d.life

i’m sitting down this weekend and trying to replicate some...

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 12:39:38 -0700

i’m sitting down this weekend and trying to replicate some of this… amazing what a creative, talented person can do with pen + ink

Johanna Basford | Portfolio

Anonymous Pro

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 18:43:56 -0700

Anonymous Pro:

wow, i adore *every* font on this site… and i’m sort of a font snob… thanks, @mikeyk!

this sink is seriously awesome. and by awesome i mean it totally...

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 10:09:06 -0700

this sink is seriously awesome. and by awesome i mean it totally reminds me of the early-90’s nickelodeon logo.

Collezioni Splash Collection Sink

awesome. i just wish there were a bit more of a hint of what it...

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 23:38:14 -0700

awesome. i just wish there were a bit more of a hint of what it did in the collapsed position. but i’m a sucker for walnut! ::puts on neverending “to-make” list::

knax walnut coat hook - storage | nestliving | modern design furniture for your home

vinyl + lasercamm, anyone? via James Joyce

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 13:45:13 -0700

vinyl + lasercamm, anyone?

via James Joyce

looks straight out of neverending story Dropular - Media...

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 13:42:43 -0700

looks straight out of neverending story

Dropular - Media Bookmarking

i haven’t posted anything in awhile. whoops!

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 13:37:12 -0700

i haven’t posted anything in awhile. whoops!

Colored Pencils (via Fubiz™)

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 10:31:36 -0700

Colored Pencils (via Fubiz™)

a tea bag that spreads its wings when steeping. i wouldn’t...

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 10:28:39 -0700

a tea bag that spreads its wings when steeping. i wouldn’t mind this critter in my tea :)

via Designers Couch

been a long time! lots of craziness lately. my whole world has...

Sat, 05 Sep 2009 12:33:33 -0700

been a long time! lots of craziness lately. my whole world has done a few cartwheels in the last couple weeks.

anyway, think this graphic would make a kickass sticker. labor day weekend project, for sure.

Designers’Couch: 17 Stunning Bicycle Artworks

they call it a “table”… but i wouldn’t...

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 10:21:50 -0700

they call it a “table”… but i wouldn’t put anything on it. fun with layers!

Isotrope Design

want to try making a cake in this style.. wonder if...

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 09:26:01 -0700

want to try making a cake in this style.. wonder if there’s a trick to getting those seams right. or maybe that’s what the flowers are for? hmm… only one way to find out, i suppose.

btw, totally in love with this website. too bad i’m not getting married anytime in the foreseeable future!!

…yep. via FFFFOUND!

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 18:17:39 -0700

…yep.

via FFFFOUND!

a simple idea beautifully executed. British designer George Rice...

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 14:42:00 -0700

a simple idea beautifully executed.

British designer George Rice has designed a table made by cutting and folding a standard sheet of steel. (via Dezeen)

Prototyping: Building as Thinking

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 12:55:00 -0700

A preface: around the d.school, I hear the d.phrase “build to think” quite frequently. And while I do agree there’s some validity to the statement, I have to add an asterisk and argue that thinking on its own is more appropriate in many cases. For the sake of this article, though, I investigate physical thinking early in a design project. Also, instead of sending you to my unskinned and nearly completely unreadable website, I’ll just post my articles here for now…

***

Often when we design, we think of the planning and building phases as distinct – surely in order to build, we first need a plan, right? In general, and particularly for beginning designers, this probably isn’t the best approach. A hybrid of planning and executing – or more specifically in this case, thinking and building, may not only be a more effective way to solve design problems, but a more efficient way as well. Two students jump to mind as examples of utilizing this principle: Brent and Kaitlin (their names have been changed).

Kaitlin began her intro design class with a vague idea of what her final project would be. She’d done a bit of planning in her head and maybe a couple of sketches in her logbook but hadn’t begun to realize her vision in any sort of viscerally meaningful way. The tiered cupcake display platter in her head remained a vision until Kaitlin was met with a table piled with an assortment of kitchen utensils, plastic toys, and other mostly random objects. Given five minutes to “realize some part of [her] design”, she instinctively grabbed a pair of tongs, and that was when her mind took off. She cleverly wedged three different sized (ripped) paper plates horizontally inside the open tongs and began to investigate the shape, scale, and usability of her platter design. She could see all the different joints she would need to consider, the parts of the design that would pose problems for her, and the beginnings of aesthetic material preferences – thickness, edge finish, etc… All this from a five-minute period of time, a pair of tongs, and a few paper plates.

Kaitlin shows us how valuable it can be not to have a plan before building – and instead use the building period as a way to begin thinking about a problem. Her final product, incidentally, had a very similar shape and scale to what she built in the first week of the ten-week long project. After this exercise, Kaitlin was able to do more detailed sketches of her design and hone in on the mechanisms she’d need to build to realize the functionality that the exercise had allowed her to envision. In just one week, Kaitlin transformed her project from a rough idea into a prototype and accompanying set of questions related to mechanism specifics and user interaction.

