wearable computing guru hired by Apple
Apple has hired Richard DeVaul to explore the possibilities of wearable computing. From his dissertation:
The short version is that I can improve your performance on a memory recall task by a factor of about 63% without distracting you, in fact without you being aware that I’m doing anything at all. Even more interesting is that giving you wrong information subliminally doesn’t seem to mess you up.
Additionally:
DeVaul will be working under Jonny Ive [Apple's lead designer] in a secret lab focused on wearable computing technology where only seven people besides Ive and CEO Steve Jobs know what he is doing.
Yukio Ota’s exit sign
Fans of Ota’s running man point to two key advantages: It’s a pictogram, and it’s green.
And plenty more on international vs. American signage.
1948 Norman Timbs Special
ready-to-hand
“The person and the various parts of their brain and the mouse and the monitor are so tightly intertwined that they’re just one thing,” said Anthony Chemero, a cognitive scientist at Franklin & Marshall College. “The tool isn’t separate from you. It’s part of you.”
Art Deco Mullin Automotive Museum
I want this lamp
Matteo Cibic’s Hi-Fido
Matteo Cibic’s Hi-Fido is a ceramic speaker in the shape of a dog.
1937 BMW 328 Mille Miglia
BERU F1 Systems’ Factor 001
What happens when F1 designers apply themselves to road bikes?
Without having to comply to the regulations of any particular cycling series, BERU was able to start from scratch and design the bike the way they best saw fit. The carbon fiber monocoque frame is painstakingly built according to the customer’s specifications and measurements and features carbon-ceramic brakes and an LCD touch-screen that displays biometrics and various other readings.
BERU will only produce a few hundred examples of the Factor 001, which may come down more to the time factor: each example takes six engineers a week to build.
think of the children
A group of pediatricians in the United States is pushing for a redesigned hot dog.
“We know what shape, sizes and consistencies pose the greatest risk for choking in children and whenever possible food manufacturers should design foods to avoid those characteristics, or redesign existing foods when possible, to change those characteristics to reduce the choking risk,” said Dr. Gary Smith, immediate-past chairman of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Committee on Injury, Violence and Poison Prevention and lead author of the organization’s new policy statement on preventing choking.
slotted bookshelf
Dezeen comments:
San Francisco designers Mike and Maaike have created a shelf with slots specifically cut to house seven seminal books about power and society.
Cool stuff, even if Plato’s Republic, is really more about the human soul than it is society (well, sort of).
1938 Porsche Type 64
The Alfa Romeo Pandion Concept
there is a crack in everything
The Less Lamp by Jordi Canudas.
the biology of design
The biological effects of what you drive:
Theory
Scientists have spent over a hundred years formulating theories to explain the existence of Aston Martins. In 1899, the economist Thorstein Veblen published his seminal work The Theory of the Leisure Class, in which he postulated that we buy expensive things not so much for their inherent qualities, but for the attention we receive as we experience said object. He predicted the rise of modern image-driven marketing, which accords value to things exactly because they are expensive and seemingly exclusive — the reason why people pay a premium for a Lexus RX over its mechanical twin the Toyota Highlander. In Veblen’s worldview, Aston Martins exist because of how they make other people feel, ejector seats or no.
Practice
Saad and Vongas had 39 male college students drive two different cars for an hour each, first in crowded city (lek) and then in open highway (non-lek) environments. The cars? One was a clapped-out 1990 Camry wagon with almost 200,000 miles on the clock. The other was a 2006 Porsche 911 Carrera 4S Cabriolet. During their drives in each car, drivers had saliva samples taken to evaluate changes in testosterone levels while in the lek (city driving with lots of witnesses) and out of the lek (on the highway, with nobody there to witness their driving). To eliminate testosterone level variations due to individuals slaking their need for speed, each student promised not to burst posted speed limits.
I’ve posted on this before, but it’s always interesting.
Sky
Sky from Philip Bloom on Vimeo.
Read more about the project HERE.
Ora Ito, Ayrton Bed
It’s tough to get to this bed, because of the crapflashular user interface, and once you do there’s virtually no information about it — thank you unspoken rules for beautiful furniture design web sites — and it probably costs more than your mom, but I love it.
Florence Knoll Credenza
I’ve been looking for a good Florence Knoll interview, but have yet to find anything other than a few stuffy YouTube videos from Knoll Design. In the interim, I’ll leave you with this credenza from an artnet auction.
Dear clusterflock
What will be your epitaph?
Edith Heath on Martha Stewart, 1989 — the materials should tell the story
I love Heath’s beautiful work. I’ll be linking to Florence Knoll and Eva Zeisel over the next few days.
Alexander Christoff, the F1 Chair
The Budget
What I thought was a rather well-presented interactive info-graphic explaining Obama’s proposed budget.
(NYT)
For Deron
…Aero-Ace, a collaborative design project, just completed with Bentley — the objective being to explore a new aerodynamic design direction for the luxury marque. Second year RCA students were asked to identify a new vehicle direction for Bentley that would appeal to the ecologically conscious consumer.
Does it do it for you?
PAPPELTALKS
Hubero Kororo designed this interactive CD cover for the band Uceroz. When you pull a tab on the side to open the CD, an ink cartridge leaks and fills the front cover with purple ink. (via)
It’s lonely in the modern world.
Even in your company, I feel so alone. (Dwell, September 2009.)
Unhappy Hipsters. (Thanks, Kate.)