Fifty years ago, most things you'd find in a refrigerator, like milk, ketchup or mayonnaise, were all in glass containers. Nowadays those items are mostly contained in plastic. Plastic is cheap, it doesn't shatter when dropped, and if you think about any jar you ever had trouble opening, it's almost never a plastic one.

The benefits of glass, on the other hand, is that they're more sanitary, re-usable, have better heat resistance and are safe to microwave. So Japanese manufacturer Hakuyo Glass has been studying plastic-vs.-glass uptake in the kitchen and concluded that if they can design glass jars that are easier to open, they can win part of the market back.

To do this, they consulted Tokyo-based designer Noriko Hashida, who heads up her own ID firm and is also a professor at Shibaura Institute of Technology's College of Engineering and Design. Hashida went all-out in her research, hooking test subjects of all ages up to an electromyograph to precisely measure their muscle movement as they opened a variety of glass designs. By studying where on a package force is applied, she concluded that a parallelogram-shaped cross-section was ideal and provided the best leverage. As a former structural package designer I'll say it doesn't look too shabby, either.

Hakuyo Glass has filed a patent for Ms. Hashida's design, and it's expected they'll soon make their way to Japanese store shelves to hold jam and pickled products.

Via Nikkei Technology

While moving toward a paperless world is a great idea, the reality (as I see in my clients homes and offices) is that people still have lots of paper they're keeping—and that paper needs to get filed away. And my experience has also made me very aware of some issues related to file cabinet design.

One of the first decisions for an end-user is whether to use a lateral file (such as the one above, made by HON) or a vertical file. Space constraints matter here, since lateral files take more wall space, but don't extend as far into the room.

And while you can't see it, this file cabinet has a lot of other design features worth noting. There are four adjustable leveling glides—always nice for less-than-totally-even floors. To prevent tipping, there's an interlock system to keep the end-user from pulling out more than one drawer at a time; there are also counterweights, where needed, to prevent tipping when drawers are open. Since I've had clients' file cabinets tip over when one or more drawers were open, these features definitely catch my attention. My only caution: One of my own file cabinets (not a HON) had an interlock system that jammed and was somewhat of a pain to reset; these need to be well-designed to prevent such problems.

A lateral file can also be configured to hold files facing the front, rather than the side, as you can see with this Asisto cabinet from C+P.

These lateral files from Herman Miller are modular—always nice for meeting changing needs. And for certain shared workspaces, the ability to have some drawers open in one direction and some in another could be quite useful.

The one time my family decided to plan a vacation based on the place we were lodging, it turned out to be the best decision we ever made as a globetrotting clan of four. We managed to find a rented villa in a mountain community of Salobreña, Spain, not knowing anything about the area or the the must-see spots. Turns out, we had plopped ourselves right in the middle of a relatively tourist-free zone among scattered cave entrances that were more likely than not occupied by gypsies. The entire space was decorated simply to the taste of the region—wall hangings of the castle we could see from the front balcony, woven curtains with traditional patterns of the local heritage made by women in the community, kitchen tiles depicting local delicacies, the list goes on. It was the feeling we got walking into the home that really resonated with us years after the trip.

I would imagine you'd hit a similar note of welcome when visiting Fogo Island Inn—minus the gypsies, of course.

Located on a tiny Canadian Island near the Polar Circle, Fogo Island Inn worked with Designer Chris Kabel (of Sticky Lamp and Seam Chair fame) to bring a bit of the local outdoor aesthetic indoors with two fantastic design touches. First up: key fobs. While cheap and easy to replace, key cards lack a certain je ne sais quoi. Kabel found 29 different items from the ocean shore, a fisherman's shed and the local supermarket to serve as the themed keychains for each of the Inn's rooms.

Nautical knots, lobster claws, pieces of coral, tool bits, seashells, etc., take on totemic significance, like 'Monopoly' tokens, as symbols of the region. "Together the key tags become the chapters of a book about the present and past daily life on the island and its rough nature," Kabel says on his website. The fobs are cast in bronze, guaranteeing they'll last longer than that card that needs replacing every time you set it next to your cellphone.

We've been taking inspiration from nature for a long time—and in typical throwback fashion, this week's topic is far from new. Jizai Okimono—which translates to "move freely decorative object" and describes the art of carving animals from materials like wood, iron and copper featuring animated joints that are just as functional as the living subjects—has been around since the late 1700s. Sushi Factory, a user on Flickr, seems to have a good amount of information on the beginnings of this artform: "Among works which bear dates, the earliest known is a dragon bearing a line-engraved signature of its maker Myochin Muneaki dated 1713. This is followed by a butterfly with a line-engraved signature by craftsman Myochin Muneyasu, dated 1753."

