design-firms – Tech Today w/ Ken May

Hasenkopf’s ‘Frescata’ Material-Processing Technology Yields Beautiful and Unique Surfaces

One of the cooler materials we saw at Holz-Handwerk wasn’t really a material at all, but a process. German industrial manufacturer Hasenkopf’s booth drew a steady stream of visitors all reaching out to touch the weird-looking totems, like the one above, that they had on display; I eagerly checked the product tag to find it was nothing more than Corian. So what gives? Hasenkopf was showing off their bag of new material-processing tricks called Frescata , whereby they hit Corian, Parapan, and even wood with four different bits in a five-axis CNC mill to create the intricate patterns you see here. (more…)

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Hasenkopf’s ‘Frescata’ Material-Processing Technology Yields Beautiful and Unique Surfaces

One Ring To Rule It All… By Bluetooth

Get ready for the Internet of Rings . Today’s the last day to jump on the earlybird bandwagon for Ring, which has completely cleaned house over on Kickstarter . In case you missed the digital memo, Ring is a wearable device that allows you to “control anything” and “shortcut everything” (or so its creators at Logbar claim). Enticingly vague promises, backed up by tight tech design and a pretty intense bank of R&D. The innovation at the heart of the device is fine gesture recognition—put it on your finger, tap the side to activate and your finger’s moves are registered and transmitted to the device of choice. From there, you get a lot of functionality: control appliances, send texts, make payments through Ring’s gateway, and get vibration or LED notifications. If you can sync it, you can rule it with Ring. To futz with your Bluetoothed lamp, draw a lamp in the air. To draft a letter, draw a letter and then start spelling. The instant payment feature is a little surprising, but an interesting take on the common interaction. In addition to the “built in” symbols and controls, you can add your own personalized finger-commands. They’re opening the API for app developers who want to get in on the Ring game, and have a store to make Ring-related apps easy to find. The charging dock is pretty boss, and they estimate it can perform about 1, 000 gestures per charge. They’re also offering it in a range of sizes, so you apes and dainty types aren’t out of luck. Onward, to the future! (more…)

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One Ring To Rule It All… By Bluetooth

Reducing the Heat In Computing

Graphene + Copper (not to scale, obviously) About a year ago, I traveled to Cornell University to interview a bunch of materials scientists who work at the nanoscale level. This means they work with stuff that is very, very tiny. A nanometer is a billionth of a meter. One of the challenges nearly all of the scientists kept mentioning is the issue of overheating in electronics. Most of us are directly familiar with the heat released from our computers when we balance them on our lap for a period of time, for example. And this becomes a big deal as devices get smaller and smaller. The smaller the copper wires—which connect chips, among other things—the more heat they emit. This is important for future devices and wearables. Scientists are exploring all kinds of solutions but a proven one has recently been announced in the journal Nano Letters. We’ve mentioned the magic material graphene before and it continues to be the superhero material, coming to the rescue over and over again. This time, it shows up as a possible damper for heated copper wires. Graphene is a one-atom thick material that can move electrons and heat. And it is able to cling to copper. Apparently by sandwiching copper between layers of graphene, the heat created by the metal is decreased by 25 percent. When attached to copper, the graphene actually changes its structure in such a way that allows the heat to move more freely through the metal, instead of being trapped in it. From left: (1) copper before any processing, (2) copper after thermal processing; (3) copper after adding graphene. Image via UCR Today (more…)

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Reducing the Heat In Computing

IBM to Invest $100m in User Experience Consulting, Hire 1,000 Employees across Ten Interactive Experience Labs Worldwide

