U101: The Design Thinking Blog

Building Stories

Here are some funny interactive animations of the design thinking of three famous british architects Richard Rogers, Norman Foster, and Terry Farrell. Nicole Lotz has consulted on the content and design of these animations. They are called Building Stories.

The stories were created in support of the BBC Four series The Brits Who Built The Modern World. It was also inspired by the RIBA season of events  that tell the story of why and how British architecture developed globally from 1750 to the present.

Art Pickings website

Ok, I have a soft spot for Brain Pickings so I couldn't help a shout out for their new site art pickings.

This piece by Todd McLellan is really nice:

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Core77 2012 Design Awards

Two posts in one day...

The 2012 Core77 design awards have now been announced and there are some interesting entries in there.

(I really liked the Future Visions for Synthetic Biology. 'Packaging that grows it's own contents')

 

Paper folding fascination

This series of videos on different paper folding techniques absolutely fascinated me. You can build a great variety of prototypes from paper using these techniques. Different folds give the object different properties, like flexibility or stiffness. My favourite is the crumbling technique, which allows to produce arches and curved forms in no time.

 

Folding Techniques for Designers: Crumpling from Laurence King Publishing on Vimeo.

 

 

This makes sketching really easy and enjoyable

There is an abundance of web drawing tools out there. But I like this one. It offers a limited set of options. You really don't need more. The lines and forms produced look really good and this is probably the essence of the Harmony drawing tool. You just save the picture you draw as png. Very simple.

About being wrong

I just watched this powerful TED talk about the benefits of being wrong. I had to think about how in design thinking we also tend to emphasize when we were right rather than admitting what was wrong about a thought, process, prototype, idea, etc. I like the concept of embracing and hence being able to learn from admitting one was wrong. It could help us to reflect more deeply about design processes and to be more honest about design ideas.

 

Play dough prototyping

There is a wonderful new, short and stunning TED video about prototyping with play dough. If you'd ever thought about using electronic circuits for things to light up, move or do other things, then watch this. This could be particularly interesting when you want to demonstrate or explore how products might respond to user interaction.

 

Interaction Design Encyclopaedia

 

The area of Interaction Design is relatively new, although its roots can be found in established professional and academic domains, such as Design and Computation or Social Science. Interaction-Design.org is an educational resource that makes knowledge in Interaction Design and related fields available to a wider audience. A new project is the Interaction Design Encyclopaedia, which follows the more traditional example of peer-reviewed articles but brings in audio-visual material as support. 

For example, the entry on Visual representation that is featured today (February 2nd, 2011) beautifully illustrates why there is such a variety of representation styles and what they are good for. 

All inclusive: the russians used a pencil

There is a wonderful story of 2 designers who had an idea of a product, and through social media and clever production and marketing strategies got it on the market within 5 months. It is a very encouraging story, but for me the key is understanding the power of social media in designing. 

If you want to know more read on.

d.School Set of Cards

Matthew Shears, a former T307 student, directed my attention to a set of cards produced by Stanford University's d.School (Design School) and similar to the U101 Welcome Pack cards.

The cards are more wordy than the U101 cards, and similar to IDEO's innovation cards in that they outline the process of design thinking. Nevertheless, I agree with Matthew who found them inspiring.

d.School Design Thinking Cards