Revista Chilena de Diseño » Tres cosas que se deberían saber antes de recibirse de diseñador

Finally after several month of delay my article was published on RChD (in spanish)

Revista Chilena de Diseño » Tres cosas que se deberían saber antes de recibirse de diseñador

The personal mobility turning point

This video is a quite interesting trip through the personal mobility history focused on describing how we found ourselves in the turning point of this industry. The arguments for this claim are the upcoming electrical technologies and material that are now being introduce in the develop of personal mobility devices, the longer performance of electrical batteries and the reduction of their sizes as well as the incorporation of high sensitive capabilities have opened broadly the spectrum of possibilities for imagining and realize new ways of interacting with the vehicles, new uses for them and, the most relevant issue, new categories of vehicles. Since the foundation of this industry both the morphology and the configuration of personal mobility vehicles has remain pretty much the same until recently devices like the SEGWAY and the Honda's U3-X (the main character of this video) have overlook the the idea that a personal vehicle has to be a car or a bike or, if you are an eccentric driver, a tricycle to bring a new category of self-balancing vehicles, and altogether opening a hole new branch in the mobility industry.

The proliferation of new devices in this area has already begun, and we can count now with transitional hybrids like one-wheeled motorcycles or Segway like devices for off road but the disruption of personal mobility it is far from being exhausted and I guess we will witness the arise of other new categories on which the power storage technology and the active sensitive capacity as well as the new ways of human vehicle interaction will have a main role.

From the Design point of view, being involved in this turning point means a bit more than just to make these new devices more aesthetically appealing or user friendly; it means also to imagine, research and prototype new ways to communicate the human will to an electromechanical device so the relationship between them can become more intuitive and responsive.

That's it for now, by the way, this video is produced by Gizmag and you can read the hole article here.

Enjoy

the creators project: Stefan Sagmeister

The Creators Project its an initiative that put together people whose work is connected with the use of new media in their creative processes and/or products. It's a really interesting sample of works and visions from different areas of the creative practice such as Design, Music, Film and Art just for name a few, but also is a tasteful gathering of different culture flavors that show us the singularities of every culture in the approach to creative work.
Between the featured personalities are big names like Spike Jones, MOS Architects, Peaches, and Phoenix, but my personal selection is one of my favorites graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister, who is also a big fish, but never the less, always fun.

By the way, check:http://www.thecreatorsproject.com/en-uk/

James Dyson:Design what it should be

James Dyson, founder of Dyson corporation and responsible for the world famous machine looking vacuum cleaners, share his achievements and inspirations in a relaxed show-and-tell talk called ''the art of engineering'' at MIT. Dyson, graduated from the Royal College of Art, tell the story of how he went into engineering and how important it is not to be only a Designer or a Engineer, but to be a Designer/Engineer, and inventor as he said, and the relevance to make mistakes: ''...I think the schools got all wrong, they should be giving good grades to the ones that makes mistakes and learn from them.'' something that himself take to the limit, for his first cyclone vacuum cleaner he spend almost 5 years and did 5,126 prototypes!

The British inventor also criticized the definition of Design as a marketing tool arguing a more meaningful and systemic view that he inherit from one of his heroes, Buckminster Fuller, from whom also borrow the beautiful advice: ''...you see what needs to be done and do it.''

At he end of the talk, in Q&A, he discuss how he manage the creative processes within his organization and how he see the future regarding the rising of the new Asian productive power. Surely an invigorating example of how to make you way through with a huge accent on innovation.

Challenges of future design

In this video Hamilton Smith, part of the team that develop the first synthetic cell, talk with Noy Bassik about building machines in the scale of a cell. Two basic ideas are discuss in this conversation, the first one coming from Smith is to build living machines through the alteration of a already existing organism. This mean build a purpose-full device out of the essential biological parts, DNA. In the other side is the vision of Bassik that pursuit the develop of machines that interact with the chemical world of biology. What he's doing is engineer devices that can be controlled by chemical reactions fulfill a purpose. The purpose of this machines is now in the level of mechanical effects but -as they discuss- is projected to be a lot more than that, a complete factory that can sense and react producing and delivering substances needed by the organism.

