshop! In Part 1, Ron discussed how he began the design by figuring out where the large, fixed items would go. Here in Part 2, he reveals how he began filling out the rest of design. He also explains the importance of modularity, his take on two different approaches to storage design—deep, dense and invisible vs. broad, shallow and visible—and why one of his goals is to get rid of the plastic boxes that most power tools come in.

In the early 1900s, guys dressed like Indiana Jones were ripping through Egyptian tombs in a somewhat shameless search for treasure. In 1911 a collection of elementally rare beads was uncovered in a 5,000-year-old tomb south of Cairo. Primitive early-20th-century tests revealed the beads had an unusually high nickel content, and it was assumed that they were carved out of meteorites.

As Live Science reports, archaeology professor Thilo Rehren recently made a more startling discovery. By X-raying the beads, Rehren and his team observed an elemental composition consistent with iron meteorites, which merely confirmed suspicions; but the X-rays also showed that these beads were actually tubes, of the sort that can only be made by forging metal into thin sheets and then rolling it.

wants a Junior Software Designer
in Austin, Texas

IBM has embarked on a major transformational journey as an organization. They are redefining themselves for the next century and their newly created division, IBM Design, will lead the transformation.

If you are passionate about solving critical and complex problems, delivering exceptional client experiences, interacting directly with end-users, working with powerful technology, and ultimately lifting the human condition through great design, this is the job you've been waiting for.

Apply Now.

Liz Kinnmark and Kegan Fisher, the duo behind the Design Glut, are moving on from their jewelry / housewares venture to bigger and better things... but they're offering one last chance to get your hands on their whimsical designs. All of their remaining inventory is available for just a few more days on Fab.com; remainders will be donated to charity.

From their take on the Gift Fair to their "Future Is Shiny" Kickstarter campaign, they've come a long way since they met at Pratt. We wish them the best of luck in their future endeavors.

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: PlayMap
Designers: Daniel Chang, Maeve Jopson, Karan Mudgal and Cynthia Poon
Rhode Island School of Design

The PlayMap is an educational toy for blind children that communicates the abstract concepts of geography through a textured, transformable model of the earth. Held together with magnetic connections, it is an icosahedron globe that unfolds into a flat map of the world. The PlayMap promotes the understanding of scale, spatial relationships, and cause and effect, allowing children to explore and gain independence through tactile play. Each continent is a removable piece that snaps into place with magnets, enforcing the development of motor skills. Made from EVA foam, the PlayMap is lightweight, durable, and easy to clean.

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

We found out while watching the live stream and were so excited to hear our names! Then about a week later, Maeve was checking her spam folder and found the email announcement... whoops.

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

Two of our team members, Cynthia and Maeve, are building a company around the idea of inclusive play, and the PlayMap is the first of a line of play materials for kids of all abilities. We are beginning to fundraise to source manufacturers, and our goal is to get it into the hands of kids as soon as possible.

We call ourselves Increment; we love the idea of incremental learning as it applies to toys and tools that kids can grow with, and it's one of the major things that we value in what we make. Check out our progress at incrementstudios.com!

- What is one quick anecdote about your project?

During testing, we were able to watch a blind student and her teacher interact with the PlayMap and fit it into the current lessons of the school day. It was amazing to see how applicable it is to many learning situations. Since the PlayMap, Cynthia and Maeve designed two more toys focused on sensory learning, and have been testing them with blind students at local schools. Seeing excitement from the kids and gaining approval from teachers and therapists has been incredibly rewarding and encouraging. We are looking forward to producing these products and bringing more fun to classrooms everywhere!

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

When we first began our research, we interviewed several blind adults about day-to-day life as well as specifics about technology, interactions, transportation, hobbies, and favorite and least favorite products. We also wanted to (at least briefly) experience what it is like to be blind, so we blindfolded ourselves and went to play with toys in Walmart. After these experiences, we realized that our assumptions kind of made us feel like... well... condescending assholes.

The toy testing began as what we believed would be a tool for empathy, and we did begin to think more about tactility and hierarchy of features, but we realized that role playing activities are far from sufficient in understanding our market. While trying to put yourself in someone elses shoes is a valid research method, in this case we found we were perpetuating blind stereotypes, and what we learned from interviewing blind individuals, is that they are just as capable of independently accomplishing what they want to as anyone else, they simply go about it in a different way. It is very important early on for any child to gain independence and an awareness of the world around them. The primary way that kids learn is through play. Our mission is to create play materials that facilitate collaborative play and learning for children of all abilities.

• Project Name: y.l.l.y
• Designer: Hansel Schloupt

The ylly project is a tool of communication and imagination for autistic children. It's a game presented with different pieces and colors separated that are put together by the players to build a sculpture based on relations, exchange, imagination, creation and common help. The project goal is to create a relation through products. How can children create a relation without talking? Products are important; they are a way to express ourselves. In the game they use it to base a relation with their partners, to express an artistic creation and an identity through the results.

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

I was watching at home the online live broadcast on the Core77 Design awards website. I never experimented a social live announcement like this and I thought that would be exciting and interesting to live it. It was a great and strange sensation to hear my name from San Francisco by internet here in France.