Long before the likes of Facebook and Flickr co-opted the color, the original Big Blue had established itself as a giant in a different era in tech. A perennial fixture of “most valuable brands” lists, IBM is pleased to announce that will be committing over $100 million to “globally expanding its consulting services capability to help clients with experience design and engagement.” The Armonk, NY-based company is capitalizing on its strength in the Big Data with plans to open IBM Interactive Experience labs in Bangalore, Beijing, Groningen, London, Melbourne, Mexico City, New York, Sao Paulo, Shanghai and Tokyo. In short, IBM is making a major foray data-driven service design, a nod to a broader definition of product as experience or interaction (a.k.a. the shift from physical to digital, hardware to software, etc.). Shannon Miller, a Global Strategy Leader at IBM Interactive Experience, shared more details on their vision for what the future holds both for IBM, its clients and the end user. Core77: We’ve witnessed the rise of service design (i.e. experience design) as a discipline in its own right, what makes this a good time for IBM to make this major investment in this area? Shannon Miller: We have seen growing client demand in the marketplace around experience design capabilities and the front office transformation—and this market only continues to grow as consumers continuously look for the next best experience. IBM is the only company that can bring research, creative and design skills together with data experts and a traditional consultancy to solve our clients’ biggest problems. We see this demand globally and wanted to expand our reach to create centers around the world where we can collaborate and co-create with clients to develop innovative solutions. To what degree is this data-centric approach to experience design an extension of the company’s long history in the computer industry, and to what degree is a new frontier for IBM’s strengths? Technology is becoming ingrained into the DNA of every business and personal interaction, especially in today’s customer-centric world, and IBM is helping clients understand their customers as individuals through the use of Big Data. While this certainly is an extension of IBM’s 100-plus-year history and commitment to design, IBM researchers within IBM Interactive Experience invented unique algorithms that conduct the analysis for new capabilities—Intelligent Customer Profiles, Influence Analysis and Customer Identity Resolution. These join an existing portfolio of data-driven capabilities including Life Event Detection, Behavioral Pricing and Psycholinguistic Analytics . IBM Interactive Experience is an industry first—a management consultancy and systems integration company combined with a digital agency powered by data and research. IBM Interactive Experience drives insights from data—including information on individual decisions, choices, preferences and attitudes—to transform the customer experience. (more…)

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IBM to Invest $100m in User Experience Consulting, Hire 1,000 Employees across Ten Interactive Experience Labs Worldwide

Nike to Release Marty McFly’s Back to the Future 2 MAGs–With Power Lace Feature!

In 2011 Nike released the Nike MAGs , based on the design of the kicks Michael J. Fox wore in Back to the Future 2. Supply of the limited-edition sneakers were constrained to boost value, as proceeds were sent to the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, netting some $6 million. While the production MAGs looked like what McFly wore in the movie, they lacked the cool self-lacing feature dreamt up by an imaginative designer (possibly the movie’s Costume Designer Joanna Johnston, Production Designer Rick Carter or Art Director Margie Stone McShirley). However, the sneakerhead corner of the blogosphere is currently abuzz with fresh news: Nike designer Tinker Hatfield was quoted at a recent event on whether the MAGs would be re-released for 2015, the year that McFly wore the kicks in the movie. Here’s the one sentence of Hatfield’s making the rounds: “Are we gonna see power laces in 2015? To that, I say YES!” If Hatfield’s true to his word, by next year we may be seeing real-life versions of this scene: Via Sole Collector (more…)

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Nike to Release Marty McFly’s Back to the Future 2 MAGs–With Power Lace Feature!

Flotspotting: Kibum Park’s Awesome Urban Residences

You undoubtedly remember those slick renderings for the Lowline , the still-in-progress underground NYC park tentatively scheduled for a 2018 opening. The renderings were done by architect Kibum Park, a partner at James Ramsey’s RAAD , a firm that “[focuses] on single and multi-family residential, commercial and hospitality projects.” Well, turns out Park’s got a Coroflot page , loaded up with renders of some bee-yootiful hotels, restaurants, houses and apartments, the latter being the ones that most caught our eye. The clients are of course anonymous and text descriptions are largely absent, but the images do most of the talking. Check out this NYC penthouse with its crazy, sun-dappled, yurt-like master bedroom with elevated library: (more…)

