Wired magazine has an interesting article about using Ambient Orbs to help people conserve energy:
Martinez realized he could use Orbs to signal changes in electrical rates, programming them to glow green when the grid was underused — and, thus, electricity cheaper — and red during peak hours when customers were paying more for power.
The result? Peak period use was reduced by 40%. It’s amazing how much easier it is for people to change their behavior if you make them aware of it.
We implemented some simple feedback loops in Google Reader in the form of the trends feature, which lets users track their data consumption and see which feeds they should unsubscribe from.
The MagicSpeed wheelchair is a brilliant invention:
MAGICWHEELS™ - 2-gear wheelchair drive work very similar to a 2 speed bicycle allowing you to shift into a lower gear before you climb hills or roll over any type of uneven or rough terrain.
It’s always nice to see design well applied to good causes.
An interesting WSJ article on retail in India:
Mr. Biyani doesn’t allow haggling, but having damaged as well as good quality produce in the same box gives customers a chance to choose and think they are getting a better deal.
The Acropolis is full of thoughtful design details:
The columns of the Parthenon slope gently inward to correct the perspective when looking up at the temple that would otherwise make them appear to be crooked, leaning outward.
It’s almost too clever to be true.
Picture by Shelby Root
Adaptive Path took to heart a diabetic blogger’s call to action and designed a concept for a new device. Charmr is the result of 9 weeks of research into how to make diabetics’ lives easier. Make sure to follow the links in the post, as they explain the design process in detail.
PSFK has a great description of their first flight on Virgin America:
It was like being eaten by an iPhone and sitting in its belly for an hour.
I’ve always been a fan of Virgin Atlantic — it’s the only airline where the safety brochures look like they were put together by a graphic designer. It appears that they’ve paid the same attention to detail for their new US venture, and I for one can’t wait to try it.
Signal vs. Noise posts about the technology of the $100 laptop.
You can pour water on the keyboard…You can dip the base into a bathtub. You can carry it the rain. It’s more robust than your normal laptop. It doesn’t even have holes in the side of it. If you look at it: dirt, sand, I mean, there’s no place for it to go into the machine.
I got a chance to play with one of these the other day. The hardware is indeed very nice, with a distinctive design and a very solid feel. Unfortunately the software is horribly unintuitive. Maybe it’s still in development, maybe I didn’t spend enough time with it, or maybe I’m just too used to regular interface paradigms. My guess is that it’s a consequence of trying to reinvent the wheel, in the process disregarding decades of accumulated user experience knowledge.
I’ve posted about the $100 laptop before.
Surowiecki on feature creep:
The fact that buyers want bells and whistles but users want something clear and simple creates a peculiar problem for companies. A product that doesn’t have enough features may fail to catch our eye in the store. [...] But a product with too many features is likely to annoy consumers and generate bad word of mouth, as BMW’s original iDrive system did.
The flow/state blog recently had a good series of posts on improving the new user experience on websites: hurdles at the entrance to a site, easing visitors in with anonymous accounts and slickest trial-to-signup yet. Well worth reading!
Driving a manual on the steep hills of San Francisco, I find Uros Pavasovic’s Fiat Scratch particularly appealing:
The Fiat Scratch comes pre-equipped with scratches and quirky lights that vaguely resemble freckles. The aim is to make drivers less protective of their cars and more able to lighten up and behave with tolerance on the road.
A concept design for a competition, the Fiat Scratch comes with a “scratch-happy” bumper that is explicitly designed to be more beautiful as it gets dented and nicked. You can find Uros’ competition entry at the Michelin site.
Two related concepts:
- Wabi-Sabi, the Japanese philosophy that embraces a beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete. (more)
- Beausage, the beauty that comes with using something.