Now in the eye of a Designer this may look really far away from our expertise area but there is some hints that can give us a second look. First the formal level, the technique worked by

Bassik is inspire in Origami and from this ancient art the idea of build volume out of a flat surface is drawn to research with the out coming of relevant insights to control materials through shape. This imply that formal thinking is needed in the conception of this new kind of machines and designer at above all formal thinkers. Another component of the thinking process of Design can take us into a deeper level, this is the behavioral awareness. Is well know that in Design practice the biggest tool is Observation, observation of people and their conducts, of systems and their components and relations between them, of causes and effects, actually of whatever is involved in the studied situation. This tool in combination with the problem solving thinking of engineers brings about comprehensive solutions that almost in every field of the building-things human endeavor has drive innovation. With the develop of techniques that enables to build thing in the micro scale we are entering in a new stage of technology and the products of this new phase will progressively increase in complexity, when this start to happen it will be necessary the knowledge and the thinking on how the outcome of the process of this machines will affect the whole system, in simpler words, how the behavior of this devices will cause effects on the other component of the system, as the non-micro scale devices affect us and the environment today.

Some of this worries have already take in hands of designers as in Nanotopia or in Victimless leather presented mainly as Art projects but in the way that this technologies star to permeate more deeply our cultures and our daily life the need for a technical and reflective presence of design will be more critical. So, maybe it's time to aim for the future and involve Design in the next technological revolution, design at micro scale.

Design: e²

This is a series from the PBS that talk about the biggest energy consumers and polluters devices made by man. The buildings. As it is claim in the opening of every one of the six episodes from the first season now available in the PBS You Tube channel, buildings consume 40% of all energy resources and emit 50% of all green-house gases.

The e² stands for: ''the Economies of being Environmentally conscious'' and they analyze which kind of approaches are been taking in the world of architecture and construction business to diminish the impact of our build environment in the ecosystem, and how we raise awareness about the relevance of this area in the climate change and in the sustainable future.

The analysis goes from the high- tech construction materials and processes to the social issues attached to the green movement and show projects and experiences from U.S.A, Mexico, China and Europe.

The episodes are:

1.- The green apple

2.- Green for all

3.- The green machine

4.- Gray to green

5.- China: from red to green?

6.- Deeper shade of green

25:45 min, each

Designer! which kind? ....mm...Designer

Design is a common noun for a big amount of different occupations. As people who have a degree on design sometimes we feel a rather disappointed with common notion of Design that able to almost everybody to become a designer just by personal statement, and because of this we usually try to separate ourselves from the crowd saying that we are Industrial, Graphic, Product, Information, Interaction, Car, Yacht, Fashion, Furniture, Interior, Stage, Green, Red, Blue or else Designer; we are good on that.

In contrast with this recently a group of Design researchers has publish a paper on Design Issues that try to find common places in diverse disciplines of the design though a very simple methodology, conversation. They realize a series of workshops with a handfull of expert Designers (more than 10 years of practice) from different fields. From the fashion design to jet engine design and from furniture design to TV documentary. The first thing they found was that, although with some nuances, all the Designers talk the same language. When an engine Designer was put into conversation with a graphic one the only idea that needed an explanation was ''thumbnail'' and it was quickly grasped... by the engine designer. So language, I mean technical language, even through heavy specialization is a common tool.

Other interesting finding of the study was that we relate the idea of good design mainly with the acceptance and recognition coming from our peers, and only then with the user acceptance, sintitutional recognition or commercial success.

One big resemblance in all the stories told by the designers is the creative relationship with the material. Great deal of the time expended in the projects and the actual search -and find- of solutions goes through the hands and the direct contact with the material. Though the ''conversations'' with the material can be more or less physically attended, the direct experience and experimentation seems to be extremely relevant. In this way the lamp designer play with the glass to find out new shapes, properties and effects that can be use in the design as the engine designer, as well as the graphic one, includes the properties and qualities of the steel or the typography as constrains and capabilities that drives de design process.

The research unveils that in the communication area the main tool is by far the Sketching. Even when the computer techniques allow us to render projects more accurately (and more convincingly for the clients) than the hand, the sketching still prevail when it comes to capture and develop ideas.

The study also goes through the relationship with the final user and the big amount of energy spent in every design project on managing the uncertainty of collaborations with people and policies and as a conclusion stress the wide range of commonalities that bring designers together rather than split them around different technical, cultural and business context; and how much we need tools that make us aware of this and foster respect across the design world.

Even though this research found some really important insight of the design praxis, there are still some questions that should be address in order to bring about information on how designers are connected to each other further than the common places of the practice, which can also be found in others disciplines. We need to ask us about, how designers work out the difficult relationship between creation of new things (or stuffs as R.Gold said) and the renovation of the already existent things? Also, which are (if there are) the commonalities of our generative process in contrast with other creative areas? Learn about this can drive us to a more deep understanding of our discipline and its practical values.