While Kaitlin jump-started her thinking process with a bout of rapid building, Brent took a more gradual (but no less effective) route. Faced with developing a challenging and unique mechanism for his barbell design, Brent began by making sketches, getting inspiration from similar existing objects, making measurements, and researching mechanisms. It was only when he began building that he was able to transform his problem into something manageable in the ten weeks he had to complete it. Brent’s thinking and building process eventually merged into one, almost literally. He began by making rapid paper models – grossly simplifying the challenges he faced, but allowing him to envision them at full scale – and then returning to his logbook to digest what he’d learned and develop new ideas. He returned to the paper models and repeated this process of build/digest/ideate right there in the lab, at the table he was using to build his models. After a couple hours, he’d nearly filled his logbook both with thoughts and sketches and with the paper models he’d built as a result. And, because his building medium of choice was paper, his thinking and building processes were nearly indistinguishable. After Brent completed these cycles of building and thinking, he no longer needed to ask the question “is this possible?” and instead began asking questions like “what size ball casters should I be looking at?” and “what is the best way to fasten these three plates together?”

Kaitlin’s project required relatively little functional innovation, and it is not surprising that she only needed a short build session to stimulate the prototyping and question-asking that led her to her final design. Had she just sat down with her logbook, she likely could have eventually arrived at the same design – but who knows how long it would have taken? There’s no reason not to pick up a few objects and develop a tangible intuition for what previously had only lived on paper or in one’s head. Brent’s project, on the other hand, required many cycles through the think/build process. With every sketch he made, he received instant feedback as to its feasibility based on the paper models he built. There was just as little chance he’d get it “right” the first time his pen met paper as the first time his scissors and tape met paper. Different types of mechanism ideas were born out of his time building and thinking, and his final design benefitted from both. What would have happened if he’d tried to figure everything out on paper or in CAD first? Without developing that physical intuition for the product that only a physical model can provide, there’s a significant risk of overlooking important aspects of the design.

In both Kaitlin’s and Brent’s cases, this think/build hybrid process was especially effective in the early stages of the design process. On a spectrum that runs from “written rough draft” on one end to “fully functional prototype” on the other, both cases fall essentially in the middle. There’s a bit more at stake than simply throwing away a sketch or deleting a paragraph, but there’s significantly less at stake than throwing out a machined part or complicated mechanism. There’s significantly less fluidity at a higher resolution of prototype (more on that subject in a future article) because of the time invested and the simple fact that it takes longer to make changes to higher resolution prototypes. The think/build hybrid works particularly well when dealing with rapid model making and questions that can be answered by simple models. When there’s no clear picture of what the product is or could be, this is an excellent technique. It’s almost as if it’s a one-man brainstorm. It’s building without worrying if something is “right” or not, because it’s simply a vehicle to develop ideas about how to accomplish a particular function, be it aesthetic or mechanical.

In the early stages of a design project, there’s no reason not to use your hands to think – it could not only save time in the long run but also generate ideas early on that may not have been generated until much later in the design process. Separating the planning and executing phases of a design project does the designer a disservice. Provided the early building is rough and rapid, it has the potential to significantly aid concept generation and problem solving.

not usually a big believer in bright yellow, but i have to make...

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 10:56:24 -0700

not usually a big believer in bright yellow, but i have to make an exception for this.

Home of Marieke Wessels and Laszlo Balog (via Apartment Therapy)

Prototyping: Just Start. Really.

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 13:39:00 -0700

Prototyping: Just Start. Really.:

so… i’m really embarrassed to be sharing this so early since i haven’t had time to finish the stylesheet for my new website (car.ly! how cool is that??!?) but i need to publish this article now due to some, um, circumstances. i’m writing a series of articles related to design (design education, mostly) but essentially i’m trying to cut through the jargon, fluff, and hoopla surrounding “design thinking” and examine what actually happens and what actually works. i’m starting my phd research in a month and am hoping to hit the ground at a full sprint when i get started.

in any case, if you’re at all interested in design methodology/education/practice and have a few minutes (and don’t mind the TOTAL lack of css, eek!) please read + let me know what you think :) this is the first article in a series of at least ten that i’ll be publishing in the next month.

there’s something so sweet about these - not sure i like...

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 12:59:33 -0700

there’s something so sweet about these - not sure i like the square hole, though.

Stat Key Designer Keys (via Holycool)

Never before has a compact fluorescent light bulb seemed so much...

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 09:23:16 -0700

Never before has a compact fluorescent light bulb seemed so much like an intentional part of your decor… (via Unplggd)

beautiful fabric flower garlands - seems like they’d be...

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 09:07:40 -0700

beautiful fabric flower garlands - seems like they’d be easy enough to make (cough… with a laser cutter… cough)

by dolciodille on Etsy