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Sensory Impact likes objects, people who design objects and people
who like people who design objects.
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7/31/2007
There’s organized chaos (which, let’s face it, is sometimes a prerequisite) and then there’s a downright mess – especially with multiple, awry cabling.
This opaque spheroid called The Hub, designed by Ora-Ito, is just the solution. It works with a Mac or PC and provides 4 USB ports and 2 FireWire ports to a computer systems concurrently connecting up to 6 devices. With The Hub, you can bid adieu to – at the very least – one set of disconcerting entanglements in your life.
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7/25/2007
The 53’rd Annual Design issue of ID magazine features a concept cell phone for the blind by Hong Kong designer Peter Lau that avoids using the Braille system (A system of raised dots representing letters that enables blind people to read by touching and to write using an embosser). Instead, the phone features a 3-D keypad with large keys and a concave surface that provides an alternative means to read the surface via touch. The device also features a menu wheel but given the sketchy details provided it’s hard to tell how one would navigate through the menu wheel.
Update: While surfing around, I came across another cell phone prototype for the blind that is more than an year old but uses the Braille system. This one is from Samsung. (link)
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1/24/2007
The Pong table
The Pong table is a dining table that doubles as a LED Pong game. The table works by integrating 2500 LEDs into the table top that shine through the corian surface. When the game is switched off, the integrated technology disappears, leaving a clean table behind.
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1/14/2007
The Cup Communicator is a prototype communication device created by design Duncan Wilson that takes on the ‘two-cans and string’ children’s toy and uses it’s interface for a real life communication device i.e. You tug the cord to activate, squeeze to talk and hold to the mouth and ear.
According to the designer, the goal behind making the device was to “explore the potential of the product as a medium for interaction and reassess the way we use technology”.
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8/25/2006
Japanese design maestro, Nendo, teamed up with NTT DoCoMo and NEC recently in order to create their first mobile phone handset. Nendo wanted to create a product that felt accessible and close to home so they took their inspiration from the concept of a drinking glass, by casting the phone in two layers of transparent and coloured resins to give a sense of transparency and depth.
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5/31/2006
Ridibundus: Ridibundi can be used for cushioning for a great night’s sleep or scattered on the desk, or put on a shelf below the rear window of a car.
Russian Studio, Art Lebedev literally takes inspiration from their PC for their latest – A collection of cushions inspired by the smiley icons and a mouse that looks like a cursor pointer.
Mus2 Computer Mouse: Mus2 cordless optical two-button mouse controls the cursor on the screen and looks like one.
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5/25/2006
For the disinclined averse to cleaning windows, Activ glass is a boon. This glass by Pilkington claims to be self-cleaning and incorporates natural forces to keep the glass clean.
Activ is ordinary glass whose surface is treated with PhotoActiv ™ and exhibits dual-action, continuous-cleansing traits and reacts in two manners. Using a photocatalytic process, the PhotoActiv ™ surface reacts with ultra-violet rays from natural sunlight to break down and disintegrate organic dirt deposits. The second part occurs when rain or water strikes the glass. As Pilkington Activ™ is hydrophilic, instead of forming droplets the water spreads evenly over the surface, and as it slides off, washes away loose grime. Additionally, the water dries off quickly leaving no unsightly drying spots.
It’s a shame that the rainfall in the UAE is, well, a truly insignificant amount.
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11/25/2005
The Interaction Design Institute Ivrea presented Exit – 19 projects that exhibited exciting future scenarios in interaction design. Exit celebrated and saluted the work of students that arrived from over ten different countries to study at Ivrea.
For their final year, the students designed projects that took cues from audio, products design, mobile and wireless technology, fashion, film sports, graphic design and even theatre. The students designed innovative working prototypes as part of their year-end thesis. Among the many products was a combined holistic health monitor and advisor that dispenses tea appropriate to one’s current health and Design Improve – a service to be used by design companies and their clients to facilitate the design process.
One of my favourites is Pronto, a navigation and communication system for car drivers that would be exceedingly handy during the traumatic rush-hours in Dubai. Pronto not only plans the entire route but offers traffic updates as well as regulates its communication channel to prioritise the destination contact, scheduled contacts, and the frequent contact list. The current interface includes a touch-screen, ‘head-up’ projection on the windscreen, and a dashboard-mounted progress-bar display.
