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Sponsored Post:Make Change Possible at Mayo Clinic Transform 2016

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Join designers, innovators and medical experts who are creating a sustainable future for healthcare and addressing what people really need to thrive in an ecosystem for health. Transform addresses tough questions, connects a broad spectrum of perspectives, and inspires change through action. Transform reaches beyond medicine to better understand health.

View the full content here

Design Job: Design Rainbows and Robots: Kikkerland is Seeking a Product Designer in New York City

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Kikkerland Design, Inc. is a company that creates and markets products in the gift, stationery and housewares industry. All our products have a distinct Kikkerland character. The position of Product Designer/ Developer is versatile team player who will work closely with the Kikkerland team to create innovative

View the full design job here

This Explosive Alarm Will Blow Bike Thieves Away

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Bike and motorcycle theft is a stinking, slinking and subtle affair, but inventor Yannick Read wants to blow it wide open. His extreme bike alarm, called the Bike Mine, would harness all the explosive noise and surprise of an actual explosion to arm your ride against interlopers. 

How does it work? By strapping an actual explosive charge and detonation chamber to your bike. Does that sound dangerous? ...Yes, Virginia, it does sound dangerous. Does it sound like it could scare the brains out of a potential thief and alert me that my precious steed was moving unbidden? Also yes.

To make this thing work you Velcro the chamber to part of your bike or motorcycle, place a charge in the chamber, and use a titanium lead to attach the spring-loaded hammer to a part that would revolve if moved. If this trigger does move, it releases the hammer, gracing you with a blinding and deafening 150 decibel explosion, not an easily-thieved bicycle.

If that doesn't say Death To Bike Thieves better than some stupid sticker, I'll eat my obnoxious messenger cap.

The steel body of the unit contains the blast and makes it–ostensibly–safe and legal for personal use. Since a lot of theft takes place at night or in low visibility conditions, the sonic impact would be paired with pretty big visual surprise value (Holy shit, why is this bike on fire?) and potentially impaired sight. The overall impact of the alarm might not be enough to totally stop a dedicated or professional thief, but the noise would be enough to draw some attention even in jaded and noisy neighborhoods. 

The viability of this alarm as a successful deterrent depends enormously on where you leave your ride, and the likelihood that it could be triggered by something other than thievery. Motorcycles are fairly stationary once parked, but bikes are lightweight and can get squirrely if parked poorly.

My own bike shed houses a herd of expensive but under-ridden bikes, and an alarm like this on the easiest to reach or hardest to replace would make a lot of sense. But if I lacked secure parking spaces or had to share my stable with other bumbling humans, like some kind of peasant, this would be less smart… Unless you think terrorizing honest people or testing your own cardiac strength are secondary benefits. 

It's no replacement for a good lock and good luck, but all in all this is a badass design, executed with fun and flair by the same guy who brought to us the Guinness Book-confirmed World's Loudest bike horn. Which is to say: screw the neighbors if you can made bike safety this awesome.

The Bike Mine Kickstarter campaign runs through June 24, 2016.

The Golf Cart Hovercraft

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The mainstreaming of golf has had a terrible effect on the ultra-wealthy. With the sport accessible to the masses, merely being on the course no longer signifies your status as an elite; from a distance no one can tell how much you paid for your clubs. What's needed is a visual indicator, preferably a functional one, that conveys your Illuminati membership to the others.

Help is here from Hammacher-Schlemmer and their Golf Cart Hovercraft:

The four-person vehicle enables you to go where others can't, ignoring the paved path to cruise directly across the green without damaging the grass. You can traverse water hazards and sandtraps as easily as you skirt international banking laws. Best of all, the modus operandi of a hovercraft provides the powerful metaphor that you float above it all and do not need to walk the same earth that the rest of us do.

The 65-horsepower twin-cylinder engine is good for 45 miles per hour in a forward direction, and the vehicle has also been engineered to do 25 in reverse, should you need to quickly welsh on a bet.

Affordably-priced at just $58,000.


Finally, a Water Bottle That's Easy to Clean

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ALEX is able. The unique design of this bottle features a patent pending mid-body split, called the Clean Seam Technology. This allows ALEX to be easily cleaned by hand or in the dishwasher and compact down to half size for space-saving during shipping or traveling. The modular design also allows for mixing-n-matching of bottle colors and sizes.

View the full content here

A Tour of the Secret Spaces Beneath Our Streets and What Are the Odds That We're Living in a Matrix-Like Simulation?

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Core77's editors spend time combing through the news so you don't have to. Here's a weekly roundup of our favorite stories from the World Wide Web.

Millennials are Slowly Killing Off Punctuation Marks

Linguist David Crystal has recently declared that the use of the period is dwindling away as text messages reign as one of our top preferred tools for communication. He even notes that "the period is being deployed as a weapon to show irony, syntactic snark, insincerity, even aggression... If the love of our life just canceled the candle-lit, six-course, home-cooked dinner you have prepared, you are best advised to include a period when you respond 'Fine.' to show annoyance." The reasons behind this linguistic shift make for a fascinating read and reveal interesting nuances of language in our present culture.

Read more here.

—Allison Fonder, community manager

Photographing The World's Secret Subterranean Spaces

Ever wonder what lies beneath your feet? This may be your best chance of finding out.

Read more here.

—Molly Millette, editorial intern

The Switch

Today I'm watching the new Nike Football commercial featuring Cristiano Ronaldo, "the hardest working man in football" and the luck kid with whom his fate collides. Nike always makes fantastic soccer commercials, and this one's no different: Damn thing just went live yesterday and already has 10-million-plus views.

—Rain Noe, senior editor

What Are the Odds We Are Living in a Computer Simulation?