Paper towels for oil spills: MIT researchers unveil autonomous oil-absorbing robot

MIT researchers unveil autonomous oil-absorbing robot

see also

The Plenitude of Rich Gold

Some weeks ago I went in a local bookstore just to kill some time , and after take a quick look into the shelves a small green spine cath my attention in the design theorie area (after that I notice that theorie books even when it comes to design, are usually graphically bored). I take it from the shelf and just there another two things call my interest. First, all the cover was illustrated with doodles that looks like made by a school kid -a thing that I found clever in a bookshelf full of elaborated computer renderings- very warm and very beautiful. The second thing was ''foreword by John Maeda'' writen under the autors name, Rich Gold. Then when I went into the book, to my surprise I didn't found any pictures, any renders, any oversimplify diagrams, nothing but words..and CARTOONS! yes cartoons. Every chapter or section starts with a cartoon, and also every main idea on the book is stressed with a cartoon. There is a cartoon to explain the overstuffed enviroment in wich we live that Gold calls ''the plenitude'', there is also a cartoon that show clearly the four disciplines (and professions pursuit by the autor) that have the responsability of around 97% of the plenitude, there is a cartoons to explain the seven path of innovation, the five problems of the Plenitude and the seven solutions for that; and even for explain how the Plenitude of ones is based in the poverty of others.

After been exposed to that amount of quality information two thoughts came to my mind, cartoons rules and I have to reed this book.

The book is about thing, or better say Stuff. What it is, from where it comes, where it goes, how we can deal with it and why we need to be sorrounded by this thing call ''the plenitude'' (after write this post I'm not sure anymore if this book it's really about ''stuff'')

The Plenitude, Creativity, Innovation and Making Stuff

autor: Rich Gold (foreword by John Maeda)

pages:111

the MIT press

EN-V: no more cars but movable-containers-points of a mobilitynet

Artificial foot recycles energy ...as a silicon gun!!

Probably the engineers from the University of Michigan weren't thinking about this when they came with the idea of storage energy through the same kind of mechanical device that makes the silicon gun works (looj at the hhel clutch in the upper picture), but the design analogy it's perfect. This hight-tech electromechanical prosthetic feet works (in the mechanical part) with the same basic principle that a silicon gun, a clever solution for a very complex problem and a really good sample of analogous thinking in the design process.

for the complete article with all the explanation follow this

for a video of the device working folow this

and for the paper who explain... everything follow this

What are the discussion on Design by these days?

fig 1

Some days ago I read in WYSIWYW a really interesting and visceral post about Design & Art. This relationship has been discussed (above all in design schools, I have never hear an artist say a word about that) since the beginning of the design as a discipline, and to be honest I’m quite tired of hear arguments going in both ways, and I agree when the people from ''Sindicato de la Imagen'' says Art is Art and Design is Design, get over, don't lose more time in nonsense.

But this closure leaves us another question: what is the discussion in design by these days? And, what are the topics of that discussion?

Design, as any other consolidated discipline, has several components that converge to give substance to his theoretical and practical body: Methodology, Ethics, Technical issues, Aesthetics, Relation with the industry, Connection with other disciplines and Cultural relevance, just for say some. All these components can also be analyze by them self to find new areas to debate and to extract polar concept that define the extension of the discussion. For example, if we look the arguments in Methodology we can find ''Design thinking'' as one of the mayor driver of the praxis by these days, but also we can find ''Problem solving'' (coming from engineering) as one of the most common approaches to design. In other areas like Aesthetics polar concepts can be a little more diffuse, and they can go from naturalism (Bouroullec) to new rationalism (Lehanneur), from the nostalgia (Hayon) to the material and structural efficiency (Grcic) (fig 1).

In the same way of analysis we can find polar concept in Ethics. Today in design every day we can contrast the Super luxury -of cars, yachts, interiors, electronics, high-end audio systems, clothes, watches and almost a endless list of product focus on give pleasure and social relevance to his owners- with product and projects focus on solving social issues like education (OLXC), Health (Lifestraw), shelter ( rectionhousingsystem), energy ( ceramic jiko). Social focus has permeated design even further than poverty issues to address health and social behaviors in the developed world (NYC Condom).

The word Design its use today almost as a synonym of innovation, and in this relationship lays the Cultural relevance of design. As material culture dynamo, Design has the responsibility to innovate, but innovation can also be decompose in the polar concepts of Incremental Innovation and Conceptual Innovation. The difference lies in if the innovation comes to improve something that already exists (incremental) or introduces a new way to achieve a desire effect. For example you can design a new washing machine in which you can wash color and white clothes at the same time without worry about the white clothes get stained in the process, which would be a really good improvement in washing. That would be an incremental innovation. But if you make yourself the question: why do we need a big and complex machine to wash our clothes? Or even better, why do we need water to wash our clothes? You can find some new ideas on how to clean the clothes that can drive you to develop new objects and process of cleaning, which would be a conceptual break through, a conceptual innovation. The main difference between this two ways of innovate is the physical product of them. In incremental innovation the most of the cases ends in a new variation of a pre-existing product (like a better washing machine), but the product of conceptual innovation usually is a complete new item, that open a new branch on the technological tree (like self cleaning surfaces).

Another big difference between incremental and conceptual innovation it’s the risk level, improve an existing product it’s a safer road than develop something complete new one. But that is a subject of business rather than design, as it is also the scale of the production. Design is –and this it’s my position- in the solution, not in the repetition or the scale of the production.

The discussion on today Design it is a lot bigger than we just talk here, and we have to be aware that this isn’t a light conversation about taste or how improve the business strategy. This is about what to do in a discipline that every day has a more relevant role in society and culture.

This conversation should continue and I think one good introduction is this video where Tim Brow talk about different aspects of Design and Design thinking.

Now we have metal that work as a tree

Recently have been unveiled a piece of metal that can transport water in a vertical way, defying the gravity force, just as trees in nature.

In Nature trees pump water up by a combined mechanism called ''the cohesion-tension theory''. Water travels up by capillarity and a difference in the water potential produced by the transpiration pull.

In Capillarity - or Wicking- the narrow the tube, the highest the column. So, if you have a extremly powerfull laser with the highest frecuency that you can imagine, a Femtosecond, what would you do? of course, the most thinnest tubes ever. That was the idea of Chunlei Guo optics scientist, from the Rochester University.

The potential aplications for this new material goes from microprocessors to clean hydrophobic surfaces...for now(when the paper that describe the process and the material is not even published yet), in the future we will hear, for sure, about more ways to apply the etched-metal.

more information on:

http://www.rochester.edu/news/show.php?id=3387

GREEN FOOTSTEP, a design tool for sustainable buildings

''Your building, your carbon, and what you can do about it'' ...it's the main idea behind this useful tool for architects. For sure it's not the first carbon footprint calculator but it is the first to include multiple building emissions over the building lifetime, also this tool gives you directions on what to do to decrease the footprint of your projects. This on-line resource was developed by the Rocky Mountain Institut, a group of very prepared people that are very concern about how we use our energetic resources and how we can improve the performance of our built-environments, so concern are they about this topics that not only they make realy good tools to help us to meke good decitions related to the footprint of our projects, but they also explain us the teory and the legislation behind this issues in a realy clear way and with all the reference needed. So, check the site and start to design in a little bit greener way.

Mathieu Lehanneur, object-ivness and user comprehension

Mathieu Lehanneur -French designer- who claims for a Design informed by Science to understand our real needs -like silence- and develop products with wich we can relate, and even achieve symbiotic dependences (for good, fortunately). It's also a good example of new areas for design and the richness that multidisciplinary work brings to design.

http://www.mathieulehanneur.com/

BIOMIMICRY, or the green path of the new technologies

Biomimicry, must be one of the most beatiful word that i learned in last time. It means understand and apply biological principles in human designs. Simple, but not simplistic.

The first time that i heard this word was in a Robert Full talk in TED, where he shows his investigations on Geckos feet, and how he and his team manages to achieve a deep understanding of the mechanic that allow this little lizard to climb glass walls with almost no effort, and - here's the exiting part- develop a sinthetic simulation of this feet that recreate the special habilities of this animal. The incredible amount of work made by Full and his team had big rewards in patents of new materials, applications and designs.

Two of most intereting things -at least for me- were, first the multidisciplinary aproach, mostly in the part of developing the new feet and the bottomline of the talk. In the first one because the complexity of nature demand the integration of the differents sides of sciences and technology to produce holistic understanding and feasable designs. The second, the bottomline ''we most preserve the nature design before they are lost'' this words point to

a new issue in the enviromental crisis that we are living. Nature produce extremly eficient and creative solutions through thousands - if not millions- of years of iterations, solutions that can be lost in a couple of years because the habitats destruction and animal extintion.