Like with any truly memorable artform, this craft was built on a group of people with a big batch of freetime. In this instance, we can thank the metalsmiths and armor makers of centuries past for bringing this artistry to light after the demand for armor plummeted. Each subject comes with its own difficultly level—the lobster being considered the most intricate of all.

Recently, Ryosuke Ohtake—a 25-year-old artist based in Tokyo—impressed Jizai Okimono artists and enthusiasts with his carved lobster. Here's the kicker: It was his first go-around in Jizai Okimono. Here's a video of Ohtake demonstrating the flexibility of his design's joints:

In a recent talk we attended, Fiskars' Petri S. Toivanen touched on the disconnect between ad photos of interiors and how people actually live. "Companies show photos of these nice, clean, 'design' kitchens," but, he pointed out, "the reality seems somehow different."

Perhaps no one is more guilty of this than IKEA, whose catalog shots of nicely-organized, all-Ikea-furnished homes have the added twist that many of the images aren't even real photographs, but are pure CG. But to the company's credit, they recently conducted a massive and global study to see how people actually behave in their own homes, and have released the study for public consumption. Called the "Life at Home" report, it features data (focused on morning activities) from roughly 1,000 respondents from each of eight world cities: Berlin, London, Moscow, Mumbai, New York, Paris, Shanghai and Stockholm.

The accompanying photographs are fairly unflinching looks at real peoples' apartments, absent any product placement or Ikea plugs. The emphasis is on the data: How long do people take to get ready in the morning in New York, Paris, Moscow, et cetera? Do they eat breakfast together? How long do guys take to get dressed versus women? What percentage of women put makeup on? Which rooms do they work in?

The past week has seen a few noteworthy proposals and new developments for the future of waterways of Los Angeles and New York City. Here's the latest on Alt 20, the Big U (pictured above) and Plus Pool.

As a lifelong East Coaster, I can't speak to the ecological, infrastructural or historical significance of the Los Angeles River—I suspect that it's not all sun-drenched joyrides—but apparently big things are in the works for the "unsightly concrete corridor," per the L.A. Times' Louis Sahagun. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which was responsible for paving over the basin in the late 30s, has opted to recommend an ambitious $1.08 billion proposal to restore and revitalize an 11-mile stretch of the neglected river basin, known as "Alternative 20," over a $453m plan it supported a month ago. "City officials estimate that revamping the entire river could create recreational opportunities—kayaking, fishing, bicycling—and attract more than $5 billion in investment over the next 10 to 15 years, generating up to 18,000 jobs."

Photo by Luis Sinco for the Los Angeles Times

The plan is still working its way through the proverbial pipes of Congress (the funds will come from city, state and federal sources), but for now we'll have to settle for the fancy before/after sliders over on Curbed L.A..

Not to be outdone, we New Yorkers are also looking to upgrade our waterways, and we've enlisted a Danish ringer to help prevent the kind of flooding that we experienced during Hurricane Sandy. The latest project from ever-inventive architect Bjarke Ingels, the Big U is among the six winning proposals for the federal Rebuild by Design program, which was launched in response to the October 2012 superstorm. The government has awarded Ingels & co. the hefty sum of $335 million to realize their prophylactic proposal for the business end of Manhattan (other winners received anywhere from $20m to $230m).

What an era we live in, where both advertising agencies and regular consumers are able to program the television that is YouTube. It's a far cry from Don Draper's day, where information on products came primarily from those trying to sell them to you.

Here's a good example of the modern-day situation. First up we have a cheery ad spot for Coke by Ogilvy & Mather China, which starts off with the nice thought "What if empty Coke bottles were never thrown away?" To that end, the campaign imagines sixteen different plastic widgets that can be screwed onto empty bottles, theoretically prolonging their lives by turning them into everything from squirtguns to pencil sharpeners:

On the other side of the market coin, we've got the much-beloved YouTuber CrazyRussianHacker, whose endearingly thick accent and wacky experiments have garned 1.8 million subscribers. In his latest video—which had 4.6 million hits at press time and counting—he asks "What will happen if you boil Coke?" The labels on the bottles are removed, so arguably this could be any cola, but Jeez Louise is this disturbing:

Here on Core, we've dedicated a fair amount of space to wood as a material in the context of furniture and product design: our ten-part series on wood species, lumber processing and movement ain't going out of style any time soon. Brazilian artist Henrique Oliveira offers a very different approach to the versatile material, which he salvages and repurposes in the form of ligneous large-scale installations. Most recently, he's worked something up for the Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade in São Paulo called "Transarquitetônica." This type of plywood is used on "fancy construction sites" (as described by the designer) to hide unsightly hardhat areas.

