Design:
- It's always interesting to see global problems manifesting themselves in consumer product space- 2 kickstarter campaigns running right now that have water conservation as a primary feature: The high-tech Nebia Shower and the low-tech but clever Aguawell Light.
- Patient led-design. People are cobbling together medical devices with their own custom hardware/software pieces to push the future of personal healthcare faster than FDA will allow.
Building Things:
- A fascinating process for making metal parts that has more in common with electroplating than 3D printing methods like sintering (they refer to it as nanolamination). Modumetal, the company developing the technology, just raised a $33.5 million dollar round of investment.
- Bolt VC gives an in depth product development and sales case study that gives an inside perspective of what a hardware startup needs to pull off to be profitable.
- China looks like they're continuing to lead the pack when it comes to drone development- Yuneec just picked up $60 million from Intel to keep building better drones.
Perspectives:
- One designer is fighting racist stereotypes by creating a varied database of stock photos of black people to help spread a more accurate reflection of society.
- An article about Afrofuturism on how technology can be leveraged to create more self-directed futures that subvert power imbalances and corporate/colonial interests.
Technology odds and ends:
- Abandoned (digital) college campuses are a good reminder of how often institutions make mistakes about how technology fits into their offerings, and then forget about making those moves at all.
- Drunk user testing. Apparently it's a thing.
More next week.