Design Insights 11.23

Design: 

• Jibo Robotics has acqui-hired CloudKid, a digital studio best known for producing animation, entertainment and interactive content for kids. It's a smart move to bring in the kind of rare skills required for robotics to move out of the dull, disembodied or dumb patterns users are accustomed to seeing.
• Computational design that brings new functional efficiency (if not manufacturing efficiency) to one of humanity's oldest products: the bow.

Roadmapping the Future: 

• A robotic cat that's supposed to help the elderly be less lonely. One more product in a seemingly never ending stream of devices to help Americans keep their elders at a distance while alleviating guilt. Elders need to be provided opportunities and tools to remain empowered, not placated. 
• Coal miners are turning to coding in the face of changing economics. 

Designing Space: 

• Airbnb figures out how to design its own spaces by borrowing heavily (or stealing, depending on your point of view) from its users. 

Building Things: 

• The tiny drone company producing Zano admits it can't make it happen after raising $ 3.6 million on crowdfunding, making it one of the best-funded crowdfunding campaigns to totally throw in the towel. It says it shipped 600 units that didn't perform as promised, and won't be able to fulfill the rest. 
• Some clever manufacturability and design details mixed with a little video game nostalgia via teardowns of Nintendo controllers. 
• Most of the plastics that claim biodegradability will do nothing to alleviate the amount of plastic lingering in the world's oceans. Another instance where clear, well-defined standards would help to make sure materials make good on their marketing copy. 

Archiving:  

• StoryCorps, the program developed to record oral histories before they are lost forever now has an app and is asking everyone to do a little social archiving this holiday season. 120,000 people have signed up.

  
More next week.

Design Insights 11.16

Design: 

• A closer look at IBM's efforts to build design teams within their organization - after hiring hundreds and hundred of designers. 

• The big name brand & design firm Pentagram is behind Snoop Dogg's weed product packaging. As legalized marijuana becomes more common in the U.S., you can almost hear the ad agencies salivating at the business opportunity it presents to differentiate a highly desirable but somewhat commoditized product - the sweet spot for advertising and branding companies. 

Body/Image: 

• Getting beyond mere activity tracking: MC10 is showing off their super-thin technology for measuring blood flow. Oh- and Xiaomi (one of the companies that invested in Misfit) says their latest variant on the wrist-worn wearable can measure blood flow as well, via optical sensors. 
• There's a pretty good chance that virtual reality in its current state will make you sick. 

Feeding the Future: 

• A product for Insect farming in the kitchen is racking up dollars on kickstarter, we're curious to see if early customers end up being more squeamish about the process than they imagine themselves to be. It seems well designed in functionality and form, so maybe we really will be seeing mealworms showing up at dinner parties soon. 
• The New York Times profiles a prominent food/health/nutrient/pseudo-science company executive who claims to have spent $ 300,000 over the years experimenting on himself with food and drugs to boost health and cognition. Time will tell how much is total bunk, how much is sales strategy, and what (if any) of it is truly good science. It's all part of the broader trend of the quantified self, turning attention to diet and nutrition and creating the nerdiest group of foodies ever. 

Big Business: 

• Watchmaker Fossil acquires Misfit, one of the big names in wearable technology. Misfit had raised $ 63 million over the years and was picked up for $ 260 million- not a bad deal, but maybe not as vigorous a signal as outsiders would guess from Misfit's high profile partnerships and impressive marketing campaigns. 

Building Things: 

• Need to drill holes or drive screws totally underwater? Turns out there's a tool for that. 
• LEGO is so popular right now that they are having a hard time keeping up with demand. Considering LEGO has been around since the 1930s with more-or-less the same basic product, they have an amazing track record of keeping interest and growth going year after year. 

Bias and Brains: 

• Toy companies and big box retailers are making the odd (and disappointing) choice to edit out female characters from sci-fi, fantasy and comic books in toy sets they sell, defaulting to an all male cast even though the movies the merchandise is based on has women in starring roles. 
• Ellen Pao on sexism in Silicon Valley and things getting better. 

  
More next week.

Design Insights 11.09

Design: 

• Disney Research unveils a project to help you connect anything to anything else, basically. Watch the video- it's pretty amazing. One exciting possibility is enabling "fringe users" to develop solutions for themselves in cases where the market may be too small or fractured for a company to justify the costs of tooling, assembly and distribution. 3D printing has long been heralded as a technology that "democratizes design" but access, CAD modeling skills and time required for the input part of that equation hasn't caught up. This project looks like it could change that equation. 

Body/Image: 

• Companies frequently miss business opportunities because of stereotypes creeping into their design and product development efforts - e.g. "older adults don't care about style, just comfort." NPR's story on the booming business in stylish and comfortable footwear proves otherwise. There are huge market opportunities for products that respect their users identities and interests, instead of merely "solving a problem." 
• Imaging startup Body Labs just raised $ 8 million to continue developing theirbody scanning/measuring tools. With wearable technology getting smaller, softer, and more pervasive, what Body Labs is building could be a boon to apparel companies that are ready to step fully into the 21st century. 

Feeding the Future: 

• Grove Labs just put their aquaponics device for the home on kickstarter and it's doing amazingly well. It's an interesting product category development or extension (is it fair to call it a kitchen appliance?) and would certainly be welcome during long winters or remote areas where fresh, quality herbs and produce are hard to come by. 
• Some interesting agriculture-specific robotics solutions are being designed and developed by farmers in South Dakota, instead of college research labs or tech-hub cities. 

Designing Space: 

• Like many high impact design solutions, the cardboard bedroom furniture set is far from pretty. If companies like IKEA, Target, Walmart and others really want to make a difference on their sustainability efforts and carbon footprints, they would do well to invest in the design, development and marketing of projects like this instead of heavy, but ultimately not much more durable particle board products we are all familiar with.
• Prefab housing from Muji looks habitable and stylish in its simplicity, more cabin and less trailer. 

Machines for Moving: 

• Terrestrial, six-wheeled vehicles for delivering packages to your door, from the founders of Skype. We think they are underestimating the creative ways in which people could mess with their friendly looking robots, but in many ways it makes more sense than drones in the sky. For now, there are too many psychological and logistical sticking points for air-based drones to get implemented in the U.S. for something like parcel delivery.

  
More next week.