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I like this sort of simple stuff that still has a function. Like this Topography Soup Plate by Kouichi Okamoto. Every flat surface you place the plate, it turns it into a landscape sculpture. Add some soup to it and you have a lake in the middle of your dining table.

Manufactured and sold by kyouei design.

[Via mocoloco]

A Forbes magazine article investigates today’s trends in product design.  A decent article for catching up what’s happening now in industrial design and in the future. Briefly the three main trends at the moment being: sustainability, design for the other 90% and DIY.

[Via core77]

I was reading Getting New Ideas from Customers. On Emphatic Design:

While empathic design suggests companies watch their customers use products within the customer’s environment, for most marketing organizations this is not always practical.

Which lead me to this article on  Emphatic Design. I like the way the article opens with this great insight.

What customers can't tell you might be just what you need to develop successful new products.

Some notes:

Empathic design is a relatively low-cost, low-risk way to identify potentially critical customer needs. It's an important source of new product ideas, and it has the potential to redirect a company's technological capabilities toward entirely new businesses.

If no current product exists in the market that embodies at least the most primitive form of a new product, consumers have no foundation on which to formulate their opinions.

But sometimes, customers are so accustomed to current conditions that they don't think to ask for a new solution - even if they have real needs that could be addressed. Habit tends to inure us to inconvenience; as consumers, we create "work-arounds" that become so familiar we may forget that we are being forced to behave in a less-than-optimal fashion - and thus we may be incapable of telling market researchers what we really want.

Watching consumers has always yielded obvious, but still tremendously valuable, basic information. Consider usability: Is the package difficult to open? Does the user have to resort to the manual, or are operating principles clearly telegraphed by the design? Are handles, knobs, and distances from the floor designed ergonomically? Does the user hesitate or seem confused at any point? What unspoken and possibly false assumptions are guiding the user's interaction with the product?

Unanticipated usage patterns can identify opportunities not only for innovation and product redesign but also for entering entirely new markets.

If the collective intelligence of the customers on unusual uses of the products can be tapped, it will be a gold mine of ideas for improving products. But how can you motivate the customers to share these stories with you? The blog entry suggests some ideas. Share yours in comments.

Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages, and more recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker including versions of Lorem Ipsum.

Not all the advertisements catch your eyes. This one has me thinking. I find these architectural advertisements very interesting.

Different by design-the catch line says. I agree the design makes all the difference.

Anyone wants to arrange their paraphernalia in this fashion?

In kitchen I certainly want to try my cups and saucers and blender and jug and mug and........

On a meditational mood I say: these are the things we accumulate all our life and through them we seek our identity. Huh... heavy.nah....?

These advertisement are of soul space.

Pois é, comentamos esses dias sobre um sistema da Microsoft em carros da Ford, e
a Apple já mostrou as caras mantendo seu posto de concorrente da Microsoft.

A Apple e a Volkswagen estão a discutir a hipótese de criar um "iCar" que iria conter produtos da Apple.

O CEO da Apple, Steve Jobs e o chefe da Volkswagen, Martin Winterkorn, encontraram-se há alguns dias na California e planejaram futuras discussões para o projeto, segundo Hans-Gerd Bode, porta-voz da Volkswagen.

Segundo Bode, existem imensas idéias, mas poucos planos até ao momento.

Especialistas estimam que um carro compacto com produtos da Apple seria alvo de grande interesse pelas massas mais jovens, segundo o jornal alemão Capital.

A Apple já está a trabalhar com a Volkswagen e outros fabricantes de automóveis para a solução de integração do iPod nos automóveis. A possibilidade de um "iCar" não foi comentada pela Apple.

Agora o pessoal vai esperar um Carro do Google também, assim como o celular, pois digo,
o Google não se mete em qualquer coisa só pra fazer concorrência.

T3

Fonte: MSN Money

Interaction Design Patterns for web development is probably one of the most useful resources for application developers. We already see many of these patterns in applications today. I am really thankful to Martijn van Welie, for taking the effort to list these patterns and document them in such a high quality blog list.

This is such a wonderful effort to take each pattern, describe it and identify implementations and usability information. For example, look at Accordion Pattern which includes very useful notes on Thoughts on Usability. In addition to a nice categorization list, there are good links to resources and code for implementation. Found the following links to interaction design patterns from this site.

• Interaction Design Patterns for Games
  
• User Interface Design Patterns - Course Notes
• Ubicomp Design Patterns from Berkeley
  

The overall goal of this work is to aid practice by speeding up the diffusion of new interaction techniques and evaluation results from researchers, presenting the information in a form more palatable and usable to practicing designers. Towards this end, we have developed an initial and emerging pattern language for ubiquitous computing, consisting of 45 pre-patterns describing application genres, physical-virtual spaces, interaction and systems techniques for managing privacy, and techniques for fluid interactions.

It will be nice to see the following additions. This can be actually built from inputs by the community.

• A tag map based on interaction-idioms
• A tag map or feature-matrix (like the mashup matrix) based on products where these patterns are used.

Se poate de spus numai oauuuuu cind vezi aceste lucrari nemaipomenite ale oamenilor cu adevarat profi in ilustratii. Galerie prezentata de Smashing Magazine a diferitor artisti care folosesc diferite tehnici si mijloace.

Continuarea...

M-am gindit ca ar fi interesant sa fac o lista a celor mai impresionante si interactive portfolii.

http://www.psyop.tv
Edwin Tofslie (Art Direction & Design)
David Mikula (A Visual Designer and Art Director based out of Portland, OR)
Alex Buga (Senior Graphic Designer) zip 15,7 MB
Veerle Pieters (graphic/web designer)
Mike (freelance art director)
Seth Weisfeld (Art Direction/Design, Brochure)
MB Dragan ( [true] interactive agency)
Mark (Art Direction & Design)
Steve Mason (Art & Code)
Joshua Sullivan
Michael Chen ( interactive, web, and graphic designer)
Jeffery Bennett
Matt Deangelo
kevin hsieh
Liz (Interactive Art Director)
Kim Wiessner (graphic & web design)
RED KEDS (web-дизайна, иллюстрации, графического дизайна, интерактива, 3D-графики и анимации и др)
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Melissa Clifton

I absolutely love this paper. I bought it from Falkiner's when I was with L and am very sorry I didn't buy more. Still, it's a good reason to go back. I have waited until I had a paper to go inside it that would do it justice. The one I chose is OK but not brilliant so I will keep searching. They are both Japanese Chiyogami papers. The paper inside the book is a beautiful handmade watercolour paper from Wookey Hole Paper Mill. It does make a very pretty book.

I have been spending most of my time designing the web site for selling these books. We finally decided on a name, I registered the domain name, and proceeded to design a logo and I took a fabulous photo (she said modestly!) for the banner on the home page, incorporating my logo and was really pleased with the result. I then received an e-mail from the hosting company telling me that the domain name had been registered by someone else, just before I tried to register it so it was now unavailable after all. I was so disappointed. For a time I thought all the work I had put in was now wasted but eventually, I thought of a slight change to the name so that I could still use the image and the logo.

Finding a domain name that is short, appropriate and memorable is a nightmare. Everything seems to have been snapped up and is only available to backorder, which is very irritating and frustrating. I hope I might still get the original name but I'm not holding my breath.