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Sony Open Planet Ideas: Into Concepting

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The Sony Open Planet Ideas Challenge wrapped up the first project stage, "Inspiration," a week ago, with 335 suggested environmental issues to tackle. After culling through the inspirations, the next phase, "Concepting," kicks off today with the announcement of the selected environmental brief.

The Inspiration phase brought out tons of great ideas from participants, with Urban Farming, Product Packaging, Deforestation, Water and Food Waste rising to the top as the most popular issues. With such a big starting question: "How can today's technology address the environmental challenges we're all facing?," the answers were bound to be tough to sort out. So tough to sort out, in fact, the team decided upon six prominent areas which are all encompassed by the theme of using resources more efficiently rather than focus on one single issue. The six resulting themes:

1. More with less: How can technology help us use our resources more efficiently?
2. Bringing the issues to life: How can technology close the gap between our actions and their impacts?
3. No such thing as waste: How can technology turn waste into something more useful?
4. Smarter Design: How can technology help us design less resource intensive products, services and infrastructure?
5. Smarter recycling: How can technology help us recycle more?
6. Behavior change: How can technology help us make the less resource intensive option the desirable option?

Now it's up to participants to use these inspirations to come up with technology mash-up solutions, build on others' suggestions, or just comment or applaud concepts they like. This concepting phase goes until November 29th, when the panel re-convenes to sift through the mash-ups.

We were curious about the challenges and process of this open-source concept, and had the chance to discuss the project up to this point with a few participating members of the Sony team: Emily Nicoll, general manager of environmental communications, Sony Europe, and Morgan David, head of Sony Broadcast and Professional Research Labs. Emily provided us with a bird's eye view of the process, while Morgan relayed in-depth insights from the engineering side.

Below, we talk with them about the transition from Inspiration to Concepting, what lessons the prior Forest Guard project brings to OPI, the value of the project overall, and how the community will be involved throughout the challenge.

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Fitbit is seeking Senior Designers in San Francisco, CA

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Senior Designers
Fitbit

San Francisco, CA

Fitbit is a San Francisco startup that makes a tiny fitness tracking device that connects to a personal health management website. We place a lot of emphasis on design across all aspects of our products from industrial design to packaging to website interaction and aesthetics. We're building a design team of epic awesomeness. Are you awesome?

You'll be part of a design team that is responsible for: designing the interaction, layout, and visual look of our personal health management website/dashboard at Fitbit.com. This will require a strong focus on data visualization infographics; developing the UI and interaction for personal fitness hardware products; conducting and/or participating in informal usability tests; designing intuitive packaging, manuals, and retail displays, kiosks, and the like.

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The best design jobs and portfolios hang out at Coroflot.

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Jose de la O's Dramatic Anti-Fly Device Repels Insects with Light

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According to Netherlands-based designer José de la O, the proprietors of outdoor taco kiosks in Mexico use an ingenious form of pesticide based on light; a plastic bag full of water hangs from the ceiling, amplifying colors and movements through the refraction of light. The fly's pick this up with their (many) sensitive eyes and keep their distance—it either scares or confuses them.

For Dutch Design Week, José has taken this traditional technology and formally revamped it, using a glass bottle and stopper in place of the plastic bag. As far as repellants go, this one is dramatic and quiet, keeping insects at bay instead of trapping or killing them on the spot .

To buy one, get in touch with José directly.

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Markus Huttary's shoot-your-own-postcards concept

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I have friends who still send postcards when traveling overseas, an anomaly in an era when you can snap a cell phone shot and MMS it anywhere in the world. As quaint as the act is, there's something more mnemonically durable about receiving a physical postcard.

It's for those postcard senders that Austria-based Markus Huttary's Polapost concept is designed. The Polapost is a digital camera with an integrated printer, so you can shoot your own postcards on site, and tweak them via the onboard touchscreen before printing. Perhaps there's a bigger market for instant film than Polaroid realizes....

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Phenomenon: Tokujin Yoshioka's Tile System for Mutina

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Tokujin Yoshioka has produced a new tile system for Italian ceramics manufacturer Mutina. The Phenomenon collection comprises of "snow," "honey-comb," and "rain," each based on the irregular textures found in nature. According to Tokujin, he intended to "create a design which stirs one's heart and imagination...integrating small substances and producing both depth and expanse." The tiles were left white to emphasize that depth, allowing the contrast of light and shadow to outline each work's unique texture.

When Tokujin entered the collaboration with Mutina, he felt they were a company with an "experimental vision," existing in a delicate balance between handcraft and industrial technology and capable of producing a "beautiful sense of depth" in their ceramic textures. Still, in order to bring out the best of the company's capabilities, he and his studio conducted numerous material experiments to "draw out the most beautiful aspect of the material itself."

More shots follow.

