Just read the Fast Company article “Strategy by Design” penned by Tim Brown, IDEO‘s vocal and oft-quoted CEO. While informative, it probably succeeds best imo as an example of how words alone (for some people) can sometimes fail. A shame. The Industrial Design profession could use someone today able to communicate as effectively in word as with imagery. So far I’ve not found a design writer that rises to the task. Then again, I should probably read more.
Tag Archives: #industrialdesign
WorldChanging 3000
In the event you’re visiting this site and not regularly stopping over on the WorldChanging.com site (a highly recommended visit), the good folks at WC asked me to contribute an entry. I did and you can read it here. Obviously, as soon as I set up the dropbox, I’ll be taking donations to send me to writing class. Hopefully the message gets out in spite of my limitations.
[Edit from the future: As the WorldChanging site is now long gone and I have no idea what I wrote for them, here’s a link to something I suspect is related: “Making the Virtual Real”]
Long Tail 3D Mental Images
I’ve been toying with Chris Anderson’s Long Tail ideas for a few months now; turning them over in my head and trying to resolve some perceived discontinuities: “cult” items, functions of Time, aso. All this in order to arrive at a more complete unified theory, I guess. I’ve even used Second Life as a way to help visualize and discuss these ideas (see above image). Last night I finally grabbed some time to model and render my latest 3D models which I collectively call the “ecoToroid” (I went 3D after seeing those “signal to noise” graphs; and especially that “Sales vs Stuff” image).
As I commented on The Long Tail blog, I’m guilty of not giving this the attention it probably deserves; especially in trying to figure out what this thing looks like in a historical context – I’ve already modified my 3D models once and I could see where they could use more thought and further modification (maybe even reverting back to something more like what I had originally). Perhaps later when I have more time. Anyway, instead of trying to explain what I’m thinking, I’m just going to post a couple of images and see what happens. Maybe these will spark ideas in someone else’s mind. Maybe not. But I figure it’s better than letting these things sit on my hard drive.
I also thought I would open up the comments on this entry. Typically I don’t allow for comments simply because the spam I get is too much bother to deal with on a blog as obscure as this one. There’s also the fact that I need to mod the code so the comment block width works on all browsers; right now you can type well outside the boundary in IE I think – sorry about that. If you want to leave a comment, I’d suggest typing it in a text editor and doing a cut ‘n paste. Hopefully in the near future I’ll fix this page so it’s a little nicer. Til then….
(edit: O-kay. Seems as if opening up one post to comments opens up the others, even though their commenting has been closed. Must be in the WordPress code but I just don’t have time to find out. Having just mass deleted about 500 spam comments, looks like it’s time to close the door for a bit. Oh well.)
(images Copyright © C. Sven Johnson)
Trimersion For 3001 AD
Via Blue’s News and Game infowire comes news of a low cost VR headset from Kopin Corporation that will be incorporated into gaming developer 3001 AD‘s Trimersion virtual reality system. The post notes that this will be the first time VR-style gaming will be available for XBox, PlayStation and PC gamers. That claim sounds a little overstated (perhaps they mean they support all three platforms), but still interesting news. From the Game infowire entry:
Trimersion brings full immersion and 360-degree head tracking to home gaming, and is the only system to deliver high-quality, cross-platform virtual reality for this market. The Kopin BDM-230K, a complete binocular video subsystem, delivers crisp, full-color, QVGA-quality (320 x 240 resolution) video with a virtual image equivalent to a 35-inch display viewed from a seven-foot distance.
Core Nano-leverage
Posted an entry over on the Core77 Software & Technology blog (man is it lonely over there for a group effort). There’s something about that Victorian-style nanotechnology that brings rapid-prototyping to mind. I have to hold onto that thought.
(btw, there is a joke in the last line of that post.)