the future of air travel

Oh yes, the glorious days of air travel are over : Forget the smiling and friendly ladies behind the check-in counters. Instead one is being yelled at for not having the brainy means to figure out their computer glitches at the electronic check-in machines (which almost never work..). Then me and my bag are being scanned (whichever comes first) only to be ousted in front of other weary travelers because i left that damn disposable lighter in some side pocket of mu bag. My bad ! Ahmm.. imagening that I am sitting on thousands of gallons of fuel any spark could do whatever my lighter is suspicious of (or I might stab that annoying flight attendant with it). After body and body temperature scan, my passport is scanned and then my fingerprint scanned and then of course also my eyes and perhaps brain volume. By the time I reach the duty free shops the only thing that hasn't been scanned (yet) is my credit card. They know where I live, where I want to go, when I will be back and ... how I look naked.
Given all this scanning with ever evolving technology, why are flights still delayed, service crappy and people crammed into this old-fashioned flying sausages ? Do they just want to know who we are and check on us using air travel as an excuse ? No longer that far fetched I think, but on the other hand I am looking forward to the day when a body scan can actually teletransport me to the destination where I want to be. Saves fuel too. AJ

the invisible consumer

I thought this was an interesting picture of a Chinese performance artist applying his artwork on his outfit to blend into the environment. To me it is also a metaphor how we, as consumers, are being consumed and not vice versa. Wish I could find the link. AJ

the dark side...

There was a lot of speculation about the 'dark' side of the moon which is not visible from earth until this shots were taken recently. Looks to me like our moon has taken a lot of hits to keep our blue marble protected. AJ

synaptic systems

is the way we live and organize ourselfs in fact biomimicry ? The picture on top shows a close-up of our synaptic nerv system, while the one below was taken from space showing a city at night. It's not just that this pictures look similar at first glance, but it does raise the idea that humans may compare to neurons being 'transmitted' by electrical or chemical processes using an interconnected mesh-type system spanning the globe. Are we just a part of a much larger organism called 'Earth' ? Perhaps about time we think that way. AJ

reality commerce

Life imitates art..or how did that go again ? F1 honcho B. Ecclestone was recently mugged off his 200 grand watch while the thieves left a gentle 'thank you' note in his face. He then thought it was a brilliant idea to use his battered mugshot for promotion with the tagline 'see what people do for a Hublot' to promote an equally expensive watch. Initially I thought it was quite a quirky idea, but then.....wouldn't it remind me that the chances to be mugged and beaten are higher the more expensive my watch is and wouldn't my face in an ad for Swatch look much healthier ? To me this ad looks like 'buy a Hublot to guarantee stitches in your face and look like a corpse for a couple of weeks' -especially when you are a very rich old man.

Monkey business 2

besides the graphic design references in your previous post i also found that there's always been a fascination with various forms of humanoid-ness, let it be the the representatives of our evolution or any monkey-types living in the forests - being regarded as our closest relatives. I think it is not the similarities that fascinate us, but our differences in appearance and behavior, often serving as inspiration for earlier Sci-Fi
movies with 'Planet of the Apes' the closest example, in which apes represent the highest form of evolution.
we still see a slight distortion or variation of the expected human reference as being alien enough, while perhaps we have no idea in what form or shape a real alien life form may appear. I have a gut sense that that permanent itch at my neck is caused by some alien-mutant-bedbug. AJ

Monkey business

                                     

Am I missing something here? Forget orange as cool - it is so OVER. Overdone in dot com boom town and a dead giveaway you are Gen X ready to roll in your design coffin...but what about the fascination with monkeys with headphones? And more ridiculous is that as it is monkeys are supposed to be copy-artists so when humans copy logos, we out do monkeys, as we not just copy but copy copies and regurgitate them to create mutants of the original copy. Looking at the logo of 'Ambassadors of Design' that I recently came across in HK I was left wondering...this is supposed to be an alternative movement, unofficial-cool-renegade-avante garde...wow...but what does the logo communicate? Monkey Ambassadors? Skull on fire? Headphones made out of cheap plastic that will flame your brain? skull heads with Anime hair-do's?

The Phone that is just a phone - and is being used the way it should...

A small shop in Tanzania that offers cell-phone service.