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GD Awards: Dell's 24 laptops + mothership, Sony's minimalist-monolith TV

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Dell's Experience Design Group took home a 2010 Good Design Award for their Latitude 2100 series, a system of notebooks aimed at the educational (K-12) market. The ruggedized laptops dock and charge up in a sort of IT Cart mothership, 24 laptops to a cart, so that you don't have to deal with a classroom of hellions swinging power bricks around like lassoes.

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Another Good Design Award winner that caught our eye was Sony's Bravia NX800 LCD. It's hard to make TV's of today look sexy, given that they're basically just flat rectangles, but we have to say Sony's pulled it off with their minimalist/monolithic aesthetic.

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For a cheap ten-dollar product with a lousy ad budget, the Trunk Organizer is actually kind of neat

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Yes the video quality here can be described as "totally ass" and the music is ridiculous, but you have to be impressed at the sheer variety of shapes these guys were able to come up with using what is essentially a bunch of planes and some fabric.

The Trunk Organizer isn't something I personally need, since I don't even have a car, but I couldn't help but think this type of product origami would have applications far beyond car trunks. I wish my entire apartment could do this so I could isolate troublesome houseguests and noisy pets on an as-needed basis.

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Vienna Design Week 2010: Studio Olgoj Chorchoj Go Back to Their Childhood

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Studio Olgoj Chorchoj's Back to the Childhood giant dining table installation.

Studio Olgoj Chorchoj were commissioned to create a new piece of work for the Liechtenstein's Museum's exhibition, 'Baroque Splendour and Stainless Steel. Table Culture with a Past and a Future' (see earlier post about Studio Makkink and Bey's Silver Sugar Spoon installation for this exhibit)

Their installation, Back to the Childhood, explores the feeling of what it might be like to be a child by displaying a wooden dining table with drinking glasses and other tableware enlarged to twice its size, thus creating a differentiation in scale which positions an adult at the vantage point of a six year old. As you walk up to the table you can just about see the objects on the table surface adding to the sense of remoteness and mystery.

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Design IS Thinking

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A few months back, on this forum, Don Norman wrote a great piece that drew back the curtain on the ever-expanding blur that is design thinking. Norman's piece eloquently articulated a number of criticisms surrounding design thinking, but as I thought back on the article, I couldn't help but feel dissatisfied. For all the chatter the piece solicited, there was something left unsaid; something insinuated but not pursued. This fact gnawed at me for months, but I think I've come to recognize the source of my discomfort. Buried deep within the messy cloud enveloping 'design thinking' is the ever so faint echo of design's deep-seated professional insecurity.

So many design articles today seem content to throw the intuitive core of design under the train of its more rational self. They imply, by varying degrees that design fits neatly into two camps: aesthetic pursuit and intellectual analysis. Just as prevalent are the pieces that chastise design for purporting to own creativity. From where this perception arose—I have no clue. Perhaps it's the unintended consequence of selling design process (aka creativity) detached from the pedestrian world of results. Design and designers may have a lot to apologize for, but their advocacy of creativity is surely not one of them. If design is guilty of annexing creativity more effectively than other professions, so be it. There are worse accusations I can imagine.

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Reflections on PICNIC 2010: What Are You Bringing?

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'Guest post by Dave Malouf.

PICNIC 2010 was the 5th incarnation of this now staple Amsterdam event. They call it a festival so people don't think they are supposed to come and sit on their butts for the 3 days. The motto this year was "What are you bringing?" and most everyone brought something.

Attendees have been known to call it a hands-on TED, but I think that's inaccurate. While there are plenty of good ideas, the caliber is not consistent. Some speakers are, in fact, former TED speakers themselves, but not all live up to that level of performance and story telling. Still, there is definitely plenty to do beyond listening and networking, though that is, of course, a big part of any event.

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Abie Abdillah's rattan furniture designs

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Jakarta-based designer Abie Abdillah is well familiar with rattan, partly because he's from a country that produces 70% of the world's supply and partly because he's worked as a local designer. For his furniture pieces, Abdillah focuses on rattan's innate qualities--strength and flexibility--and combines modular units of bent pieces into well-ordered shapes.

Abdillah draws inspiration from a variety of sources: His Pretzel Bench is based on a bowl full of the snacks; his Doeloe Lounge Chair is modeled after the Oplet, a popular car in the Jakarta of the 1970s; and his Madu Lounge looks to honeycombs to provide strength across a plane. Hit the jump to see 'em large.

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Dario Jandrijic's KLEXL lets your kids go Sistine Chapel on the walls

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Before there was "Shit My Dad Says" there was "Shit My Kids Ruined."

More than a few parents have discovered that a few minutes of divided attention is all it takes for their tyke to blaze a graffiti burner across the living room wall. Junior's gotta express himself, so what to do? University of Wuppertal ID student Dario Jandrijic's KLEXL Interactive Painting concept is for a projector that allows digital wall painting by means of an IR tracking camera.

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Light pens take the place of crayons, light pixels take the place of those Neo-Expressionist smears, and plugging this thing into the wall'd be a damn sight easier than laying down a tarp and rolling over your child's masterpiece. Plus you can presumably save the images, and reproject them years later when you want to humiliate your child, now in design school, for his poor sense of composition and line quality.