A thoughtful piece on what philosophers call the "simulation argument," sparked by Elon Musk's claim last week that he believes there is only a "one in billions" chance that we are not living in a Matrix-style simulation. "In the end, it's a story about limits," the author explains. "On the one hand, we maximize human potential by creating worlds of our own; on the other, by doing so, we confirm the impossibility of ultimate knowledge about the universe in which we live.

Read more here. 

—Alexandra Alexa, editorial assistant

How to Make a Shop Stool in 10 Minutes, Build a DIY BBQ Grill Stand and Transform Your Cutting Table Into a Coffee Table

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Cutting Table to Coffee Table

This week Laura Kampf builds a very cool coffee table, using mortise-and-tenons for the joinery and what looks like a circular-saw-cutting underlayment for the top. To level off the kerf marks she fills them in with epoxy resin, killing the bubbles with a torch. Check it out:

Mobile Workstation

An entertaining fast-motion build from Jimmy DiResta this week, as he whips up a teacher's workstation for a makerspace. It's a lot of fun watching him install the locking mechanisms:

Make a Shop Stool in Ten Minutes

Jesse de Geest shows you his "cribbing ponies," 2easy-to-make shop stools. Consisting of just two legs, two gussets and a top, you can whip these up out of cut-offs:

An Expensive Planer vs. a Cheap One

Here Matthias Wandel compares a (CAD)$200 planer versus a (CAD)$750 planer. He does a great job with sponsored content because he doesn't pull any punches, really gets inside a machine to see what makes it tick, and shows you some real-world-usage details that many power tool reviewers would neglect to address.

Wood Turned Brick Bowl Fix

Wood movement being what it is, Frank Howarth turned a massive maple bowl three years ago and has been letting it dry ever since. With the bulk of its moisture finally shed, now he's ready to turn it to final dimensions, and comes up with a novel way to replace some defects in the wood:

DIY Barbecue Grill Stand

With the weather getting nice barbecue season is nigh, and here Steve Ramsey shows us how he built the equivalent of a $100 grill stand for $40:

Building a Trash Can Enclosure, Part 1

An outdoor build from April Wilkerson this week, as she starts to build an enclosure for her trash cans using inexpensive materials. Here in Part 1, she puts up the framing and sheathing before the weather intervenes:

How To Flatten A Workbench Top With Hand Planes

How do you flatten something too large to run across the jointer? Using handplanes, of course. Here Jay Bates demonstrates the technique using a friend's workbench:

Installing LED Shop Lighting

No build video from Linn/Darbin Orvar this week, just a basic one showing her installing ultra-bright lighting in her shop. It seems like a product plug, but if you're looking to go LED in your own shop, these may be worth a look:

Lumber Cart for Vertical Wood Storage

Last time Sandra Powell whipped up some brackets to store wood horizontally. This week she builds a tall, narrow cart to store cut-offs vertically:


Design Job: Human-Centered Research the Flys: TEAGUE is Seeking a Research Manager in Everett, WA

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The Research Manager is responsible for leading the Research team in defining broad, human-centered, future-focused research projects for our clients and evangelizing the value of research to inform our design process. The position demands experience and expertise in research methods, planning, and execution, collaborating with world's largest aerospace company to

View the full design job here

The Rise of Networked Matter and a Manifesto for the Future of Making and Learning Systems

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[Editors note: This article is a companion article to Mickey McManus' previous article entitled "How to Build an IoT Apocalypse." Both articles are written from the point of view of some time in the future. They take a look back on the choices we may make today and how those decisions could play out over time.]

A look back

As we look back at the last century and explore the early beginnings of the age of Networked Matter, it may be worth taking a moment to consider where it all began. How did we "pass through the eye of the needle" of unbounded malignant complexity and get to the other side? 

Today we take it for granted that we live among a sea of information devices that have faded into the woodwork, extended our reach and helped us collaborate on a galaxy-spanning society that has uplifted tens of billions of life forms. Our birth planet is rich with the flora and fauna of both natural and artificial life and is a veritable garden of delight for all who visit. Some of the most astounding new advances in science and art come from collaborative minds comprised of humans, meta-humans, and machines. 

Just as brick and mortar architects and engineers came to the forefront when cities began to rise, the community of design scientists has been lauded for their efforts in architecting a rich and resilient era of networked matter. 

Design Science 

The seeds of the era are many fold but most historians and pioneers agree that one seminal work by Nobel Laureate Herb Simon called, The Sciences of the Artificial, framed a key concept early on. Simon offered up a parable that design scientists took to heart:

There were once two watchmakers, named Hora and Tempus, who manufactured very fine watches. Both of them were highly regarded, and the phones in their workshops rang frequently — new customers were constantly calling them. However, Hora prospered, while Tempus became poorer and poorer and finally lost his shop. What was the reason?The watches the men made consisted of about 1,000 parts each. Tempus had so constructed his that if he had one partly assembled and had to put it down — to answer the phone, say — it immediately fell to pieces and had to be reassembled from the elements. The better the customers liked his watches, the more they phoned him, and the more difficult it became for him to find enough uninterrupted time to finish a watch. The watches that Hora made were no less complex than those of Tempus. But he had designed them so that he could put together subassemblies of about ten elements each. Ten of these subassemblies, again, could be put together into a larger subassembly; and a system of ten of the latter subassemblies constituted the whole watch. Hence, when Hora had to put down a partly assembled watch in order to answer the phone, he lost only a small part of his work, and he assembled his watches in only a fraction of the man-hours it took Tempus.

