Posts tagged overview
Project H Lecture at NCSU
Feb 26th
Design Revolution Road Show and Lecture
Monday, March 1, 1:30PM
NCSU, Burns Auditorium
Project H Design connects the power of design to the people who need it most, and the places where it can make a real and lasting difference.
We are a team of designers and builders engaging locally to improve the quality of life for the socially overlooked. Our five-tenet design process (There is no design without (critical) action; We design WITH, not FOR; We document, share and measure; We start locally and scale globally, We design systems, not stuff) results in simple and effective design solutions for those without access to creative capital.
Our long-term initiatives focus on improving environments, products, and experiences for K-12 education institutions in the US through systems- level design thinking and deep community engagements.
Project H is a tax exempt 501c3 nonprofit based in the San Francisco Bay Area and Bertie County, North Carolina. We believe design can change the world.
Emily Pilloton is the Founder and Executive Director of Project H Design. Trained in architecture at UC Berkeley and product design at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, she started Project H to provide a conduit and catalyst for need-based product design that empowers individuals, communities, and economies. Former Managing Editor of Inhabitat.com, writer, California girl and unwavering optimist, she has written for ID, GOOD, ReadyMade, taught design theory, and lectures worldwide about new social impact imperatives for the product design industry. Her book, “Design Revolution: 100 Products that Empower People,” is a compendium of and call-to-action for product design for social impact. When she isn’t traveling or emailing, Emily enjoys trivia games and baking (and eating) cupcakes.
NYC IxDA / Tap is the New Click / Dan Saffer
Feb 22nd
NYC IxDA – Tap is the New Click – Dan Saffer from Interaction Design Association on Vimeo.
Even though the technology has been around for decades, only now are we starting to see mass production and adoption of touchscreen and gestural devices for the public. Jeff Han’s influential 2006 TED demonstration of his multitouch system, followed by the launches of Nintendo’s Wii, Apple’s iPhone, and Microsoft Surface, have announced a new era of interaction design, one where gestures in space and touches on a screen will be as prominent as pointing and clicking.
But how do you create products for this new paradigm? While most of us know how to design desktop and web applications, what do you need to know to design for interactive gestures?
This introduction to designing gestural interfaces will cover the basics: usability and ergonomics; a brief history of the technology; some elemental patterns of use; prototyping and documenting; and how to communicate that a gestural interface is present to users.
ABOUT DAN SAFFER
Dan Saffer is an experience design director for Adaptive Path. An international speaker and author, his writing on design has appeared in BusinessWeek and many online publications. His acclaimed book Designing for Interaction: Creating Smart Applications and Clever Devices has been called “a bookshelf must-have for anyone thinking of creating new designs” and has been translated into several languages. His new book on interactive gestures will be published by O’Reilly in October 2008.Dan is a member of the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) and the Interaction Design Association (IxDA). He received his Master of Design in Interaction Design from Carnegie Mellon University.
Design Revolution / by Emily Pilloton (2009)
Feb 1st
In January of 2008, with a thousand dollars, a laptop and an outsized conviction that design can change the world, rising San Francisco-based product designer and activist Emily Pilloton launched Project H Design, a radical non-profit that supports, inspires and delivers life-improving humanitarian product design. “We need to go beyond ‘going green’ and to enlist a new generation of design activists,” she wrote in an influential manifesto. “We need big hearts, bigger business sense and the bravery to take action now.”
Featuring more than 100 contemporary design products and systems–safer baby bottles, a high-tech waterless washing machine, low-cost prosthetics for landmine victims, Braille-based Lego-style building blocks for blind children, wheelchairs for rugged conditions, sugarcane charcoal, universal composting systems, DIY soccer balls–that are as fascinating as they are revolutionary, this exceptionally smart, friendly and well-designed volume makes the case for design as a tool to solve some of the world’s biggest social problems in beautiful, sustainable and engaging ways–for global citizens in the developing world and in more developed economies alike. Particularly at a time when the weight of climate change, global poverty and population growth are impossible to ignore, Pilloton challenges designers to be changemakers instead of “stuff creators.” Urgent and optimistic, a compendium and a call to action, Design Revolution is easily the most exciting design publication to come out this year.