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Smart Design and Ford: Reducing Glance Time on the Ford Smart Gauge

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Here's an interesting video tidbit from Smart Design, describing a portion of their development process for the Ford SmartGauge, an LCD based instrument panel for their hybrid cars. Concerned that an LCD screen would increase visual demand, Smart designers utilized the LCD's capabilities to reduce glance time, using areas of color to display information that could be seen in a driver's peripheral vision. Dan Formosa demonstrates above.

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IDEO's Designs On Birth

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Designs On&mdash is a printed series put out by IDEO, with new design concepts by IDEO's designers that "aim to raise awareness about a particular issue or topic." The book was started in 2007 in response to a challenge by I.D. Magazine's 2007 Annual Design Review to create concepts that bring awareness to the topic of global warming, resulting in a collection of 15 projects, collected into one booklet. IDEO's publication persisted—addressing time, then food, and now, birth.

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Concepts examined include paternity, baby booms, comfort, the man's struggle, c-sections, natural selection and more. Light my Life by Nicholas Zambatti is about celebrating the ephemeral nature of life, from birth.

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SolTech Energy integrates solar, beautifully

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Nothing says "afterthought" like a rectangle of solar panels slapped onto the roof of a house with no visual relationship with the rest of the structure. Swedish company SolTech Energy brings solar in a different direction with their roofing tiles, made from ordinary glass in the shape of (gasp) ordinary roofing tiles. Why has no one thought of this sooner?

The attractive tiles--which heat pockets of air that in turn heat water--were named "Hottest New Material 2010" by a Swedish construction industry magazine that, frankly, you've never heard of, but the proof's in the pudding; stack these up next to any other roof-based solar system and tell us which looks better.

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DesigNYC: Call for Round Two Submissions

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DesigNYC, a one-year-old organization that matches nonprofit/community design needs with pro bono designers, has just opened its call for their second round of project submissions from nonprofits, community groups, and city agencies, eligible if they are serving the public good. A round-up of the most compelling projects will be selected by the DesigNYC team and matched with a professional design leader in the fields of architecture, landscape design, interior design, comunication design and more.

To enter your project in the running, visit read over the requirements and submit before November 5th, 5:00pm. If you're a designer based in NYC interested in contributing your services, you can submit a profile at any time. The organization is sporting a brand new website, with images and project descriptions and updates from their inaugural round of organization-designer partnerships, so worth a visit even if you aren't submitting.

For even more info, read the post we did on the results of DesigNYC's first year.

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Watch the The Feast 2010 Conference Live Tomorrow!

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The Feast 2010 has sold out for the third year in a row. Thankfully, they'll be livestreaming the entire thing here, from 9am-5pm. Head over to their website to look over their list of speakers.

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The IDSA's Catalyst program seeks tales of design (and makes last year's available, for a fee)

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Do you or your organization have a great design story to tell? The IDSA's Catalyst Case Study Program, initiated by RKS Design's Ravi Sawhney, seeks tales of design success, change, and influence. Winning entries will be turned into both write-ups and podcasts.

Design is vital to all aspects of our lives. By bringing depth, clarity and transparency to the industrial design process, these case studies reveal the profound importance of the profession. This concrete body of evidence will instill into the collective consciousness design's power to effect positive change.

Eligibility: Open to design stories worldwide. Designers, client companies or any interested party may nominate a design story. There are no restrictions on dates in use or in distribution; however, the design story must clearly demonstrate the impact of design.

Would-be design raconteurs can get started here, and if you'd like to see last year's case studies (Apple's iPod-iTunes-iPhone ecosystem, Black & Decker's Dustbuster, OXO's Good Grips, Whirlpool Strategy) and are willing to shell out ten bucks for each of 'em, they're available here.

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A look at how better design can improve schools' performance

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We learn design in schools, but sadly, the layout of most regular schools is not informed by design. Kind of a stretch but it reminds me of how barbers can't cut their own hair.

In an article in Slate, educator Ronald E. Bogle discusses how his opinions on school facilities changed drastically after he received a little design education. Beforehand, "I came up with many ideas, which in hindsight I now see were plenty flawed, about how we should approach [school] design," he writes. "There were few resources available to inform us. Too often, education leaders have not had much exposure to new ideas in design. The fallback position is to go with what you know."

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Shape Changing is Real: Blob Motility by the Wakita Lab

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A friend of ours loves to joke that the future will have no hard edges; experience will be defined in pastel-colored gels, foams and mists that deliver your voicemail and bring you milk. Probably to his dismay, this new project from the Wakita Laboratoray at Keio University may one day prove him right.

Blob Motility is an early phase of a new "actuated shape display using programmable matter." With it, A gel substance can be programmed to a specific geometry and topology, resulting in organic shape-changing in real space—not unlike a "metaball" in computer graphics, as the lab points out.

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