Simon's watchmakers exemplified the difference between designing using architecture with a capital "A" and designing a house of cards. This was a powerful principle of beautiful complexity called hierarchy. It sits alongside other core principles of design science like modularity, redundancy and generativity. Simon went on to note that complex systems were "nearly hierarchical" in nature. Ultimately this meant that not everything fit in a perfect box, un-modeled features that bled across boundaries could lead to hard-to-predict emergent properties. Even to this day, unintended consequences remain a challenge for design and society. These principles are well regarded and accepted by 22nd-century school children today as they craft their worlds, but that wasn't always the case.

The time before things dreamed

While we have long become accustomed to our things and places capturing reality and providing us with dreams for what could be, there was a primitive time before things could actually aspire or catch dreams of their own. A time when design tools were oddly confined to creating the birth (launch) and death (recycling) of things and places, rather than the rich inner lives they lived throughout their existence. Where Computer Aided Design (CAD) was really little more than a set of documentation tools that resided on a desktop or in some sort of rudimentary client server system known as the cloud. It's hard to imagine today that our communities of things were frozen in their infant forms, blind, dumb, mute and with no imaginations to share, no social connections with each other or us. Authoring was somehow relegated to a single creative team designing from the top down.  

In rich ecologies we find that the nature of an organism (the genetic makeup given by its creator at the time of its birth) shapes how it engages with the system, but we also find that organisms are shaped by how they are nurtured over their lifetime. The concept of nature and nurture — where in essence we have to design for a little loss of control so that a thing or place can evolve in the wild based on what sort of ecosystem it finds itself within — seemed unknown at the time. It was a sterile existence. 

The Beginning of the Dream

In early 2016 a handful of organizations recognized they had a responsibility and a role to play in the future of making and learning at a system level. They undertook an epic journey of reinvention and shaped a response to the existential threat of the early 21st century, namely unbounded malignant complexity. 

A research lab named MAYA, off the eastern coast of Pittsburgh sounded the early warning response system with their seminal book entitled, Trillions and others took up the call. One such company of note was in what is now known as the Sunken Burning Collectivate but at the time was known as California — that company was called Autodesk. 

Even at this early date Autodesk realized that the future wouldn't be about making things, but rather about making systems. They understood that making and learning were intimately tied together and that a system view that encompassed creative teams that included humans and machines would foster an accelerated and fruitful co-evolution. They embarked on the reinvention of authoring tools for the physical world on two fronts. Under one initiative they explored a new idea for collaborating with machines called "Goal Directed Design." Concurrently they experimented with what would happen when artificial intelligence and generative design intersected with lifelong learners to drive enhanced and open-ended "Generative Learning." Early efforts demonstrated that machine/human collaborative teams accelerated discovery and optionality while increasing cenhognitive plasticity in both forms of life. It was a surprise to researchers at the time that machine algorithms could shed light on human learning and reinforce metacognition. They saw their first hints at the potential to give humankind what has in effect become a sense that today we all take for granted. What historical records first called "Systems123D" we know as our sense of "ecology." 

They started by dreaming about helping creators design not only the things and places of the future but also the flows between those things and places; with tools to build new services that harness the economic power of the "Information Carbon Cycle." They imagined the flow of information could help our things become "experienced" by tying real sensor data back into our simulations. They imagined a way to shift the focus from design for the birth of things to the design of their operations over a lifetime. Ultimately they envisioned the learnings from that lifetime paying forward to drive the design of the birth of the next thing. Instead of seeming like "groundhog day" each time a designer started to build a product or environment, they wondered what would happen if they could build "experienced things" at birth. This idea is akin to the theory that humans have portions of their brain already "pre-loaded" at birth, including the ability to verbally communicate via language. Autodesk started talking about creating tools easy enough for a child to use but that also provided the power of systems thinking to the next generation of creators. 

Systems123D — a look back.

Just as looking at the first hammer or arrowhead or early attempts at creating the first towns and cities can teach us about the past and how our ancestors saw the world, a dissection of the very first parametric system-thinking design tool is illustrative of the patterns that helped build the modern Galaxy today. Few people today realize that an early tool built for children to learn about systems and build simple ecologies of places, things and people grew into the reality shaping meme-ware commonly found in all our networked matter today known as "the dreaming." 

Below is an excerpt from early concept design documents for a project called "Primordial" that contributed to what later became Systems 123D.

A manifesto on the possibilities for a "Future of Making and Learning Systems" 

1) Design for a Lifetime

The tool would need to help design teams plan for the lifetime of a product or place. Current design tools and processes encourage the design team to consider the experience a user will get from the product or environment when it is first used. The "out of the box" experience and the way the product is used daily are critical. Designers have also been encouraged to consider what to do when the product is no longer valuable. How it can be recycled, or up-cycled? — this question has become a common component of the design process. But in an ecological design we have to consider not only designing for the birth and death of an object, but also for its entire life's journey, and how short- or long-lived it is in relationship to other members of its ecosystem. Is the product a ten-thousand year clock, or is it as ephemeral as a mayfly? Where does it fit in the "pace layer" of the ecosystem? Could we build a tool that helps designers consider the very essence of the product — its spirit or personality as it grows and matures? Could we help creators imagine and plan for the most perfect moments in its life, how it handles diversity, what or who it might talk to or interact with when "out in the wild?"  

2) Design for Fit 

Ecosystems have lifeforms that "fit" within the environment. When looked at as a whole, the environment forms an information and resource "biome." A Primordial tool, like Systems 123D, would have to help creators design for the fitness of their product in the native "biome" that it will live within. As we transition from disconnected and "dead" products and environments to connected communities of things we'll need to help design teams plan for how their offering natively fits into the whole. Is the product a "royal" lifeform that requires the entire richness of a biome to survive? Is it a "pioneer" lifeform that lays the foundation for others to bubble up out of rich soil? Are there dark zones in the biome that a product could fill? Is there a danger of overpopulation? What unique position does the product hold that would allow it to sense, gather and exploit underused resources that others would value? How much does the product consume of the surrounding "exhaust data" from other lifeforms and how much does it hold on to? How much exhaust data does it put out itself? 

