Interesting interview by german designer Dieter Rams read the other day at the train station in Zürich. What struck as fascinating was that Rams was, at first, hired to design stuff but with a different mission that led him to nail down design process: "One of my first jobs in the design departmen...
New chapter about design issues in location-based games
" Digital Cityscapes: Merging Digital and Urban Playspaces " a book edited by Adriana de Souza e Silva and Daniel Sutko that deal with location-based games and urban informatics: "The convergence of smartphones, GPS, the Internet, and social networks has given rise to a playful, educational, and s...
Adaptive street infrastructures
Several occurrences of adaptive street interface encountered in Geneva this summer. The street fountains has been accommodated with either a little table (above) or both a little table and a bench (below) with a bright orange color. I assume it's meant to encourage the street life/gathering around...
Robot exhibit at the Design Museum in Zurich
Went to Zurich last wednesday, for the robot exhibit at the Design Museum. Called "Robots - From Motion to Emotion?", it is meant to give an overview of robotic research, with a presentation of robot highlights (ASIMO, nanorobots or the robotic jockey) as well as addressing issues such as: why rob...
Pacman maps
Been stuck into Pacman maps and cartographic representations lately, as the one above (that represents the "strawberry and first Orange" levels. I found the one above at this Unified Resource Locator when practicing random combinations of keywords on the Google (an activity I often carry out with ...
Urban "error"
Physical encounter with a "error" signage coming from the digital world during an urban scouting venture in Chania, Crete. ...
Hamel and Prahalad's take on failures
Generally, I do not read so much of business books but I wanted to have a glance at "Competing for the Future" (Gary Hamel, C. K. Prahalad) because it deals with issues I am interested in: futures and the importance of foresight research. Although the vocabulary is idiosyncratic and turned to a cer...
Outdoor television
Watching television outdoor often requires some sort of bricolage... such as this TV encountered in Omalos, Crete. The cardboard piece is an easy-but-convenient way to manage to see the images when the sun if glowing a bit too much. ...
7 qualities of "responsive environments"
Awesome encounter the other day at the flea market in Geneva: Responsive environments: a manual for designers by Sue McGlynn, Ian Bentley, Graham Smith (1985). I bought it right away and started perusing this interesting compendium of urban design principles. Very practical and straight to the poi...
Personal informatics instances
Playing with personal informatics' devices lately. Such as Walk with me or On Life. Walk with me enables you to track and monitor your daily walking routine, set certain goals, rate your day, etc. Onlife is meant to observe interactions with digital services (such as your web browser mailer, IM c...