Design Thinking

Designing Chairs

Habitat designer Tom Dixon appeared on BBC Radio 4's The Today Programme today (doh!) in advance of the Milan Furniture Fair, which starts tomorrow.  In a 4 minute clip he talked to Evan Davies about the design of chairs, and how chairs might be designed in the future.

Tom Dixon Talks About Designing Chairs

Eco Fashion

Found a nice accessible BBC site (for young people, but not childish) which gives some accessible explanations of the issues of ethical and eco fashion plus some inspiration to recycle clothes. With the Tshirt excercise this may be a good place to link to.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blast/art/tipsandtools/ecofashion/?8#mainphoto

Needs and Desires

I found an informative design framework for considering needs and desires in design thinking.

http://www.uxmatters.com/MT/archives/000152.php

Inclusive design

One of my students recently posted this link to a good inclusive design site which may be useful for U101 and beyond.

Inclusive Design Toolkit

Designing systems

Just caught the tail end of a programme on Channel 5, Big, Bigger Biggest which looks at some of the largest engineering feats in the world. The bit I saw was about the baggage handling system for Terminal 5, which had to be tested with 12000 bags to be sure that it worked properly. It reminded me a little of the scene in ToyStory where the toys are on the high speed conveyor belt (they have early storage for check in bags and then the slow belts deposit the bags into trolleys which go at up to 30kmph to the planes. Lots of interesting design challenges in there. The programme cited a terminal in the US where the baggage handling did not work, bags kept falling off and it put the terminal out of action for a year while they fixed it.
G

Downloadable furniture

An interesting article on downloadable furniture with downloadable scale models.

www.treehugger.com

Steve.

Design Icons

Design icons - things that designers like and use as exemplars/references/inspiration - are part of design culture. I've been trying to think of some, and structure them into Individual/Group/Society/Global categories. There are quite a lot at the Individual level, not so many (I can think of) at the Global. They could be recurring mini case studies in the course, including attempted explanations of why they are 'iconic'.
Individual
iPod, iMac
Juicy Salif
Chopsticks (and Japanese lunchbox)
Swiss Railway clock/Mondaine watch
Chairs: Thonet bentwood, Barcelona, Red/Blue, etc. etc.
Group
London underground map
Houses: Falling Water, Robie, Farnsworth, etc. etc.
Society
Citroen 2cv
Geodesic dome
Ronchamp chapel
Pompidou Centre
Sydney Opera House
Global
World Wide Web
Boeing 747

I'm sure these examples display my age and personal interests!