3) Design for Dynamics 

Designing for ecosystems can, at times, be an exercise in designing, not for complete control, but for the loss of some or all control once the product or environment is set free. For instance, designers will need to consider how much the lifeform is open to learnings from how it's raised or nurtured versus how much its genes or core nature determine its capabilities. What if the Systems 123D tool could help explore the outcomes if a product is static over its lifetime or if it's dynamically mutable based on new developments? How can we help designers understand and design new challenges like how transparent and collaborative the product is versus how secure it is? Does it share only with itself and its authors for internal improvements, does it share with other products in the customer's ecosystem, or is it a part of the grand global pool of experimentation? As we build lifeforms we will need to define the constants and variables that enable them to play out their lives. How can we build tools that help creators set the constants that are core to the brand or product spirit, and define the limits of its variability, as well as its preferred or initial set points?

For instance, what defines a Chevy Corvette's essential spirit, and how much can it stray from the original designer's vision? Could there be a version of the Corvette that takes on some of the design ethos of Charles Eames or Norman Bell Geddes or Karim Rashid or some up-and-coming designer, or even the end user? What if it could evolve in the wild at a faster pace than the traditional model year, reacting to external environmental stimulus? What tools will help design teams configure their lifeforms for composability and fungibility within the broader ecosystem?

4) Simulate for Emergence

It will have to help teams design for the shaping of their things in a dynamic system over time. While the goal shouldn't be to turn everyone into a master system engineer, understanding the common pitfalls and opportunities that ecosystems represent will become increasingly valuable. Helping design teams in understanding and using the elements that make up a complex system's flow, having tools to help build and diagnose system level ideas, and cataloging the menagerie of ecosystem "wildlife" will be critical to reduce surprising developments in the wild.

We will need to develop tools that provide a team with the ability to build interaction physics, assemble information flows, capture stocks of value, and model a system's richness. How can we enable creators to "spin up" their ecosystems, or play test them? How will we help teams learn the implications of their design decisions as the number of lifeforms begin to increase and populate the space How can we help authors signal that they'd like other organisms or proto-lifeforms to join their "petri dish" experiments and invite complimentary products to play? 

5) Design for an Information Carbon Cycle

All too often design decisions are made based on the "Internet of Thing" or the "Internet of Five Things" rather than within the true richness of a population of hundreds, thousands or millions of things. As creators build lifeforms and define their initial ecosystems, we'll need to provide tools to help test out their ideas for value exchange at scale. "Designing in" data capture without understanding the potential value it will bring to the product or organization could lead to large amounts of waste data and lame or hobbled systems. It will be important to help creators capture, at birth, how their products will become robust, viral if appropriate, and deliver value back to the creators. 

Much of the value of a connected product will come from its ability to be not only future-proofed and agile but also respond to unforeseen events. What new tools can we give organizations to help them try out serendipitous or event-driven campaigns that capitalize on new knowledge? How can we encourage business model experimentation "in situ?" As the rise of distributed ledger methods, like those employed by BitCoin, allow for distributed transactions between entities, will our things and places harvest value locally by trading with other things in the same way that lifeforms on Earth engage in a market called the "Carbon Cycle?" In what ways can we help creators map the social graph of the community of things, take advantage of influential and complementary new members, and turn their own products or places into influencers? Ecosystems are complex by definition and often emerge from the most basic ingredients. How will we build the initial feedstock of data and complementary lifeforms to prime the system? How will we help designers diagnose and trace systemic failure modes and tune the way their lifeforms respond so that they don't all turn into the Internet of Bricked Things when something goes wrong?

6)  Become Gardeners of Emergence

As we shift from dead products and environments to living communities of things, people, and places we'll need new tools to manage and shape the growth of not only a given product species but also the community it lives within.

Brick Day

The excerpt above hints at some of the thinking going on at the time within the Autodesk organization. They were quietly biding their time and building the elements that would later become a framework for system thinking. We know that a good number of their customers began using this new framework in earnest within the next few years. Autodesk first showed up in the press when systems built with their tools were some of the only ones that survived a close call known today as "The Day the Earth Almost Bricked." Science fiction authors have often noted in their dystopian stories that, had the company not had the prescience to embark on their "Future of Making Systems" framework, civilization as we know it would have collapsed . In some forms of the story, we'd be living in caves hiding from our robot overlords, in others we apparently make good pets. One wonders if we ever would have taken the threat of complexity seriously if we hadn't gone through such a close call. We still celebrate "Brick Day" as a means of reminding our children and ourselves of how near we came to a technological apocalypse. We were lucky that more creative, and systems-focused, thinkers prevailed.

Explore New Workplace Solutions at Neocon 2016, Improv Techniques for Design Thinking and Ove Arup's Philosophy of Total Design

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Jumpstart your week with our insider's guide to events in the design world. From must-see exhibitions to insightful lectures and the competitions you need to know about—here's the best of what's going on, right now.

Monday

The leading interior design tradeshow for the workplace Neocon 2016 opens up in Chicago today, showcasing a variety of new solutions for today's fluid office environments. We are looking forward to the debut of David Rockwell's new furniture collection with Knoll (pictured above), Rockwell Unscripted, composed of eclectic, modular and movable elements that can be used to create both communal work spaces and quiet retreats. 

Chicago, IL. On view through June 15, 2016. 

Tuesday

Flex your creative muscles with a workshop on improv for design thinking, where you'll be introduced to basic improv techniques to help you loosen up and find opportunity even in unlikely places. Because as Einstein once said, "we can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."