His work is a little bit Alice in Wonderland with a few decor notes from The Hobbit—devoid of visitors, it would make for a great mid-day stroll the shake the workday off a bit. This video, by Crane.tv, offers a closer look at "Transarquitetônica," including Oliveira elaborating on the making of the piece: "When I broke this piece [of wood], it was like a brush stroke for me."

David Rockwell is one of America's most acclaimed interior designers. His firm, Rockwell Group, has designed large-scale immersive environments for hotels and restaurants around the world, not to mention its sets for the Academy Awards and several Broadway musicals. But Rockwell's latest project is one of his smallest yet, and not something typically associated with high-end hospitality—a grill.

Rockwell, however, doesn't see it as a major departure. "We are interested in all aspects of hospitality, from the preparation of food to the experience of eating," he says. "The core of dining—whether you're at a restaurant or at home—is sharing experiences with family and friends, and our grill goes to that."

Indeed, the David Rockwell by Caliber Grill is being billed as a "social grill"—which, when you come to think of it, is something of an innovation. Grilling is an inherently social experience, but most grills do not exactly encourage folks to stand around and enjoy the show.

For the Rockwell Group, the biggest hindrance to a shared experience is the typical grill lid, which separates the cook from his or her guests. So the firm's primary goal was to create a disappearing grill hood. "Once we came up with the idea that the grill should be treated like a table with access on all four sides, we worked a lot on achieving that," Rockwell says. "It was a complex challenge, as the firebox needed to be certain dimensions to generate the solid heat for professional grilling, and there needed to be a means to discharge the fat spilling from grill's surface."

We know, Chris Hadfield—we think that baggie design is whack, too.

There are certainly at lot of things to consider when designing for space travel, and basics such as hydration are no exception. For years, the Zero Gravity Cocktail Project has been working to come up with the best way to enjoy your cosmopolitan in the cosmos and they've landed on a design that's a big improvement over the liquid-filled baggies astronauts have long grappled with. For those of you who have never considered what it would be like to sip in space, I've sprinkled a few videos exhibiting this inconvenience throughout. Observe:

Back to the glass at hand. Zero-Gravity's vessel depends on a grooved surface and capillary action—the ability liquid has to flow in narrow spaces without the advantage or disadvantage of gravity—to keep any celestial messes at bay. The Cosmic Lifestyle Corporation—"a boutique concept, design and branding company that develops stylish products for off-world use while connecting Earth brands to space," as stated on their website—is responsible for the space-age design. While it would get great use from today's astronauts (hey, spacewalking deserves an end-of-the-day drink), it seems more intended for the future population of permanent space-dwellers. Along with the martini glass, the group is also working on the Drinkbot, a mechanized bartender (in theory) which mixes liquids in weightlessness and dispenses the cocktail into the Zero Gravity glass.

The Zero Gravity Cocktail Glass

So why a bar set and not a more commonly used kitchenware? Founder of The Cosmic Lifestyle Corporation and space tourism futurist Samuel Coniglio explains:

The Zero Gravity Cocktail Project is an attempt to bridge the gap between the space tourism vision and mainstream reality. By creating a fun object that appeals to many people, we hope to show that space tourism is not an abstract concept but a stepping stone for improving the way people live, work and play beyond planet Earth.

Yeah, that's not foamcore

Few endeavors in the history of cinema have been as divisive as the Star Wars prequels. Or rather, I can't think of another trilogy that so many people delight in hating. While I dig an epic space opera as much as the next guy, I'm clearly not a Lucas devotee. However, as an OG movie effects lover, I must say the exponentially increasing CG distracted from the plot (arguably a mercy) and clogged the movies with bewildering, fake-feeling detail. Beautiful as hi-res screenshots, sure, but difficult to take in. Imagine my surprise when I learned that each of the prequels used more physical models than the last!

Not to oversell it (Lucas did a good enough job himself), according to the SlashFilm story, physical miniatures bore a decent amount of weight in scene setting during several crucial moments. Using state of the art materials like clay and painted Q-Tips, the team of set builders and model makers created backdrops and objects in the film's most epic shots. Seen as a cost-effective and high quality method for delivering believability, miniatures were used in scenes as wide ranging as the pod racing arena and the Ultimate Showdown on Super-Lava Island, respectively depicted by a room-sized clay model full of cotton swab spectators, and a 20×50ft slanted miniature set that they poured under-lit ooze through.

