Category: Design
OLPC’s Real Legacy
This week's announcement that OLPC's conceptual XO-3 tablet computer design would launch late this year, brings the OLPC initiative full circle. It's original vision inadvertently ignited the netbook market for lo-fi, connected computers which in turn begat Chrome OS and iPad, culminating in OLPC's closing the loop with its own tablet. Ironically, the original XO-1 was at times more…
XOXO
I’ve long been in two-minds about the OLPC project. As a source of technical innovation, the XO-1 laptop has been a sensation; from mesh networking, clever power management to the dual-mode screen and the Sugar interface, Yves Behar‘s iconic green design has distilled some of the best-in-class electronics into a unique product. Indeed, the price…
Tarek Atrissi Design
I was recently asked to help a client develop an Arabic language edition of their web product. They have strong brand with a great contemporary aesthetic and some Web 2.0 flava, but there is a dearth of contemporary Arabic typefaces that would enable their brand to retain its design DNA once translated. Aside from Saad…
Children Of Men
Alfonso Cuarón’s Children Of Men was one of the best films I’ve seen this year…great acting, a poignant and hopeful story, a haunting score and a pair of breathtaking set pieces, shot in a single take. Unlike movies such as Minority Report and Blade Runner, the world inhabited by Cuarón’s characters is realised with much…
How to host a product/feature design party
Ian forwarded me an intriguing post on rapid product design from Kathy Sierra’s Creating Passionate Users – How to host a product/feature design party. I love the contrast between a dry focus-group and a friendlier social session. The method looks just about complex as a regular meeting, but seemingly more inclusive, and more importantly, fun.…
The Hills Are Alive with the Sound of Interaction Design
I take it back…I was a little unmoved by Matt Webb’s playsh at ETech 2006 and conceded I might not have fully grasped the implications of his work, but after reading Schulze & Webb’s recent The Hills Are Alive with the Sound of Interaction Design, I’m really taken with Matt’s approach to design 🙂 Some…
Iconik
In Summer 2005, Liz designed a set of Aqua-esque icons for a proposed Orange Firefox browser that Mark and I were working on. The project was never finished and I’d almost forgotten about Liz’s mini-project until today…Liz’s icons are too good to remain hidden, sO I figured I’d blog ’em for posterity 🙂 If things…
Love Being
TDR go from irony to optimistic semi-psychedelia with their Love Being video for Citizen Bird’s Joy…you can download it from Coke’s The m5 design project. The Coke collaboration is intra-ironic, given TDR’s earlier Work Buy Consume Die pastiche of the Pepsi logo. The m5 project also includes contributions from LOBO, MK12, Caviar and Tennant McKay/REX. TDR’s…
Meta Kitchen
We’re currently in the midst of constructing a two-storey extension and I thought I’d get some kitchen ideas from budget DIY icons, MFI. Using MFI’s online planning tool, I only needed to enter some basic room dimensions, indicate positions of doors and windows and select some appliances…the software then filled in the remaining spaces with…
Money Walks
The newly redesigned Zopa site, includes a cute visualisation of the service’s borrowers and lenders. Designed by Poke, the visualisation emphasises the person-to-person nature of Zopa’s communal banking – humanising loans for its customers. I remember the ultra-cute Israeli IM service, Odigo, included a similar feature showing a ‘radar’ of all Odigo user’s at a…