New York, NY. June 14, 2016 at 6:30 PM. 

Wednesday

Since the Industrial Revolution, advances in steel and metal technologies have pushed the potential of architecture in exciting directions. Join the Center for Architecture in this panel discussion exploring transformations in metal, connecting historical precedents with the technological and poetic aspects of the material. 

New York, NY. June 15, 2016 at 6:30 PM. 

Thursday

Head to the Museum of Arts and Design for a double film screening of Harry Bertoia's Sculpture—a mesmerizing visual feast exploring the artist's abstract sculptures—and Charles & Ray Eames: The Architect and the Painter—exploring how the infamous duo's exploratory oeuvre created a new aesthetic approach for our digital era. 

New York, NY. June 16, 2016 at 7 PM. 

Friday

Design Miami/ kicks off this week alongside Art Basel. The high-end design fair will feature a number of pavilions and special installations including a special presentation of works inspired by the theme of landscape.

Basel, Switzerland. On view through June 19, 2016. 

Saturday/Sunday

Engineering the World, the first major retrospective of influential structural engineer Ove Arup (1895-1988), opens at the Victoria & Albert Museum. Focusing on Arup's philosophy of total design, the exhibition features rare archival materials from projects such as the Sydney Opera House alongside recent prototypes and digital animations. 

London, UK. On view through November 6, 2016. 

Check out the Core77 Calendar for more design world events, competitions and exhibitions, or submit your own to be considered for our next Week in Design.

Honey, They Shrunk the AC Unit

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Summertime is already in full swing in New York, and with that comes the dreaded air conditioner install, first dragging it from the depths of the closet (if you're fortunate enough to have one), then struggling to get it into your window, mounted and sealed—all without dropping it out the window and killing someone with it in the process. The struggle is real.

For anyone who has ever experienced that, there's a new, dreamy AC unit that will come like a breath of cool air (sorry). Noria is a super sleek, smart, connected air conditioner that sells itself as easy to use and beautiful to boot.

The product is the brainchild of Kurt Swanson, an engineer with a background putting processes in place for producing aircrafts at Boeing and Carson Helicopters. He prototyped the first designs for Noria in a shared co-working space, Nextfab, back in 2012, personally building over 5 heat exchanger demonstrators, while optimizing the design and math models to determine the final form factor. For the final production, Swanson teamed up with Likuma Labs, a creative engineering and industrial design firm based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Noria doesn't just look better—it's actually less than 6 inches tall and 40% smaller than existing units, while achieving 5,000 BTU cooling capacity. "[Swanson's] previous experience as a mechanical and aeronautical engineer at Boeing helped him approach the tough optimization problems involved in taking a 5,000 BTU window air conditioner to less than half the normal size," says Devin Sidell, co-founder of Likuma Labs.

"We've seen this with a few other products, including Nest, where a mundane object that no one ever paid much attention to finally had some light shed on it in terms of how users interact with it," Sidell says. "Window air conditioners were created out of necessity with no considerations made regarding the design, just function. There are some smaller units out there but they never addressed the real issues people had with them. We knew it couldn't just have a pretty face plate or be just another IoT product, as with Aros. It really came down to the user experience."

The design for Noria was the result of over two years spent studying the design and engineering of these units, pushing the boundaries of how small an air conditioner could get without sacrificing performance. "Everything about existing window air conditioners had to be thrown out the window and rethought," Sidell says. The design was guided, in part, by a range of mathematical modeling and optimizations performed by Sidell's team, allowing them to use the available heat exchange surface area and airflow in the unit in a more efficient way than traditional window air conditioners. "Ultimately, we were able to achieve the same amount of cooling power while utilizing smaller heat exchangers," Sidell says. "Comparable 5,000 BTU window air conditioners weigh about 40 pounds in comparison to Noria's approximately 30 pounds."

Noria's night mode setting is easy on the eyes 

As for the more outward aesthetic elements, Sidell and his team were also focused on simplifying the experience for the user. "What if everything was controlled by just one knob?" Sidell says. "And, how can we make this thing easier to install without the user breaking their backs? We focused on what we would want if we could have the ultimate window air conditioner. Ultimately, behind every design decision was a very simple goal—building the first window air conditioner that users could love. Inspiration for the design came from many places including aerospace, automotive and household electronics."

Diagram of cold air flow with a standard AC model
Model of cold air circulation with Noria

Creating the desired airflow proved to be one of the biggest challenges for the team, who designed Noria to blow cold air upwards to mix with the warm air below as it falls, removing warm spots in the room while preventing cold air from being recirculated. "Well over 1,000 hours have been spent optimizing the fans and their housings to arrive at the greatest efficiency possible," Sidell says.

"The next big issue was user installation, which is perhaps the largest painpoint with existing window air conditioners," Sidell says. "Noria had to be easy, safe and straightforward for a single person to install, remove and store. We solved this with Noria's form factor, front handle placement, as well as general ergonomic considerations, in conjunction with the window frame adapter which works incredibly well for single or double hung windows."

Part of the genius of Noria is the sealed socket that is installed prior to the device. A special window frame adapter allows it to easily slot into any window frame, creating a secure, sealed space to add Noria, which also touts an easy to carry handle, making it easy to position the device into the socket. "We also knew that for this project to be successful, Noria could not look anything like what people are used to seeing," Sidell says. "It had to captivate people. We aimed for an iconic design that could be easily integrated into the home without becoming an eyesore."

Like other air conditioning units, Noria is primarily painted metal with a bit of UV-resistant plastic. The internal components such as the fans, compressor and heat exchanges are to be made out of the standard materials for those parts, and Likuma Labs will be using an ozone-friendly R410a refrigerant as the coolant. All materials will be in compliance with Underwriter Laboratories' requirements for rain, corrosion and UV resistance.

Inside, Noria utilizes a vapor-compression refrigeration system like most other refrigeration and AC systems, and accordingly includes the same basic components such as a compressor, fan, heat exchanger, refrigerant and basic electronics. "However, we have custom designed the specifications of those components to optimize performance," Sidell says. 

And, of course, like any product produced in the modern era, Noria can be connected to your smartphone, allowing users to set up weekly schedules and control the device straight from a synced application.

At the launch of their Kickstarter campaign, Sidell and his team had gone through several stages of prototyping, and were in the last phase, working with vendors and suppliers in the US and overseas to source and manufacture critical components like the heat exchangers and the compressor. "A lot of what is under the hood is the subject of our pending patent applications, and we are still in the process of developing further improvements for future iterations of Noria. We have several pending patent applications on our technology and design, and are still growing our intellectual property portfolio," Sidell says. "Our outside vendor confirmed our heat transfer performance as well with their model, and we've been working with Underwriters Laboratories (UL) through the safety certification process."

Sidell and his team have the crowdfunding game on lock. While they wrapped up their official Kickstarter campaign earlier this month with the help of of 3,714 backers who collectively contributed $1,467,498 in pledges (more than 5 times their original funding goal), they also have a parallel Indiegogo campaign, which has raised $1,567,078 to date. Those interested in pre-ordering a Noria can head over to the latter and back the campaign for $299 plus shipping, saving a hundred bucks off of the estimated retail value for the device.

Merge, the All-Inclusive Bicycle

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Merge is inspired by the variety of cycling needs in New York City, and New York is a tough proving ground for an urban bike. There is some good cycling infrastructure, but also streets that are packed with cars and pedestrians. Merge is a compact and nimble ride, offering its rider confidence when navigating tight spaces. At the same time there is necessary utility. Merge’s rear rack snaps open at a moment’s notice, but can also retract when not in use. Merge’s thoughtfully designed features include cargo, lighting, security, and a USB charging port. They are seamlessly integrated and right where you need them, yet unobtrusive when not in use. Merge offers an elegant and integrated solution to the needs of a variety of urban cyclists.

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Research-Driven Design Projects Honored in the 2016 Core77 Design Awards

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Research plays a crucial role in successful design and the entries for this year's Core77 Design Awards year truly embodied that ideal. Many of the projects honored by our juries used research as a compass to drive their strategy, direction and execution—ultimately valuing empirical data and experience over all else. This adherence to a research-heavy strategy allowed for a multitude of factors to be incorporated into the design process, and, in many cases, led to thoughtful, sustainable solutions. Here are a few 2016 Core77 Design Awards Honorees that took the notion of research-driven design to heart.

Wondersphere – Design for Social Impact Professional Winner

WonderSphere is a sealed, mobile chamber that empowers pediatric patients with the wonders of nature and science.
The design, shape, size, and ergonomics work for pediatric hospital patients – the glove ports are the right height for the target range of ages; and are tilted down and spaced in such a way that they don't interfere with the user's line of vision.

Wondersphere was created as a means for immune-compromised children to interact with the natural world for educational and therapeutic purposes. Wondersphere's Project Team utilized extensive research to inform both the design and purpose of their product. Given the restrictions of a hospital room, and the increased vulnerability of the patients, the design was built to be lightweight, easy to clean, and airtight. Additionally, the project was "based on research that shows better outcomes for patients who are experiencing fun and positive emotions," and focused on fields such as positive psychology and nature therapy. The Project Team went on to test the effectiveness of the design finding that "interacting with [Wondersphere] has been shown to have positive health, psychological, and learning outcomes."

Eventbrite Reserved Seating System - Interaction Professional Winner

The Eventbrite Reserved Seating product is a multifaceted design lead ecosystem that enables event organizers to create, host, manage and sell tickets to their seated events.
All seat maps created are linked to a venue and can be reused by the same organizer and shared with other organizers using the same venue.

The Eventbrite Reserved Seating System attempts to make the often frustrating experience of organizing and selling tickets to seated events as intuitive and cohesive as possible. To achieve this the Project Team spent "many hours talking to organizers, venue managers and internal sales and customer support individuals to uncover truths, insights and to develop a deep empathy into the problem space." However, even before addressing the 'how,' the team first considered if they 'should': "Prior to launching our Reserved Seating solution a lot of thought and analysis went into why Eventbrite should launch into this space to ensure it made sense for our core product and larger business." This insight and dedication to meticulous research drove the team to create a product that the Jury Team admits "makes me want to host an event."

Refugee Text Service - Service Design Student Runner Up

Through ideation with classmates and experts, and drawing on insights, especially from meeting refugees and volunteers in the Danish-German border area, the concept of an information service based on SMS was formed.
Since SIM-cards are one of the first things refugees seek during their journey, it became an obvious onboarding touchpoint for the service.

Refugee Text Service aims to offer displaced persons emigrating from hostile or war-torn regions a smoother and more hospitable transition to their new country of residence by providing easy access to information, guidelines and reliable contacts. The project was informed by extensive research, as Kåre Magnus Sand Solvåg, the designer, spent "the first four weeks of [his] process researching the domain, informing [himself] through desk research, expert interviews and volunteer activities on what the situation was like both on the ground and at a larger, political scale." "Through the process of immersive people-centered research, [Kåre] built an extensive knowledge and empathetic understanding for the journey these human beings have been through", which allowed Kåre to create such a successful service design solution.


Belt-Buckle-Based Multitools

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On a recent episode of the "Making It" podcast, Jimmy DiResta and Bob Clagett pointed out the handiness, in an emergency situation, of belts. Clagett pointed out that by wearing a belt you've always got a sturdy strap of leather on hand, and DiResta mentioned that he only wears the kind that have holes all the way around, as it provides a wide range of adjustability.