Setting aside any lingering resentment (or love—what man is without folly), take a look at these ironically grainy behind the scenes shots of impressive models that made the madness possible.

Alex Brands® is a new family of brands including some of the most iconic and creative brands in the toy industry including: Slinky, ALEX Toys, Poof, Scientific Explorer, Ideal and Zoob. The Alex Brands® mission is to consistently produce high quality, innovative and trend-leading toys, games and open-ended activities for consumers who want the very best products to help children grow, learn and explore.

This summer, they are seeking a talented, creative packaging designer to assist with day-to-day workflow during an internship that will start as soon as possible. The right person will work on packaging design concepts, execution of design, learn to communicate with vendors and support in some light administrative assistance. This is a great opportunity to work in the Toy industry along side a group of top-notch packaging and product designers. Want in? Apply Now.

A Collision of Intentions, Thoughts and Avatars: that's my current definition of a service.

The idea that an organization can package and delivery a service (or value) is industrial, scientific, old-fashioned and does not come close to explain the dynamics that take place in the real world. That is one of the fundamental points I discuss in my new book, The Service Startup, on which I will elaborate in this post.

But, first, hi again!

I've been gone for a while to work on my new book, but now I'm back and intend to keep my posts here flowing.

It has been exciting times here at Livework with wicked projects and our team winning the Design Team of the Year award at the Design Week Awards 2014. Personally, I also served as the Jury Captain of the Service Design category of the Core77 Design Awards. We went through exciting entries and will be announcing the honorees soon.

Back to my point. The truth is, there are no services—only journeys. And a journey is not the same as the sum of all the processes the user interacts with. A journey is a story that lives inside the users' minds. As such it cannot be "delivered," it can only be influenced and co-created.

Take a moment to think about the last service interaction you had. Ok, I'm pretty sure that what came to your mind was a story, not a series of technical process specifications or track numbers. Which puts service designers in the position of memory weavers.

A memory is an event, a residual piece of information that is stamped in the mind with the help of emotions. The greater the emotion associated with the event, the more likely the memory will endure the test of time.

To design a service is to design a journey and this ultimately means the design of moments in people's lives. We have the need to connect emotionally with everything we encounter in life. This is imperative, and comes hardwired in our brain. Some connections are commonplace and pass unnoticed, while others define our mood, the way we perceive others and ourselves and, most importantly, the way we will remember the experience itself. This ability for people to connect emotionally with everyday things is called anthropomorphism, the attribution of human characteristics and behaviors to a thing or a process, and this topic is very dear to designers. Anthropomorphism is the doorway to connect emotionally with people and, the quest to positively influence this mental process is the quest of design itself.

Summer is here! And while that most definitely means warmer weather, sandal season and socially acceptable popsicle consumption, it also means the Core77 Design Awards live announcements are right around the corner! We've got 70 jurors in 15 cities and nine countries working on putting together a list of this year's best of the best entries. The announcements will be streamed live starting next Monday, June 16 and run through Friday, June 20.

If you entered work, want to see some groundbreaking works from designers around the world or have a friend on one of the juries, check out the schedule of live announcements below—don't forget to set your alarms! Some of the categories take place mighty early (it's a small price to pay for the excitement of a live winners announcement):

Monday, June 16

» 5am ET: FOOD DESIGN
Location: Dordrecht, Netherlands
Jury Captain: Marije Vogelzang

» 12pm ET: EQUIPMENT
Location: Portland, Oregon, USA
Jury Captain: Sohrab Vossoughi

» 2pm ET: STRATEGY & RESEARCH
Location: Chicago, Illinois, USA
Jury Captain: Larry Keeley

» 5pm ET: DIY
Location: New York, New York, USA
Jury Captain: Ayah Bdeir

Blood pressure enthusiasts, you can count yourself among the lucky masses now served by wearable tech and Bluetoothed everything. If you're in need of regular pulse checks, or just really really like medical devices, you might want to check out the at home blood pressure monitor from Withings. This monitor is wireless, powered by AAA batteries, and operates using a small air pump contained in the attached cylinder. Its networked nature is a big selling point, immediately uploading and charting your data via an app for iOS 5, or Android 4 and higher, via Bluetooth or Bluetooth 4.0. The armband is permanently semi-curled (reducing some of the one handed wrapping on traditional models) and the read itself takes about 40 seconds.

