Nowadays the Word ''Smart'', regarding products, is associated to devices enhanced by electronics in sensitive and responsive ways. It refers to the technology that drive inanimate objects into a more sentient stage of their development. But electronics is not the only way to reach that goal. Through the intelligent use of mechanics it can also be achieve the point on which inanimated objects would recognize key features of their users, helping them with this to perform better whatever task these objects are meant to do.
This is the case of the Cannondale concept bike developed by Priority Design. The C.E.R.V (continuosly ergonomic race Vehicle) adapt its handle bar position to match the most efficient posture for different kind of terrain. Without a doubt a great example of meaningful collaboration between design and engineering.
This short demo shows a prototype of a LED that can be stretch. Now, that doesn't sounds like much but think for moment in the sources of light that we have today. Since we tame electricity we've been able to make vessels that contains light. From the light bulb to the pixels that you are looking at right now all our light emitting sources have a discreet shape, its shapes are define by manufacture. Since the commercial introduction of the first light bulbs back in the 1880's the shape have been pretty much the same from the glass balloon to a ''pear'' shape (the German word for light bulb is Glühbirne which can be translated as glowing pear) then to a almost any possible variation of that.
Then the fluorescent (as different as the previous incandescent) lighting technology came and also the halogen and then neon and all of them were confined either to a bulb or a tube. All of them constricted by the formal possibilities of glass. And this kept going up to the introduction in the early 60's of LED (light emitting diodes) which change the electrically powered reaction within an micro atmosphere full of specific elements ( as the Incandescence, Fluorescence, Halogen or Neon technology are) for the convenience of the electroluminescence effect in a Semiconductor, and also change the glass by epoxy. This change, the glass by epoxy, brought a whole new set of formal possibilities to the design of light sources starting for the radical decrease on size, and -for what it matters- the first squared lights.
But even after all these technology leaps the initial shape of the light source will be its definitive shape. The form of the light will be still the form of the mold. Until now the only source of light with the possibility of change its shape was the fire, and we couldn't control it. That change with the arrival of OLED ( organic light emitting diodes) on which the traditional semiconductor layer was replace by an organic semiconductor. The OLED technology has already proved to be flexible, which is already a great step forward. But now this little light emitting plastic sandwiched on each side by carbon nanotube-polymer can change -by being stretched- its shape, which means that its structure can be adapt in three dimensional ways. Why this is important? because of socks. Can you think in something more finely adapted to another shape than a sock wrapping you foot? a very basic shape surface that adapt to all the complexities and nuances of another intricate surface such as it is the foot.Well, when was the last time you worn a rigid sock? stretchability is the the most defining feature not for customisation, but for active adaptation. Stretchable light means that light is now is not only parts of the object but an object by itself.
These are good news, I will be presenting my paper: Emotional prosthetics: Artificialy replace
physical manifestations of emotions with the purpose of enhance the Mother-Son
multisensory bond inside the intensive care environment. Next August (22-24) in the Norddesign conference in Aalborg University in Denmark. Here I left you the the abstract.
Collecting the mother’s emotional physical
manifestations (EPM) and replicate those into the incubator machine environment
can help preterm baby’s self regulation. Here’s presented a method to assess
mother-child emotional care situations and
extract the right stimuli (EPM) from them that could produce in the baby a emotional response that
help him to improve his health condition as well as a mediation interface that
harvest the stimuli from the mother and deliver it to the baby
Some thing is better put them just as they come, so here it goes.
1: Be authentic. The most powerful asset you have is your individuality, what makes you unique. It’s time to stop listening to others on what you should do. 2: Work harder than anyone else and you will always benefit from the effort. 3: Get off the computer and connect with real people and culture. Life is visceral. 4: Constantly improve your craft. Make things with your hands. Innovation in thinking is not enough. 5: Travel as much as you can. It is a humbling and inspiring experience to learn just how much you don’t know. 6: Being original is still king, especially in this tech-driven, group-grope world. 7: Try not to work for stupid people or you’ll soon become one of them. 8: Instinct and intuition are all-powerful. Learn to trust them. 9: The Golden Rule actually works. Do good. 10: If all else fails, No. 2 is the greatest competitive advantage of any career.
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
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.
Pranav Mistry is one of that people that have the abitlity of play with the technology as if it was the most childish of the games. With a background in Computer Science and Design, Pranav Mistry gather together the understanding of the interaction between the people and the digital interfaces and the comprehension on how technology can improve our lives to give birth to some of the most radical devices and interfaces. This one of the guys who is shaping the future human-computer interaction... and it's going open source!!!
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.
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
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.
El equipo de EOLIAN se presentará en el evento a realizarse en la Facultad de Arquitectura y Urbanismo entre los dias 24 y 27 de agosto
La iniciativa EOLIAN partió como un proyecto de alumnos de Ingeniería Eléctrica que rápidamente se extendió, primero, a otras ramas de la Ingeniería y luego a al Diseño. Este proceso se produjo bajo la base no de quien tenía los mejores recursos sino de quien los manejaba mejor, es decir, quien presentaba mejor comprensión y manejo de los recursos tecnológicos y era capaz de generar las respuestas mas adecuadas con los medios disponibles.
En base a ese fundamental criterio se formaron los distintos equipos que participaron del proyecto: Ingeniería Eléctrica+Diseño, Ingeniería Mecánica+Diseño, Diseño y Gestión. Esto plantea la pregunta de ¿donde yace o cual es el verdadero recurso tecnológico? ¿Es el Hardware/Software que te permite manipular las ideas? O es acaso el conocimiento sobre ¿como funciona la tecnología y que función debiera de tener?
La presentación del equipo EOLIAN se centrara en relatar como fuimos descubriendo las respuestas a estas inquietudes a medida que el proyecto avanzaba y cuales fueron las variables determinantes para insertar al Diseño dentro del espectro del desarrollo de proyectos de alta tecnología.
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