The belt buckle is another item you can always be wearing that can provide utility. Hence action sports enthusiast Tony Zentil has designed a compact line of tools, in three different flavors for three different sports, that all tuck away into a belt buckle:

Zentil has reached his $20,000 funding target, and if you'd like to get in on it, you'd better hurry—at press time there were just two days left to pledge. The Board Sword's going for $25, the Wheelie Wrench for $30 and the Powder Pliers for $35.


The Vitruvian Man Action Figure

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Sure, your kids want Captain America and Iron Man action figures for their birthdays. But you don't want to rot their minds with all of that Marvel Universe nonsense; wouldn't it be more fun and educational for them to play in the exciting Renaissance universe?

A responsible parent would buy them a Vitruvian Man action figure:

Japanese toymaker Max Factory's Vitruvian Man toy is faithful to Leonardo da Vinci's iconic drawing, teaching your child that the distance from the elbow to the armpit is 1/8th of a man's height and other important anatomical details.

Yes, they might be a little freaked out by the extra limbs, but you can sell this by explaining that Vitruvian Man is the original Doctor Octopus.

For even more fun, limbs can be added and subtracted at will.

Plus, who needs the Avengers when you've got Venus de Milo, David, the Thinker and the Incredible Thinker?

Max Factory is taking orders until June 22nd and expects to ship Vitruvian Man in time for the holidays. Bet you can't wait to see that look of wonder and joy when your child unwraps this!


So, You Want To Be A Technology Designer? Gadi Amit Says to Know These Five Things.

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Recently, we had the very good fortune of catching up with Gadi Amit—renowned designer behind the likes of FitBit, Lytro and Google's Modular Ara phone and founder of San Francisco-based design firm NewDealDesign—in London, thanks to a flying visit of his to take to the stage at the Product Design + Innovation conference.

In recent years, Amit has been calling for the retirement of the term 'industrial design', at least where it relates to the development of technological products. Whilst such a proposal might sound radical—sacrilegious even, to some—he points out that the evolution of technology-infused objects demands a new balance of skills from designers at the cutting edge of hardware.

Whilst design has been rapidly broadening its horizons in many directions (UI, UX, Experience, Service, Strategy, Transformation etc. etc.) in recent years, the concept of a 'technology designer'—Amit's preferred title these days—is an interesting one for the industrial designer rooted in design physicality in a world that is inundated with technology. We've been keen to hear more for some time.

Gadi Amit was a keynote speaker at last year's Core77 Conference! Signup here for more information of the 2016 Designing Here/Now Conference being held in Downtown Los Angeles September 29-30.

Over the course of a winding chat over morning coffee, Gadi filled us in on what he's been working on these days and offered up five pearls of wisdom for those hoping to step up to technology design.

1. Know Thy Technology

Once industrial design was fairly simple. The engineers delivered their ready-made package of components and your job was to put a pretty box around it. As design's role and responsibility has expanded, hardware designers have had to work much more closely and collaboratively with a whole bunch of different experts from mechanical and electrical engineers to software and UI.

In digital design there is a well understood advantage for designers who learn to at least speak code. Being able to brainstorm (and perhaps sometimes play hardball) with the programmers means a whole new world of leverage in pushing for more elegant design solutions.

Gadi sees a similar parallel in hardware design. Evolving to develop a deep understanding of the components that are dictating the form of today's devices is essential if you want to be able to shape more than the plastic box around them. The engineering, you might say, is too important to be left to engineers alone.

And there are deep depths of learning to be done with each microphone, aerial, sensor or speaker, each having its own complex requirements and interdependencies. It's the designers who can become deeply knowledgable of the limitations and possibilities of such components—this knowledge will allow designers to reshape them most creatively. "Making creative trade-offs is a core competency of industrial designers," Amit points out. Understanding the elements behind the hardware is essential in broadening our sphere of consideration to create game-changing solutions.

Dojo, a home cyber-security device designed by NewDealDesign moves drastically aware from tired rectangular form-factor of internet routers to create an unusually approachable pebble more suited to the home environment.

2. Get to Grips With 'The Guts'

Amit talks passionately about getting his hands dirty with the hardware–"the guts"—as soon as possible. It's only when you start arranging the raw elements of a device that the possibilities of the form and function become apparent and malleable. Prototyping is the second vital industrial design skill that Amit points to as essential for shaping future technology—but suggests that designers aspire to be as confident in this art of trial and error with basic electronic components as they are with blue foam and kappa board.

3. Less Smart. More Wise

The breed of 'technology design' that Amit preaches is not just about form giving. Gadi talks at length about the delicate balance of form, function and experience that he brings to his work. He is quick to admonish the bandwagoning around 'smart' technologies, that glorify functionality over experience in context. 'There's a big difference between a smart object and a wise one," Amit points out, using the example of two driverless cars, one that is smart enough to follow the road and avoid other cars, the other that is wise enough to anticipate likely scenarios, such as children running out into the street at the end of the school day.

Fever Scout, is a new continuous child temperature monitoring device that NewDealDesign designed for VivaLnk

4. Mind Your Manners

The wisdom of objects and technologies has a lot to do with how well they understand the cultural context in which they reside. Gadi talks about the need for technology to have 'manners'—something that is all too often overlooked in an age of ringtone and notification overload. 

Whilst he observes design has been gradually, globally homogenizing in recent years, Amit foresees that increasing technological ubiquity and complexity will see a return to exploring and catering for the needs of different cultures. "Designers have always been good at unpacking and understanding peculiarities of people," and Gadi suggests that these skills are something designers working with the technologies of tomorrow should continue to build on.