For first time use, you download the app, put the thing on, power it up, and allow your tech widgets to discover each other. After that the heart rate monitor will default to the last used device, or you can use a separate app-equipped device—just disable Bluetooth for the one previously used or isolate it out of range so it won't notice it's been replaced.

I played crease attack on my high school's lacrosse team, and I sucked. The first two years I got laid out so many times while trying to set picks that by junior year, I'd accepted my complete lack of athletic ability and hung up the stick for good. (Frankly speaking the coach probably would have cut me anyway.)

Back then, it was rare to see the coach bench a player for safety reasons after he'd gotten his bell rung; it was the age of "Walk it off," where there simply wasn't concern for the concussed. But nowadays we're all well aware of the deleterious effects of a concussion, and until full-contact sports change in nature, there's room for design to try to make a difference. Designing stronger helmets sounds like a good move—but actually makes it worse. Players are emboldened by improved shielding and thus hit harder, causing more damage.

Groovy: It's the perfect way to describe Visibility's new universal design kitchenware set, Ridge Kitchen. We're not talking some psychedelic mixture of bold colors and gaudy florals. New York-based duo Sino Sohrab and Joseph Guerra have created a set of minimal designs that do more than just look good while not in use. Ridge Kitchen is made up of three porcelain kitchen tools—a pitcher (which can moonlight as a vase), grater and a mortar and pestle—each of which indicates its purpose through a cohesive design trait.

The grooved patterns indicate where the tool should be gripped, making it easy to intuit the objects' use.

As an industrial designer, I love what our profession has accomplished. Every time I hold a perfectly balanced drill—go pick up a Festool TI 15, or even my crappy ten-year-old Makita—I see the weeks of work put into each compound radius, I envision the endless clay models and hand studies that resulted in the weight sitting perfectly in the crook between your thumb and forefinger, and how the trigger has been placed in the perfect location and has just the right amount of pull on it. We made these things fit us perfectly, even though our hands were originally designed to grab tree branches, not power drills.

The hands of Lego figurines were also not designed to hold power drills. But the clever folks over at Sugru have discovered that they're perfectly sized to hold something else—USB and accessory cables.

Recognized as the leader in the Powersports industry, Polaris Industries prides itself on recognizing and developing top talent to take its people and company to the next level. They are transforming themselves from a North American company to a global leader, but they need the skills of an accomplished Clay Sculptor to help get them there.

The Lead Clay Sculptor they want to join their Wyoming, MN team will be responsible for leading the modeling staff by schedule adherence, sourcing and hiring internal and external staff, and coordinating programs from start to finish. They will drive process improvements to the team. This takes at least 10 years of experience and a pension for being adaptable to change and refinement in programs. Apply Now before this great opportunity passes you by.

By Anne Lacey, antedote

The first time I drove across the United States, I couldn't help but be struck by how different each state and region feels. Even so, I saw that there were clear commonalities that tie together to make the U.S. a single nation. The closest I've come to gaining a grasp of what makes that nation tick has come from examining both the commonalities and differences between all its people and place. It's been the project of a lifetime to develop anything resembling a coherent and comprehensive of picture of just this one country.

Over time, this personal journey to understand the United States led me to examine my professional career, identifying consumer insights for innovation—how can I do qualitative research that enables me to spend time to understand what really motivates people and that gives a more representative picture of the country?

Over the last couple of decades, ethnography and qualitative research have become distilled into short dips of a couple of hours into peoples' lives, often in popular research cities such as Chicago. This type of research relies primarily on self-report by the consumer rather than observation or behavioral analysis. This has made it increasingly difficult to ascertain the kinds of new insights about fundamental shifts in people's needs and motivations that make the work truly valuable.

To gain to new insights and opportunities, we need to think and approach research differently. Digital ethnography can fuel new ideas and research approaches, as my colleagues at antedote and I have seen in the years since we designed and built a mobile and online tool for studies from the ground up. Although digital ethnography has become an umbrella term for a great many online qualitative research tools, we use it specifically to mean a lengthy study (a week or two to several months) with consumers via computer and/or mobile phone, comprised of a blend of observation, live experience-alongs, interviews and user-generated content. Though these elements are common to it, each study has custom elements to it, premised on one big idea: using cutting-edge technology to restore some of the original intent and benefits of ethnography.

Interestingly, the longer we've worked with it, the more we've identified practices that enable digital ethnography to provide an ideal complement and enhancement to other qualitative and quantitative methods. One of the key guiding rules we've found is to gather research based on the strengths of the technology rather than trying to directly translate other research methods to digital.

These are some of the guiding principles we have identified and apply: