Category: Design comment
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Designing in an uncertain future
Designers want to generate products that meet their users’ needs and that delight them for a long time. Some products, like trains or aircraft, have life spans of many decades. However, components or subsystem can endure for much longer as they are used across many product generations. Something that is designed now might well be […]
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E-bikes charging ahead?
Has the time for e-bikes – electrically assisted cycles – arrived at last? E-bikes have been available for many years, and popular in China and parts of continental Europe, but only bought in small numbers in the UK. It’s only now that proper design thinking, research and development has been applied to them. Evidence for […]
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3D printing; What is it good for?
3D printing, technically referred to as additive manufacturing, is often heralded as the manufacturing process of the future. This is because it is a very flexible process, and is able to produce forms that cannot be manufactured using traditional methods. In theory anything that can be represented as a 3D model in a CAD file […]
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Blindekuh
This summer, I finally had a chance to visit Blindekuh. Blindekuh is a restaurant in Basel, Switzerland, but more than that it is a unique experience. On arrival, you need to lock everything that is light emitting away, your phone, your watch, etc. Then, you have a look at the menu in the waiting area. […]
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Getting good social design to happen
Georgy Holden’s post last week got me thinking. Do have a look at it. Georgy made a link between the philanthropic housing activities of the 19th century ‘model village’ builders and the lessons for today with the push for the private sector to build vast amounts of new homes. She is so right that there […]
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Design for (fully) living
In 1887 William Hesketh Lever, a grocer’s son from Bolton, purchased a large parcel of swampy land in Birkenhead with the intention of building a soap factory. That factory was the start of what is now the global company Unilever. William Lever, later Lord Leverhulme, had a strong vision for business, but it is his […]
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Where do creative ideas come from?
‘All designers probably say the same thing, that inspiration is everywhere and in everything. We study the work of great mathematician and designer, Buckminster Fuller and others like him – it leads to new ideas.’ So says lighting designer Ian Cameron. https://camerondesignhouse.com/collections/collection The source of ideas can be fairly general. For example, the Inspiration for […]
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Is it smart to be Smart?
Smart products are elements of product-service-systems which use processors, sensors and communication technologies to collect and communicate data. The most common example is the smart phone which is a multi-functional device that uses its embedded technologies in different ways according to the installed apps, for example as activity tracker, health monitor, shopping assistant, etc. Based […]
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U101 AL to win British Medical Journal Innovation Award 2018
We are proud to say that Dr Liliana Rodriguez, AL at the Open University and teaching on our U101 module, has received the prestigious British Medical JournalInnovation Award 2018. She took part in a collaborative research project with colleagues from the Brighton and Sussex Medical school. The project was funded by Public Health England (PHE). […]
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Fixation in design
Fixation on a known idea or on a known way of solving a problem is a commonly observed phenomenon in creativity and design. Often, attachment to initial ideas or repeating solutions or parts thereof is seen as a negative thing. But does it always lead to worst outcomes? Researchers are not so sure about it. […]