October 2008 – Illy, Wall Cleat, Nulla, Paper2dust
Illy
Just by pushing the button, this standard sea container transforms into a five room appartment, with kitches, dining room, bedroom, living and library. To us it seems a good idea for a mobile lounge bar that can be put in the park summer days.
Wall Cleat
The Wall Cleat, designed by Karl Zahn, has two very nice extensions on the body to wind up cables when they are too long.
Ovetto
In order to make recycling more fun and easier, the Italian architect Gianluca Soldi designed the Ovetto Recycling Bin, made of recycled polypropylene and with three compartments.
Brunopasso
A very special and majestic espresso machine, this Brunopasso from the Japanes designer Tadahito Ishibashi.
Nulla
A minimalistic bike concept from the design Bradford Waugh. By taking out the chain drive train and using a very simple frame structure, the product has only a minimum of weight.
Winglet
From Toyota. It is a prototype of a futuristic personal transportation vehicle, a competitor for the Segway. The vehicle is driven by an electro motor and just like the Segway it is controlled with many sensors, that feel the position of your body.
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The paper2dust
Bluelarix Designworks shows the first impressions of the Paper2dust, a revolutionairy paper shredder. This is a realistic concept that will be further engineered into an industrial manufacturable product.
Paper is shredded by a fast turning cord of a strong and very robust material, so that the paper is not teared into slices but being produced to dust. Inside is a reservoir that can be emptied by using a standard vacuum cleaner hose, by connecting the hose on the round hole in the foot of the Paper2dust. Except from the technical functionality, the product is most of all a statement and a design item.
A Japanese design studio developed this very simple plastic bags. By using mimicry, where human and animal elements are simulated in a product, the bags are not left behind anymore after a picnic in the park.
In nature mimicry (simulation) has to do with copying elements from known objects, organisms or environments in order to be able to hide for organisms or frighten them. In design three sorts of mimicry are important: appearance, behaviour and function.
When using appearance mimicry the appearance of the design looks like something else. Software programs use pictograms that look like folders and documents. Also the trash bin and desktop icons are based on the real world to make it feel familiar for us.
Mimicry of behaviour means that the design behaves like something else, like a robot dog behaves like a real dog. This form of mimicry is useful to enlarge the likeability, but has to be used very carefully if you want to simulate complex behavior. Simulated behaviour like laughing brings normally a positive reaction from the user, yet it seems unreal if the behaviour does not match other signals, like a doll that is laughing when she is beaten.
Mimicry of function is about designs that function like something else. This form of mimicry is useful to solve mechanical and structural problems, like using the design of the keypad of a counting machine for the design of a mobile phone. Functional mimicry has to be used carefully, because sometimes the physical principles of a function can not be copied from one context to another or from one scale to another, like the early attempts of people trying to fly with wings on their arms.
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Cooperation with universities
Bluelarix Designworks works together with the Hanze university of Groningen, having 8 students working on two complex projects in the fields of interaction and products for enlarging the experience of digital communication.
Since last week our website is almost fully available in russian as well. Altought the markets in Russia are still developing, there is more and more a trend that production in the country is started up again, which means that product design is needed as well.
Site in Russian /
On November 13th the International Usability Day www.worldusabilityday.org is held, with the theme “Transportation”
The Tensio+ has made it throught the first round of the iF design award 2009 and will be criticized by the jury in November.