Excerpt from Newsweek. "The phones now allow Masai tribesmen in Kenya to bank the proceeds from selling cattle; Iranian protesters to organize in secret; North Koreans to communicate with the outside world; Afghan villagers to alert Coalition soldiers to Taliban forces; insurgents to blow up roadside bombs in Iraq; and charities to see, in real time, when HIV drugs run out in the middle of Malawi."
A large part of the globe is still using the phone for what it was meant for  - instant action/ communication. As this majority of users moves beyond addressing their basic needs that typically physical infrastructure can and does, the phone will re-evolve from being a cutesy entertainment piece for the few to a device that executes simple but much needed yet viable sustainable services for many. I think we might find that for us few, the basic device will come back - and as new users we will have to re-learn it's simplicity and purpose. PJ

the phone that is.... just a phone

hailed as the world's simplest phone this 'John's Phone' by Dutch advertsing agency John Doe it does not have a camera, games, all kinds of sensors and web browsing capability. It's just there to make calls and the 'address book' is literally an integrated piece of paper. I thought this could be something for me to compliment my 'anti iPhone' policy and phobia of cumbersome menu trees. AJ

how it all started

It's been a bit over 30 years and this thing above was the first computer 'shipped' by Apple in 1976. It actually came without monitor, keyboard and mouse and was priced close to 700 bucks, while the user had to build their own casing. Now Apple is valued at 282 billion in stock and is by far the most valuable tech company. Is this just about being at the right place at the right time with the right idea ? Or is it about having the right vision ? Perhaps both , but we should also consider the fact that in our finance-based economy a guy with a vision and will not come very far on his own. First family and friends lend a few hundred bucks until the first seed capital comes in from a venture capital fund. That leads to more exposure, improvements in product offerings and support in human resources. Then come the cornerstone investors, rich guys with too much cash to their disposal and the ability to smell the bacon before it is cooked. This then leads to an IPO eventually and the average Joe can then participate in the company's future by investing his hard earned cash
in shares. Needless to say that the venture capitalists and cornerstones have been holding on to their shares which they bought for pennies and make a killing as soon as a company becomes public.
Sometimes I start to wonder who the real innovators are - those with vision and drive to create something that everyone wants, or those who invent complex financial tools nobody understands to milk the rest of us.
There are two worlds out there, but what's new ? AJ

The Darwinian Business of Designing Machines

The author says in this article that "every new project is a wonderful new riddle that presents many dilemmas:
- Manufacturing. Sourcing elements (bought off-the-shelf, modified, or developed from the ground up), assembly-line efficiency, human or machine labor, testing, quality assurance, and yield all play into the process.
- Interoperability. A fancy word for compatibility between various pieces, including communication, hardware and software synergy, and simple physical fit.- Usability. The rational part of user-experience—cognitive psychology, ergonomics, demographics, and so on.- Operational efficiency. Can the product be packed, shipped, and delivered effectively? Can it be maintained and serviced? Is it sustainable? Can it be recycled or disassembled easily?
- Business. Among the challenges: building a brand, winning customer loyalty, disrupting competitors, and arriving at the right time to market with the right price tag and the right strategic outlook on the world.
- Standards. Be it regulatory requirements, internal policies, or industry standards, every object made today has to stand up to and be qualified against a long list of rules.
- Cultural grounding. Is it new? Is it exciting? Is it beautiful? How do we make it lovable? Is it a good citizen? "


Honestly AJ, in your many years of experience in the past as an electronics/ domestic appliance designer how often have you:
1. Considered usability as a designer? Been asked to consider usability, and if you did how did you consider it?
2. Who gave you the usability data? 
3. Did you ever observe users? Did you consider who might use your product?
4. Operational efficiency beyond the now - did you have the mandate to think sustainability? Post-production, in temrs of out-of-box experience?
5. Cultural grounding? How often did you have a cultural immersion to know whether your product would be 'grounded'? How often was its success a fluke? How often do products also just get stacked on shelves and bought simply because of an unbeatable price point - making marketing feel their company has 'sustainable market share'? PJ

web smear

wouldn't consider this art, but found it quite interesting (i used it for the latest CD cover..). when internet connectivity is quick it takes a while to upload image-rich websites. When scrolling down at the same time some images a smeared into colorful barcodes which can be captured by screen prints. Could this be a new expression of 'virtual art' ? AJ

living in a bubble

Living and sleeping under the stars - an interesting idea by French Designer Pierre Stephane Dumas. People can reside in inflated transparent spheres to be as close to natural environments as possible. I liked his explanation that the surrounding will create the effect of a 'living wall paper' while natural light will provide the moods from sunrise to sunset. Sleeping under the stars in a new dimension... AJ

Networks are encouraging TV viewers to go online simultaneously...Media insecurity?

For Bravo, One Screen Isn't Enough, Networks are encouraging TV viewers to go online simultaneously...

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_46/b4203043899285.htm

As if the dual screener phenomenon during sports tournaments wasn't big enough, now its becoming even bigger. The Media wants to control us everywhere, even when we're vegetating while watching some dumb show, it's not enough that we're watching - the media networks feel that any moment that we're not engaged with that specific channel we're engaged with a competitive one...what's next? HBO accusing me of having an extra-channel affair with  NBC? PJ

We're all getting extinct...

Both are endangered species...the nomadic tribesman of the San people in kalahari desert
as well as the cheetah that had been hand-reared after their mother was shot by poachers. AJ

More is more and more...

There was a time when instruction labels in clothes were in one language with one set of graphics. I bought a pair of jeans from H&M recently and noticed 5 flaps of double sided printed instruction labels in 21 languages. Let's see, 4 years ago they had 17 languages...5 years later there will be so many labels that it will feel like an extra layer of clothing inside. Honestly, if H&M came to India, it would mean adding at least 10 more languages to their label - since all the official languages have different scripts and are spoken and read by the masses who have the money to buy...now on the other side of the coin, what does it say about globalization and the tenacity of MNCs to reach as many consumers as possible? PJ

... while other designers thought of it all

I do like the design spirit of the 50ies and 60ies - especially in the US. Nothing was bold enough to satisfy the consumer interest in newer and better things. There were the huge cars with fins like space ships and everything was streamlined , aero dynamic and futuristic. It was the time of new expressions of  what can to be considered modern. I like this ad of the lawnmower and the tagline. So husband tends the lawn in air-conditioned luxury while the rest of the family has to wait it out sweating in the sun. Where's the fridge in there ?

10 Types of Innovation

From Doblin Consulting group, a strong methodology to map how innovative your concept/ idea/ solution is a well as a useful framework to assess innovation in general. For instance how and where would you map Apple in this framework? (Pictures from blogs by other people that illustrates the above).

http://www.doblin.com/AboutInno/innotypes.html

some designers just don't get it

ok, this is a design concept, but still... this steam iron concept by nico klaeber was designed for the male user, which is why it looks stealth, is all edgy and black. Are male hands any different than female hands ? Have all male turned into cyborgs with robotic hands ? I like concepts for challenging paradigms, but sometimes some ideas are just out of whack.

Supermind made in China

The Chinese supercomputer, called the Tianhe-1A, crunches numbers at warp speed – at a mind-boggling two thousand trillion calculations a second.
The £50 million machine took 200 engineers two years to build, and needs to be housed in 103 refridgerated cabinets.It has a speed of 2.507 petaflops – 1.4 times as powerful as the current supercomputer, the Cray XT5 Jaguar at the U.S. Department of Energy, which has held the crown for the past year. Professor Jack Dongarra, who compiles the rankings of the world’s fastest 500 supercomputers, said the Chinese computer ‘blows away the existing No 1 machine’.
Mr Dongarra’s list is not due to be completed until next week, but he predicts that no other machine will come close to matching the Tianhe.‘It’s definitely a game changer,’ said Mark Seager, chief technology officer for computing at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the U.S.
The Tianhe-1A, whose name means Milky Way in mandarin, has 14,000 times the processing power of a normal machine.
It also contains 7,000 graphics processors – the type used in video games – to further boost its power.
But despite its incredible speed the Tianhe-1A is also greener than the current top supercomputer – with the difference in energy consumption enough to provide electricity to more than 5,000 homes for a year.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1324557/China-builds-worlds-fastest-supercomputer.html#ixzz13hsgoz00

macro art

two examples of macro photography and hardly anyone knows what this could be. This two pictures could easily trade as pieces of modern art, but are in fact a close-up of chrystallized soya souce (top) and a film of soap (bottom). Unfortunately I can't find the link anymore.

the miniaturization of living

Looking at the typical skyhigh living towers in the city scape of Hong Kong the reference to a bee hive comes to mind. Given the fact that living space is so limited in this city while property prices are going through the roof one wonders what next our developers come with : Cram more people in even lesser space ? May be the future of living in a metropolis would mean that we share space when needed in public areas, rent or lease anything we have to use, but don't need to keep and sleep in rented boxes like the concept design above - anywhere in the city. Perhaps that would also solve the problem of accumulating too much stuff during a lifetime.

how will we evolve ?

An interesting subject : How will we humans evolve in the next 100 to 1000 years and how will we look like ? Numerous scientists have created very different scenarios and some are even predicting we may still be around in 4 million years (i think not) and walk around looking like cyborgs or coneheads. The more realistic prediction appears to be the one that we will vanish due to a severe and rapidly changing strain of a lethal virus with 100 years from now. Another quite interesting concept by a Dr. Curry at the London School of Economics was that humans evolve to a height of almost 7 feet, can reach an age of 120 and have a brown skin color (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1531602/This-is-the-shape-of-things-to-come-for-mankind.html) . He also assumes that around year 100 000 we have evolved into two species - the ones that are superior and an inferior human species that is shorter, grubby and less intelligent. There are some interesting assumptions in his Bravo study, but i would like to challenge him in the time frame required for the appearance of a human sub species or even a split. AJ

why some of us could have done better...

Humans are excellent designers, engineers, artists and creators. But sometimes it reaches it's limits and we continue to create until we face the complete picture of a problem. That's probably why teamwork, but also leadership skills are so important.

the creation of irrelevance 3

aehmmm... i leave it to everyone's imagination what this device is for, but it's called 'ten tongues', usually used by females after having been approached by a helpless and useless 'pants enhancer dude'.

the creation of irrelevance 2

Ok...that's a bit below the beltline, but I laughed out loud when i came across this : A 'trouser expander' for the insecure male. I am sure this is just a gimmick item, but any woman would most certainly laugh and inflate this thing until it bursts inside the poor chaps pants.

the creation of irrelevance 1

I thought at first this was some kind of joke, but this is for real. A little plastic device pushed over ones thumb to help keep pages of a book apart. And it's called 'thumbthing'. Reminds me of the 'hair flippomat' - an invention i seriously considered to bring to market.
http://www.thumbthing.com/index_e.htm

meet Ranitomeya Benedicta

Over 1200 new species have been discovered in the Amazon lately and this little fellah is one of them. To me this is one of the coolest and most hip frogs on the planet (found in Peru). While we humans create artificial 'skins' to differentiate from one another and reflect our status within society this one just wants to be left in peace by pretending he's a little bag of poison. It almost looks like a red frog wearing a neoprene suit. Colors of nature. AJ

Insane

This picture has just been recorded as a world record for the most tagged online photo. It shows the crowd of visitors at the Glastenbury festival this year in a hi-res panorama shot and Facebook users can find themselfs or their friends and create a tag online. So far it reached almost 9000  tags. AJ
http://glastonbury.orange.co.uk/glastotag/

Retired : Sony Walkman

Sony has just recently announced that they will officially stop the production of 'portable cassette tape players' or the 'walkman' as we all know it. While we all listen to our music collection of a lifetime using a tiny thing we can clip to our shirt collars in the present day it should not be forgotten how 'music on the go' started. I remember when i got my first walkman in the mid 70ies that looked similar to the one above and how hyped i was listening to my music while my mum was nagging about my dirty clothes not being in the hamper. I remember the clunky buttons and forward/ reverse that sounded like i was about to shredder my tape (which happened on a few occasions). I even 'customized' my walkman at some point, hand-painting it bright red. Unfortunately some of the paint got on the magnetic head and playback sounded like the whining of a stray cat. That was the end of my first walkman and the start of newer and better devices to be used.
Amazing piece of tech it was back then. AJ

plants in motion

hah... an interesting concept of NY based designer Marco Castro - plants on the roof of buses as one attempt to reclaim forgotten spaces as he calls it. He estimated if all buses of the NY fleet (about 4500) were covered with plants it could cover a total area of 35 acres of rolling green. I thought that was a really cool idea. AJ
http://busroots.org/

Space tourism means decimated icebergs

 Given that they haven't started yet, imagine what'll happen to this lace in the Arctic above? (Pic taken by PJ last Dec as we flew over the arctic, the Bering Sea down to Asia...oh and I wasn't flying with Branson - I was traveling economy class in a regular plane ;-)