Emily Pilloton is the founder and Executive Director of Project H Design, a global industrial design nonprofit with eight chapters around the world. Trained in architecture at the University of California, Berkeley, and product design at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Pilloton started Project H in 2008 to provide a conduit and catalyst for need-based product design that empowers individuals, communities and economies. Current Project H initiatives include water transport and filtration systems in South Africa and India; an educational math playground built for elementary schools in Uganda and North Carolina; a homeless-run design coop in Los Angeles; and design concepts for foster care education and therapy in Austin, Texas.
Allan Chochinov is Editor in Chief of Core77.com, and writes and lectures widely on the impact of design on contemporary culture.
GOOD Magazine: The Decade in Design
Jan 9th
by Alissa Walker on December 23, 2009
Being a designer means being able to not only predict the future, but to have a hand in shaping it as well. In the last 10 years, however, designers also had to dramatically change the way they worked: What other industry got to weather the dot-com crash, a real estate bubble, and the death of print?
But it was not all boom and bust. The design field redesigned itself during this decade, transforming from an industry that created better objects to one that created better experiences—and endeavored to deliver them to everyone, not just the people who could afford them. Design was the place for big thinkers to cultivate new technology, and it’s where the sustainability movement found its most trusted partners. Here’s a look back on the design decade that was.
Designing for Small Screens / by Studio 7.5 (2005)
Jan 5th
Designing for Small Screens provides a guide for professional designers and students to developing functional concepts and good design for the small screen.
The design of interactive applications or presentations on small screens is becoming an increasingly pertinent field, given the advancement of technology in mobile phones, palm-top computers and other small-screen devices. However, design of this nature can be challenging for the designer. Not all design concepts that are valid on larger screens can be implemented on the small screen. Devices in this category differ in size and type of their display, in the nature of their physical interaction and in their performance.
Designing for Small Screens, therefore, equips the student or practitioner with the appropriate tools with which to develop functional concepts and realise good designs for small screens.
Mobile Interaction Design / by Jones and Marsden (2006)
Jan 4th
Mobile Interaction Design shifts the design perspective away from the technology and concentrates on usability; in other words the book concentrates on developing interfaces and devices with a great deal of sensitivity to human needs, desires and capabilities.
Presents key interaction design ideas and successes in an accessible, relevant way Exercises, case studies and study questions make this book ideal for students. Provides ideals and techniques which will enable designers to create the next generation of effective mobile applications. Critiques current mobile interaction design (bloopers) to help designers avoid pitfalls. Design challenges and worked examples are given to reinforce ideas. Discusses the new applications and gadgets requiring knowledgeable and inspired thinking about usability and design. Authors have extensive experience in mobile interaction design, research, industry and teaching
Mobile Design and Development / by Brian Fling (2009)
Jan 3rd
Mobile devices outnumber desktop and laptop computers three to one worldwide, yet little information is available for designing and developing mobile applications. Mobile Design and Development fills that void with practical guidelines, standards, techniques, and best practices for building mobile products from start to finish. With this book, you’ll learn basic design and development principles for all mobile devices and platforms. You’ll also explore the more advanced capabilities of the mobile web, including markup, advanced styling techniques, and mobile Ajax.
If you’re a web designer, web developer, information architect, product manager, usability professional, content publisher, or an entrepreneur new to the mobile web, Mobile Design and Development provides you with the knowledge you need to work with this rapidly developing technology. Mobile Design and Development will help you:
Understand how the mobile ecosystem works, how it differs from other mediums, and how to design products for the mobile context Learn the pros and cons of building native applications sold through operators or app stores versus mobile websites or web apps Work with flows, prototypes, usability practices, and screen-size-independent visual designs
Use and test cross-platform mobile web standards for older devices, as well as devices that may be available in the futureLearn how to justify a mobile product by building it on a budget