Design Consilience

A Folksonomy for Product Design

My paper on the applicability of folksonomy in a product design scenario is available here: Folksonomy and Designing: An Exploration.
In it, I discuss how product design is a social process involving negotiation and reconciliation of conflicting design objectives and why folksonomy is an effective design representation and retrieval tool that evolves with the design as it emerges through the negotiations and discussions of the design team.

The Singles Distribution

From the Creative Class blog, a map of the US and the distribution of singles. I know where I'm moving to...

Solving Problems for the World's Poor

The Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in NYC is having an exhibit on products designed to help serve the world's poor. The exhibit, called "Design For The Other 90%" serves to salute the designers dedicated to improving the lives of the billions of people around the world living on less than $2 a day. Most of the world's smartest designers cater to the needs of the world's richest 10%, and hence the phrase "other 90%".
Among some of products being exhibited is the Q-drum, a toroid shaped jerry can that rolls smoothly enough on the ground for a child to tow with a rope. It addresses the need of millions of women and children, who spend hours each day fetching water and transporting it over several miles while balancing it on their heads, both tiring and a cause of injury.

Another cool invention is the Lifestraw, a personal water purification device that kills bacteria when water is sucked through it. Designed to prevent diseases, it seeks to help in achieving "the Millennium Development Goal of ‘reducing by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water’ by the year 2015".                        
 

                   

Snippet from the NYTimes:

Interestingly, most of the designers who spoke at the opening of the exhibition spurned the idea of charity.

“The No. 1 need that poor people have is a way to make more cash,” said Martin Fisher, an engineer who founded KickStart, an organization that says it has helped 230,000 people escape poverty. It sells human-powered pumps costing $35 to $95.

“Most of the world’s poor are subsistence farmers, so they need a business model that lets them make money in three to six months, which is one growing season,” he said.

Bike ride, anyone?

To follow up on my invitation for a bike ride in my earlier post on New Urbanism, I found a list for bike friendly cities at Fitsugar.com via the Creative Class blog.

                  

The Platinum Award went to Davis, California.

The Gold Award went to:

• Boulder, Colorado
• Corvalis, Oregon
• Madison, Wisconsin
• Palo Alto, California
• Portland, Oregon
• San Francisco, California
• Tucson/Pima Eastern Region, Arizona

Sunday Morning TV...

Charles Osgood and CBS presented a Sunday Morning show on design from Chicago, a city I know quite well and a city whose landmarks I recognize, having visited or driven by. This made for an especially delightful show.
Everything from cities, household appliances, robots, buildings, interiors, origami, Ferraris, airplanes, jet packs, the human face to TOMBSTONES(!) all fell under the design umbrella.
The interesting tidbits:

New Urbanism - The design movement with the goal of designing communities in which the theme is "walk rather than drive". It is about "giving more people more choices about how and where they want to live, while providing the solutions to global warming, climate change, and peak oil". 
            
Started because the suburban dream was considered as failed because instead of greenery one got a lawn and instead of being able to drive every where, one got traffic, the benefits are supposed to include walkability, connectivity, sustainability and a sense of community. The idea is to get diversity in peoples and income groups living in a community where the schools, stores and housing are all within walking distance... a throwback to how we lived in the past.
It can be viewed as a "traditional" living style or possibly third world even - when you can't afford a car you are most likely going to want your business to be conveniently accessible to your customers and as a customer you are most likely to go to the closest grocery store.
However, communities like Kentlands, MD and Seaside, FL are being called "fake" towns by some, since these towns were built by Design - which begs the question, when does good design and effective planning result in some thing fake? Any design that meets a need and proves is utility is undoubtedly REAL to the person using it.
Oh, and I think we'd all be healthier because we'd be walking and biking more... bike ride, any one?
(See Creating The Perfect Town, Wiki: New Urbanism)

- Tomorrow: Designing Up a Cyclone

 

Quote of the day: Leo Burnett

Quote of the day:

Curiosity about life in all of its aspects, I think, is still the secret of great creative people.
- Leo Burnett

Life at your fingertips

Talk about an enormous and exciting undertaking - The Encyclopedia of Life: "An online reference source and database for every one of the 1.8 million species that are named and known on this planet, as well as all those later discovered and described."
The Encyclopedia has been described as one of the most significant developments in the history of life science, it is being designed to be a global resource about life on earth and is predicted to spur new developments in comparative biology, ecology, and related fields.
It will be a collaborative effort among researchers around the world, sharing and discussing developments in the science of life a la Wikipedia. Accessibility will be provided to people around the world through translations and visually strong presentation.
Here is  musical treat with no language and understood by all:

Quote of the day: Winston Churchill

Quote of the day:

"The empires of the future will be the empires of the mind"
- Winston Churchill

Hilarious Bad Ideas

Here are two ideas that people thought had enough merit to spend several thousand dollars patenting.
Some one actually patented a pogo-copter: take a pogo stick and helicopter blades and wheels and voila! You get the pogo-copter (1969)!

                           

What better protection to go along with your pogo-copter than airbag underpants when you fall on your derrière.

                     

"These brainy briefs feature accelerometers that detect a tumble in progress, sending compressed gas into balloon-like pockets throughout the knickers."

In case you want to license these technologies, technical descriptions for the pogo-copter aka "Jumping Device With Driven Airlift Blades " and airbag undershorts aka "Airbag inflation device" are here and here respectively.

Check out the other ridiculous ideas at the links below.

Via Wired and IZ Reloaded

Art vs. Design

Going along with my post on the Innovation-Growth-Technology Link, here is a diagram I have reproduced from Design_at_the_edge that helps us understand the difference between art, design and business. The caption at the top is my own.

                        

                

Does this mean that a disciplined artist can become a designer or does it mean that a designer is a disciplined artist?