Category Archives: product design
Radical Traceability
Small and independent producers can benefit from the Internet’s Long Tail and on-demand manufacturing to find supply and demand for their products. Now, they can also count on radical traceability in the form of Myfab.com, a website that combines user-contributed design with the ability to follow each step in the manufacturing process once a product [...]
Also posted in customization, fabrication, furniture, futurecraft, open objects, retail, traceability Leave a comment
Pocket Wikipedia
UPDATE: This is the wiki reader, a device available for $99 and that runs for one year off a pair of AAA’s. Last night Wikimedia board member Mako Hill showed me his prototype of a new mobile device for searching Wikipedia, using a simple reflective display and touch screen and an SD card to contain [...]
Also posted in conviviality, open objects Leave a comment
Bike Brights
Gus writes “Have you made or do you know of something that both of us could wear that would enhance our visibility as bicyclists?” There are a number of ways for us bicyclists to stand out day or night, ranging from the ultra-geeky to the super-fashionable. Here they are in that order: 1. Make your [...]
Also posted in augmented reality, conviviality, fashion, lighting, materials, soft/glowing Leave a comment
Blinking Chairs
Ryota Kuwakubo’s Nicodama is a project that – to put it simply – puts blinky eyes on inanimate objects as a means of giving them personality. From the placard at the Ars Electronica Center: “Nicodama” combines findings from the field of behavioral biology (ethology) with technology and Japanese philosophy. The “Nicodamas” communicate with each other [...]
Also posted in animation, furniture, interaction, surveillance Leave a comment
3D-Printed Clock
At the Ars Electronica / MIT Media Lab exhibit in Linz, Peter Schmitt presented his work on mechanical systems made by rapid prototyping machines – so-called 3-D printers. He makes the interesting argument that by producing these intricate mechanical devices using a single process, manufacturers could forgo the need for low-cost assembly and instead manufacture [...]
Also posted in 3d, environment, fabrication, materials, supply chain 1 Comment
magnetic chips
Ayah Bdeir launched ‘Little Bits‘ last week at Eyebeam: a kit of magnet-studded circuit components that naturally snap together with the right polarity. The idea is to make prototyping of simple interaction possible for those outside the electrical engineering profession – such as this example of a product designer experimenting with lights on a mock-up [...]
Also posted in customization, fabrication, lighting, materials, tangible Leave a comment
Machine Shoe
Ten Bhomer‘s ‘Rotational Moulded Shoe’ is an anti-craft exploration that seeks to replace the manual process of shoe-making with a machine. A plastic shank is placed inside a mold with rubber resin, and as the mold is continuously rotated the rubber hardens into a shell akin to the way rubber duckies are made. While seemingly [...]
Also posted in fabrication, fashion, materials, soft/glowing 1 Comment
Capacitors from the Congo