Designing a safe pint glass

Two revolutionary prototype pint glasses have been designed to reduce the injuries caused by glassing attacks.

The Design Out Crime project has developed two revolutionary prototype pint glasses that have been designed to reduce the injuries caused by glassing attacks. The designs represent the first major advance in pub glassware since the 1960s and feature new high-tech ways of using glass, so they feel the same as conventional glasses, but crucially do not create loose, dangerous shards if broken.

See the Design Council’s website for more details on this and other crime-related design projects.

Solar Cells Can Now Be Printed on Anything, Even Paper and Fabric

 

Bike lights powered by your clothes? Phones charging in your pockets?

Researchers at MIT have figured out how to print photovoltaic cells on every-day materials like paper or fabric — and the process is practically the same is printing this article out on your desk printer.MIT reports that a team of researchers has published a new paper in the journal Advanced Materials detailing how solar cells can be printed as easily and as cheaply as “printing a photo on your inkjet” thanks to new special inks.

via Solar Cells Can Now Be Printed on Anything, Even Paper and Fabric : TreeHugger.

Artificial Sight On View In London

 

A fascinating blend of science, technology and design

Mobile phones and computer games consoles now carry sophisticated position detectors, video cameras, face recognition and tracking software, you name it.

And researchers have been looking for new ways to exploit this in other fields like medicine.

[...]

Researchers at Oxford University are developing the “bionic glasses” to help partially-sighted people who have just a small area of vision, or whose vision is blurred or cloudy, or who can’t process detailed images, such as they can see that a hand is front of them but they can’t make out the fingers. A good example would be someone with age-related macular degeneration or diabetic retinopathy.

Dr Stephen Hicks of Oxford University’s Department of Clinical Neurology said in a media statement:

“We want to be able to enhance vision in those who’ve lost it or who have little left or almost none.”

“The glasses should allow people to be more independent – finding their own directions and signposts, and spotting warning signals,” he explained.

The glasses have video cameras at the corners and arrays of tiny lights embedded in the see-through lenses. The camera collects images and feeds them to a smartphone-type computer in the wearer’s pocket which has software that can locate objects or people, and track their position. A feedback mechanism drives the colours and intensities of the lights in the lenses in real time, so the wearer can “see” what is happening in their surroundings well enough to navigate around a room, and pick out relevant objects.

via Artificial Sight On View In London.

(image: Dr Stephen Hicks)

Championing interaction design

 

 

Design Week champions interaction design:

We are on a mission at Design Week. Our aim? -  to get interaction design better represented within the creative community and beyond.

And we are in good company. A handful of top talents in interaction are keen to debate how best we can get it recognised as a design discipline in its own right, with as much clout to create wealth for client, consultancy and country as any other area of design. A significant difference is that, unlike most other disciplines, interaction design can blend commerce with culture through, say, museum and public-space installations, apps and computer games.

Yet it’s potential is too often misunderstood by clients, perhaps because so often interaction designers are buried within ad agencies.

via Editor’s blog | Blog | Design Week.

Reducing violence and aggression in A&E by design

The Design Council blog has an interesting article on a project to redesign A&E departments to help reduce violence towards staff and other patients.

 

 

According to the National Audit Office, violence and aggression towards frontline hospital staff is estimated to cost the NHS at least £69 million a year in staff absence, loss of productivity and additional security.We know designers have what it takes to reduce the impact of violence and aggression in A&E. We are currently judging submissions from multi-disciplinary ‘design and make’ teams to determine which teams will be awarded funds to help improve the experience of A&E departments and make them safer for staff, patients and visitors.

Read more about the project at Reducing violence and aggression in A&E by design | Our Work | Design Council.

Wearabraille: wireless braille keyboard for iOS devices

This is a fantastic concept – a wireless braille keyboard for iOS and other mobile devices. Watch the demonstration – if you’ve never come across the iPhone’s built in “voice over” technology for the vision impaired it’s well worth checking out.

Sketchnotes 101: Visual Thinking

 

 

A great article – the first of a series – on making “Sketchnotes”, over at Core77. Take a look.

The recent rise of the “visual thinking” movement in business borrows from the natural ways designers work—using sketches to explore and express ideas, manipulating complex systems of thoughts on sticky notes, and using rough visuals to make sense of the world. Humans are, of course, wired to be visual thinkers from birth, so it’s only natural that people are attracted to these tools, and the power they have to help solve problems and explore opportunities.

In the long list of tools one could use for visual thinking, sketchnotes are one of the most exciting. Simply put, sketchnotes are visual notes that are drawn in real time. Through the use of images, text, and diagrams, these notes take advantage of the “visual thinker” mind’s penchant for make sense of—and understanding—information with pictures. Often these notes come out of lectures or conferences, and have gained a lot of attention and interest in the past few years when people post scans of their sketchbooks from events like SXSW or various design conferences for the whole internet to see.

via Sketchnotes 101: Visual Thinking – Core77.

 

 

Push the Boundaries 2nd May, Dundee

Master of Design students Bruno Brites and Maria Maclennan are pushing the boundaries. They are giving a public lecture on their transition from Jewellery and Graphic Designers to co-designers of Forensic Jewellery Identification systems and Communication systems for people without sight. Monday 2nd May, 2.00-3.30pm, Lecture Theatre 5018, Matthew Building, DJCAD, University of Dundee. All welcome.

via Push the Boundaries | master of design.

The first digital camera

Interview and portrait of the inventor of the first digital camera, Steven Sasson by David Friedman. Note the camera in the shot above.

When he initially mentioned that the first digital camera held 30 pictures, I assumed that was due to the storage capacity of the digital tape. It was really interesting to hear that he picked 30 as an artificial limitation, and his explanation why.

True story: in the 1990s I saw a digital camera (from Apple – the first commercial digital camera) at a digital reprographics studio in Leeds. We were their clients, on a visit at the start of our relationship. They’d borrowed the camera and were trying to figure out what they could use it for. We stood around for ages trying to think of something.

The only idea anyone could come up with was “security passes” for visitors to a factory. You could take 640 x 480 pixel images, but could only fit eight at a time. If that seems small (which it is by today’s standards) bear in mind that a typical computer monitor in those days only did 640 x 480 pixels. So it was full screen! But still not good enough for print, which requires a much higher resolution. I think these images would be about 3cm across in print.

You can read a review of the camera with some examples of its images (which though small are surprisingly good – I seem to remember them being quite dithered when I saw the thing for real)

My boss said digital cameras would never be useful. I have to say, I hoped he’d be proved wrong, but thought he might not be.

Watch the interview over at Inventor Portrait: Steven Sasson – David Friedman Photography: Blog.

How science fiction influenced design

A great talk on the cross influences between science fiction and design – the example from The X Men is particularly interesting. Watch in full screen for the best experience.