Other thing that caught my attention was the Biomimicry as a methodology. As a designer most of the process involve on creation have to do with the interaction between the forms and the enviroments; so, as Christofer Alexander says long ago, we analize the ''surroundings'' of an object (fisical, semantic, perceptive, mechanic, etc) and we propose forms that ''fits'' properly with these surroundings...but what Nature do if it is not that!? I'm not saying that designers are a force of Nature, but the process of design -and with this i mean every process call design- has to do a lot with what Nature do. Multiple and consecutive iterations to

develop a specific form, function or behavior. In this way it is very interesting the example of FESTO, German company who take the concept of Biomimicry to develop Pneumatic Robots who works, looks and behave like real animals.

This robots born from the deep understanding of the motion of these animals, and it is the transference of that understanding of mechanical principles to the design of these pneumatic creatures where lays the relevance of the biomimicry research; the groundbreaking conceptual innovation, in this case, of how mechanical devices can stop to be mechanical devices and become creatures with specific functions, in a product more close to poetry than engineering.

Biomimicry in the form of Biomechanics it isn't new, in every culture we can find examples of how the men build tools based in the observation of nature, but what it is new is put the focus on the materials and behaviors. In the last years the research on how the Nature resolve his more smallest structures combined with the Nanoengineering had resulted in the revolution of the materials industry. But maybe the most promising area of Biomimicry it's the study of the naturals behaviors that can lead to the improvement of the responsiveness of our own enviroment due to the basic principle that the behaviors are modeled by the information that the subject can perceibe. If we can improve our undertanding on how the Nature ''talk'' and interact with him self we can start to design the enviroment it self, not just the material part of it but the way that the enviroment can generate by it self the responses (forms, structures, stimulus, ...)for the immediate needs. An self evolving artificial enviroment.

For now Biomimicry it is at service of the cutting edge technology insdustry, but why not expect that in the future this path also take us to a better comprention of how we can live in Nature and not just above the Nature.

information and source:
http://www.festo.com/cms/de_de/index.htm
http://www.iop.org/EJ/journal/1748-3190
http://www.biomimicry.net/
http://www.biomimeticsregistry.net/main.html
http___www.biomimeticsregistry.net_pietrzyk.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biomimicry

The evolution on products

This week i have been in two very unusual and interesting places, two museum of contemporary products, Mercedes Museum and Vitra Museum.

The big diference between those museum and the regular ones (like history, Natural history, or an Antropology Museum) is that in this ones you can see a sample of a particular product an also you can see the path that leeds him to that point and the later development. In a historical museum in were the object exposed are a unique sample that comes to describe an specific cultural moment, you can only infer the amount of work and the creativity weigth of that single piece of craftmanship and, in the same way, you also have to infer the value of that object had for the people that in first place possessed it. Like the value of an spear for a hunter. But what happend when you step in front of a complete chain of development in the same object? you can see the value of craftmanship because you see the process behind every detail of that product, and how that solution connects with the cultural situation.

So, what it's the relevance of this museum? it's not the recolection of precious objects but the visualization of the cultural situation and value system through crafts.

What it is important about this is the understanding that the products didn't born in their optimal stage -if that even exist- but they evolve to fit the cultural expectations. Because of that we can't expect the perfect product, but more important than that is that we can project the future step in the evolution of a single product based in the understanding of this cultural expectations upon that product.

Then we can say that the main feature of this kind of excibition is the craft, but the craft understood as the apply understandind of cultural expectations into the phisical tansformation of the matter.
The craft as the act of visualize and therefore create…
…from my point of view, Design.

For more information on the product evolution watch this video

Iluminated Apparel 2010 by LUMINA MOTION

This is a sample work of the Chilean Light Design buro LUMINA MOTION, doing their awesome and magical lights set up.

see also:http://www.loretocorrea.com/

Iluminated Apparel 2010 from Lumina Motion on Vimeo.

The power of sound, how sound affect us

I was just killing some time in tedtalks.com when i found this incredible piece of practical human knowledge. Julian Treasure, sound researcher and ex drummer, explain how the sound affect us and how we can use it for different purposes (like playing bird singing give us the impression of safeness). Good for every one, a must for designers.