You know those dudes who walk around with hands-free Bluetooth headsets jammed into their ears all day? Maybe their twittishness isn't a character flaw, but an unintentional emergent effect of poor product design: let's face it, those ...READ»
Tony Fadell invented the iPod. Okay, he didn't do it singlehandedly--but the former Apple executive conceived it, got Apple on board, and then went on to shepherd the development of 18 (!) generations of the company's signature ...READ»
Do you ever wonder if there's a heaven that obsolete package designs go to when their parent corporations do a brand refresh? Okay, fine, only a design blogger would wonder that--but as it turns out, there actually is such a place. ...READ»
The well-deserved attention paid to the design of Apple products has tended to obscure the creative energy Steve Jobs invested in designing other elements of Apple. So what can we learn from Steve Jobs, Teacher? He was a great designer, all right. But his talent only began with the design of the product. READ»
I live and work in Los Angeles, the land of celebrities and special effects, where I’ve witnessed the battle for big box-office draws and learned something from it. As product innovators, we also strive to create standout products ...READ»
I've been loving Ludwig Zeller's science-fiction-as-product-design experiments lately, and his latest brainchild, called "Introspectre," is quite the capper. Like his other works, Introspectre imagines a future "digital native" with ...READ»
3-D printing was supposed to liberate the masses to become product designers -- design to object, one step, no fuss and no muss. Unfortunately, as Technology Review bluntly puts it, "the reality is that if you want to make anything ...READ»
Alessi, Italy's venerated purveyor of high-end home wares, tapped the best and brightest from ECAL/University of Art and Design Lausanne recently to produce a set of stunningly simple concept office accessories.
The results are ...READ»
PoMo architect-turned-household design whiz Michael Graves has unveiled a new suite of housekeeping tools for Target. It includes a squeegee, a broom, a dustpan, and a couple of mops, each bearing Graves’s signature look. And lucky ...READ»
It's challenging enough to design a single effective interface for a product or application. Now, driven by technological advances and rising consumer expectations, a growing number of products can present multiple methods for ...READ»
I'm headed to Las Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show and here's what I want to know: Which exhibitors in the sea of booths, announcements, demos, and sales pitches are not quite satisfied with what they are showing? READ»
Even in 2010, I think most companies err too much on the side of complexity. They try to strike the right balance between making the base product "useful enough" for the "average" user. I think the novice needs to be able to walk right in the door and be able to start playing around with your product--without a manual.READ»
We always thought there were only two types of intimate relationships: monogamy and bopping everyone except your husband (or wife). But no!
Turns out there are dozens and dozens of them: serial monogamy, polifidelity, soft ...READ»
Doomsday approaches!
[Click image for larger view]
The infographic by Mechanicsville, Maryland, designer Zachary Vabolis maps out Near-Earth Objects -- NASA-speak for asteroids and other scary crap that could send us the ...READ»
The British design agency Cxpartners has a nice little infographic showing the phylogeny of video game controllers since those prehistoric days of Odyssey and Atari.
The diagram maps key design transformations, from wireless ...READ»
Today, the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum announced the winners of the 2010 National Design Awards. Just over a decade old, the awards are the closed thing the country has to a Nobel Prize in design; the nominees were drawn ...READ»
From the Dutch design firm Studio Wieki Somers come household objects made out of human
ashes. Yes, human ashes. As in John Steegman (b. 1939, d. 1985), who is now a
vacuum cleaner:Pietertje Vos (b. 1942, d. 2007), now a scale:And ...READ»