Steven Blyth’s The Social Fabric would thrill any social butterfly. The Social Fabric is a representation of one’s social world, displayed as a single visual array on a cellular phone. While no alternative to an address book or calendar, it subtly updates you on which relationships are thriving in your social network, which are being neglected as well as and the overall state of your social fabric.
Also Tazaki’s InstantShareCam merits a mention. Combing hardware specification and a software application, it permits groups of people armed with a camera to shoot and edit videos on the fly. An on-screen intuitive interface together with uncomplicated controls, offers each group to see what the others are shooting and help decide which video-stream takes precedence, etc.
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Design Innovation Awards (DIA) is an independent Russian award granted for outstanding projects in the field of innovation design and architecture.
The Awards aim to discover contemporary trends and representation as well as detect innovative and exciting projects. Annually, three designs are selected in each category and luminaries in the design & architecture world judge the finalists.
Syringe Button (link)
The winner was Vladislav Kropachev’s the syringe-button which serves as a DIY injection. Once, placed on the skin surface and pressed, the needle penetrates the protective film and pierces the skin. The piston then moves further down and the reverse end of the punctures the medicine capsule. Simultaneously the air-bubble inflates and presses the medicine capsule immediately releasing the medicine through the needle. The size of the capsule along with the length of the needle can be dependent on the course of application. The syringe-buttons have a massive mass-product potential and can mimic pills by having the dosage prescription and name printed on top.
Roman Kriheli’s Phone (link)
My favourite piece (primarily because I am shopping for new phone) is Kriheli’s mega-sleek #1 Phone. The phone’s entire surface is a colour sensor display 4.2 inches in diagonal (a TFT-matrix of 700 × 266 pixels) protected with a 2-mm transparent plastic shield. The buttons are 13 mm in diameter and additionally the telephone is equipped with a metal joystick. The phone can be used vertically or horizontally. The telephone will support GSM networks (900, 1800, 1900) as well as the 3G networks (the third generation). A wireless data exchange feature (Bluetooth 2) enables synchronisation with a computer.
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11/18/2005
Let frustration fester and ye shall pay – MIT Grad, Surj Patel has lost his patience. A cell phone developer by trade, Surj has given up on big phone giants and is building his own open linux-based phone with his partner, Deva Seetharam.
According to him, commercial cell phones don’t let developers write at a basic level that talks directly to the hardware, thus making some programming tasks impossible or hugely inefficient. Hence, the frustration.
Patel wants phones to be as flexible as computers. “I want the phone to be much more open.” He adds “The world’s best research and development lab is all the hackers out there. Enable them, and they’ll do it.”
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11/16/2005
In these disaster-ravaged times, whether natural or otherwise, the refugee radio is more than an object of convenience. Mareike Gas has created this handy, energy-independent AM-receiver radio. The Refugee Radio is powered by the energy of radio waves (crystal radio) and was primarily conceived for two situations in mind – any emergency crisis and a long-term refugee circumstance. The Refugee Radio is a great device for calamity-prone/conflict-plagued areas or simply for those insufferable power blackouts.
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11/13/2005
‘Theatre’ is a wooden side table in which a home cinema set is integrated complete with DVD and speaker system.
Dutch designer blurs the line* between electronics and furniture with his new collection of consumer home appliances for the brand, HE. Each appliance is made invisible by either giving it a wooden exterior or incorporating it into a common appliance i.e. the wave tv.
Egg – Speaker
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11/10/2005
So what if your chances of ever becoming an astronaut are less than nil, you can still defy gravity using Oooms’s Anti Gravity Machine and you know it’s probably more fun. All you have to do is harness yourself on to the moving sea-saw contraption and voila, you can moonwalk like Neil Armstrong all over the Basketball court.
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11/8/2005
Move over naff laser-etched crystal portraits and make way for exceptional icon products that are, well, none other than yourself! Scott Klinker has created the Icon Vending machine which is essentially the photo-booth of the future. It combines a large format 3D scanner along with a 3D printer to produce miniature models of you. This would be the cue for those tacky celebrity doll manufacturers to collectively shudder.
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11/7/2005
This one effortlessly slides into the ‘why didn’t I think of it before’ files. Instead of concealing all wayward wiring paraphernalia, why not simply adorn them? BLESS employs an array of materials – crystal stones, wooden cubes, fur, pearls, lace, etc. as fluent cable embellishments. Of course, this presents a fabulous DIY concept for a rainy afternoon where one has a cornucopia of adaptors and cables and some spare gilt-flecked lace to play with.
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