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

After finishing the school project I met with Dr. Gepner again to talk about the changes we wanted to proceed and the details we wanted to be better, based on what we saw on the first user tests. Now we would like to do a strong protocol of user test on few weeks with autistic children and children without autistic disorder and also with different games to compare with our y·l·l·y game. For this, we need to produce at least 3 or 4 full prototypes in good conditions with all the changes and we are looking for contributors and some external investments to make this dream come true. If the full protocol secures us about the interaction and all the work we've done so far, then we will start making this project a real product.

- What is one quick anecdote about your project?

The quick anecdote about the project is maybe the fact that when I was a kid I had a medical disorder (I was 7 years old) and I had to wear a protective corset during almost 11 years of my life until I've been cured at 18 years old in Barcelona. So when I started my studies on industrial design in Barcelona, I really wanted to do something with disorder and childhood, but I didn't want to do something purely medical, because when you are a kid who needs medical help and has medical products around him, this environment doesn't make you feel better in a psychological way. So I guess that's the reason why I wanted to do something that is artistic, natural and helpful at the same time and it's what make y·l·l·y a very nice game because it can help autistic children but it can be a social game for any other child who wants to play and that doesn't make autistic children different. The great think about design for all. 

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

The "a-ha" moment, like in many research, strategy or human-centered design projects, is when insights are coming up and make everything so clear and so natural in a problem that has not been solved yet. We discovered that we had to design a game that has no way to be "fixed". Autistic children use product in different ways that designers think about and they tend to do many rituals with (for example the cars that our putting in line etc...). So we decided just to make pieces that have no direction, no figurative forms or way to be, so that way pieces are just an excuse to build, to connect and to imagine a circuit by the users collaborating together. The fact that pieces are a personal contribution of each player on the full game is also because autistic children are communicating through, what it's called in a medical way "transitional objects" (doodles, pictures...).

On the occasion of the 2013 IDSA International Conference, the National Endowment for the Arts is pleased to present a new report on industrial design practice in the United States. "For nearly four decades, the National Endowment for the Arts has used federally collected data to portray the demographic and financial characteristics of artists as workers." Entitled Valuing the Art of Industrial Design: A Profile of the Sector and Its Importance to Manufacturing, Technology & Innovation, the document thoroughly presents facts and figures related to the profession of industrial design.

Design is a field with a large and extensive presence in our nation's manufacturing and services industries, as documented by the national datasets that provide the basis for this report. Designers are prolifically inventing new products, processes, and systems that have a profound impact on our economy and civil society.

Drawing largely on data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), supplemented with data from the Census Bureau, the report provides a near-comprehensive survey of the economic significance of Industrial Design, as well as projections about its growth over the next decade or so (these predictions are look to 2020 as they are based on data from 2010). At 830,000 practictioners, design comprises the largest proportion of that group, nearly 40%; it's worth noting that industrial (or commercial) designers are considered to be artists, where engineers would not be—a long-debated topic that came up at various points during the Conference—alongside "fashion, floral, graphic, interior, and set designers as well as merchandise displayers." In fact, the Valuing the Art of Industrial Design largely takes an optimistic outlook on industrial design's symbiotic relationship with manufacturing and invention (i.e. patents), acknowledging the profession's hybrid role:

At first glance, it may seem as though industrial design has little to do with the National Endowment for the Arts. After all, industrial design clusters around the commercial enterprises of manufacturing and industrial design services. But that view would be shortsighted. While the Arts Endowment does not award grants to for-profit companies, it does support the schools that train industrial designers and the museums that display and interpret design to the public.

Introducing In the Details, a new series that examines one especially smart, innovative or unusual detail of a new design. We'll have a new post every Friday.

Dor Ohrenstein's Opus Chair is not designed for kicking up your heels. In fact, to use the chair as intended, both soles should be firmly planted. "When you sit in the chair, you make a tripod," says Ohrenstein, who completed the chair's year-long development last May as a school project at Jerusalem's Hadassah Academic College. "It's like sitting on an exercise ball with your feet on the ground. The chair makes you sit up straight."

The idea for the Opus Chair emerged from the principles of qigong, the ancient Chinese practice that combines mental and physical awareness (it's often credited as the basis of martial arts). Ohrenstein wanted his chair to compel sitters to engage their brains and bodies in a similar way—but without the fear of actually falling over.

Several components work in concert to achieve this goal, but perhaps the most crucial part of the design is the unusual-looking saddle seat, which is tilted at 85 degrees. Since the chair requires that users keep their feet on the ground, the seat had to be low enough for shorter sitters, but not so low that it was uncomfortable for taller folks. (Ohrenstein and his wife made for a good test audience; he is nearly six feet tall and she is just over five feet.)

Left: Ohrenstein adjusting the seat of his Opus Chair. Right: Ohrenstein also designed an accompanying Opus Table, seen here in the background

A height-adjustable seat made obvious sense, but Ohrenstein's research returned mostly vertically-mounted options. He looked into the telescoping action frequently employed in office chairs and piano seats, but he decided that none of the standard approaches would be sufficient. Ohrenstein had already worked out his stool's structure; he wanted nothing below the cushion but air.