5. Embrace Complexity. Forget Process

Gadi's final tip for the budding 'technology designer' is to own the creative chaos of your craft. "Academia and corporate culture has put so much pressure on young designers to codify and quantify their practice," he laments. "We need to embrace the complexity and be confident in our abilities to reach a solution," no matter what got you from A to B. "It's talent and experience that give great results, not pretty process diagrams." Gadi puts a lot of his success down to seeking out clients who can understand and appreciate the unpredictability of this creative process.

Cheers Gadi!


Design Job: Game On! Dick's Sporting Goods is Seeking a UX Designer in Pittsburgh, PA

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The UX Designer is responsible for delivering the creative vision, user experience and acting as the voice of the customer for their respective projects and products. They will need to build strong relationships with product management peers, development, design, site merchandising and other critical partners. Success in this role will

View the full design job here

Convertible Bike Pedals That Actually Make Sense

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Simple good ideas are what design is all about. Fly Pedals deliver one surprisingly simple (and surprisingly colorful) good idea that appeals to the serious cyclist with a limited quiver of bikes. 

What Fly Pedals offer is dead simple: a lightweight clipless-to-flat pedal converter that doesn't suck. The design is an aircraft grade aluminum platform with traction spikes and bolt holes that match the cleat patterns for major pedal brand. That's it. This stiff platform snaps into whatever pedals you already have. Simple, elegant, function, and still the only "universal" converter you can find. 

If you ride clipless and use your bike for more than long hard hammerfests, you probably know the bummer of swapping out pedals for casual rides, riding on uncomfortable (not to mention dangerously low-traction) pedals in street shoes, or skating all over the floor of a coffee shop thanks to your slippery little road cleats. It's a common irritation, yet the options for flat-plus-clipless pedals aren't great either.

To use these, grab extra cleats that match your pedals (they're cheap online, and decent pedals come with a couple sets anyway), bolt them to the converters, and then stash the platforms where you're likely to need them. In use they snap into and out of your pedal with the tension and movement that you're used to, and provide way more surface area, comfort and traction for street shoes. 

A snug-fitting platform converter can make grocery runs, coffee rides, or commutes more leisurely, or let you commute comfy and race during lunch. Another benefit is the lowered wear and tear you'll put on fancy bike shoes and cleats, which can add up fast if you commute or ride with the wrong gear. (Trust me. I could have fed a neurotic purebred pet on last year's budget for Sidis.) 

Rather than trying to fit both flats and clipless in the same design poorly, (the current industry standard method), this pair serves both needs with minimal fuss. The Fly Pedals stack together neatly when off the bike, and even with road cleats they're smaller than a sandwich. 

As discussed in the self-teasing video, the brand's current Kickstarter will see the newest version of the pedal released in a range of colors for the first time. Which is a wise move, considering how much personal style and love and time and lust and money some of us pour into our beautiful two-wheeled babies.  

Plus, they're now all cast and painted in the USA, which has only upped the finish quality and fun. Add velcro power straps and this is starting to get serious about your lazy off-day riding.

For $39 earlybird bucks they'd make a simple nicety to keep in your kit, garage, car, even a seat bag or Camelbak. And with these 6 slightly blinding color options you can match your flats to your sweet rig (or car or garage or Camelbak...). Pretty fly!

The Fly Pedals campaign runs through July 10, 2016.

Tonight at Curiosity Club: Vinyl Presser Amy Dragon

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Amy Dragon works for Cascade Record Pressing in Milwaukie, OR. Cascade Record Pressing is the first large production automated record pressing plant in the Pacific Northwest. Amy joined Cascade just before their grand opening in May 2015, and she's committed to their mission of producing high-quality records for discerning artist and labels.

She's coming in for Curiosity Club on Tuesday, June 14 at 6PM PST to talk about Cascade Record Pressing and how you can optimize your own vinyl release.

Growing up, Amy travelled all around the US before landing in the Pacific Northwest in 2008. In 2013, she got an audio engineering apprenticeship at Telegraph Mastering. Now with a background in audio reissues, restoration, transfers, and vinyl mastering, she's coming in to share her expertise.

Join us Tuesday at 6PM PST for Amy's talk and some beers from Ft. George. If you can't make it, get to the Curiosity Club homepage for a live stream.

Yea or Nay? Apple's New iMessage Interface

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Icons, as designed by Susan Kare, used to be elegant in their simplicity. Kare is the graphic designer who worked on the original Macintosh, and in that era of limited memory, they needed an effective way to communicate ideas using a minimum of pixels. Kare developed a minimalist series of icons that fit the bill. Less was more.

In the decades since, icons have grown into densely-detailed emojis, almost grotesque in their cartoonishness. Some still do a good job of succinctly conveying an idea—I chuckled the first time I saw the "fist bump" emoji—but to your author's eye, the catalog has become too bloated; I will probably never have the need to send an icon of a shocked kitten, a profile of a puffin or a dancing snowman.

Still, as the UX designers behind WeChat and Facebook Messenger have ramped up their apps' cutesy factors, Apple has now followed suit. Have a look at the new features for iMessage, revealed at this week's Worldwide Developer's Conference:

Am I the last person on Earth who only wants text messages to clearly convey information and have a simple interface? I can't imagine needing to send a message festooned with lasers, a confetti animation or my own chicken-scratch handwriting, and if you ever sent me a message in "invisible ink" I'd never take the time to unmask it (and I'd secretly want to slap you).

Clearly I am not the target market for this "upgrade." I imagine they're aiming to further engage the hordes of smartphone-starers that heedlessly bump into people on the sidewalk. Are you one of them, or someone who would enjoy this interface? If so, can you explain the appeal?


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