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Flotspotting: Kibum Park’s Awesome Urban Residences

Amos Chapple’s Photographs of the Coldest Town on Earth

Globetrotting photographer Amos Chapple has shot in sixty countries, eventually working his way up to be named Cathay Pacific’s Travel Photographer of the Year for ’09. More recently, New Zealand native Chapple recently photographed a region with weather very opposite from that of his home country: Oymyakon, Russia, where the average winter temperature is negative-58 Fahrenheit (negative-50 Celsius). As Chapple told Weather.com , “occasionally my saliva would freeze into needles that would prick my lips, ” and “focusing the lens would sometimes be as challenging as opening a pickle jar.” Viewing these photos officially means you can never complain about being cold ever again. The temperature is so brutal that Oymyakon residents’ lives are structured around surviving it, with inconveniences aplenty. For example: No wearing eyeglasses outdoors, unless you want them to stick to your skin. Even worse, there’s no indoor plumbing. It’s impossible to keep underground pipes from not freezing, so guess where you’ll go when you need to use the bathroom: Then there’s the gas situation: When you stop your car, to run into a store for instance, you cannot turn the car off, or it won’t start again. So everyone leaves their cars running (except at night, when they’re parked in heated garages)… (more…)

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Amos Chapple’s Photographs of the Coldest Town on Earth

Brilliant Transformational Transportation Design: The Track N Go Converts Your Truck Into a Tread-Equipped, Snow-Going Beast in Under 15 Minutes

Even though I live in America, I never saw as many monster trucks anywhere in the ‘States as I did in Reyjkavik. For drivers who need to navigate the Icelandic hinterlands, owning a pickup truck converted to drive man-height tires is more practical concern than pissing contest. Sure, they looked silly and inconvenient in the city, but it was a trade-off everyone was apparently fine with. So I wonder if the Track N Go would gain any traction in Iceland. This has to be the coolest off-road conversion I’ve ever seen, because it’s completely reversible and only takes fifteen minutes. Check out how it drives: Before we get to how they put them on, the following video, narrated in French, gives you a good look at an individual Track N Go (and gives you a sense of how heavy it is): (more…)

The Onewheel: A Self-Balancing Electric Monowheel Skateboard

Inspired by the hoverboard Michael J. Fox cruises around on in Back to the Future Part II , ex-IDEO’er Kyle Doerksen created the Onewheel. A self-balancing electric monowheel skateboard, the Onewheel seemingly replicates the feeling of riding around on a hoverboard (if not the form factor), and even a novice can purportedly pick up how to ride one in less than a minute; in addition to the self-balancing feature, riders can accelerate by leaning forward and slow down by leaning back, as with a Segway. The 25-pound device will do 12 m.p.h., with a range of four to six miles. Charging the lithium battery takes from 20 minutes to two hours, depending on what type of charger you use. And the monowheel design means that maintenance is a lot simpler than it would be for a bicycle: “There’s literally only one moving part—the wheel, ” writes Doerksen. “No gears, belts or chains to maintain.” And yes, the Onewheel is real, not just a concept; Doerksen and his team have it up on Kickstarter , where it’s already tripled its $100, 000 goal. Check out the video: (more…)

How Shipping Containers are Made

As we saw last week , shipping containers carry our manufactured goods all around the world. There are some 17 million of them in existence, and that number will never shrink; no one can make a profit recycling shipping containers, because it takes a lot of energy to melt 8, 000 pounds of steel down. So once brought into existence, these sturdy, hulking boxes are here to stay. A portion of you are undoubtedly curious as to how they transform raw rolls of sheet metal into shipping containers. Well, here’s how, as documented by Canadian company Big Box Steel . Pretty cool to see all of the jigs, rigs and fixtures, like the horizontally and vertically sliding chairs the welders sit in: Now having seen the vid, what do you reckon is the worst job in that manufacturing squad? I think that guy at 8:12 who has to do the underside waterproofing has got it the worst. (more…)

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How Shipping Containers are Made