schneiderism

I am attending the Office 2.0 conference in San Francisco. I am here because I believe strongly that the tools and technologies that make up Office 2.0 are having a dramatic effect and influence on the way we work, interact, and collaborate, and that this will have a profound effect on how our physical workplaces will need to evolve and respond to this change. I have made no mystery of my feelings on this point, that the office as we know it is becoming increasing irrelevant. I want to be at the forefront of this change.

This morning at Office 2.0 Matthew Glotzbach, who heads up Google’s enterprise products team, gave an impressive presentation (and thinly veiled Google sales pitch) entitled “10 Things That I Can Do In The Cloud Today, That I Could Not Do a Year Ago.” This has been a big week for Google with the launch of Chrome and secure video sharing. Sitting next to Mark Bean at the presentation, he quipped… “And this from an online ad company.” Business model innovation right before our eyes. But that’s been Google’s model since inception. Matt’s 10 Things essentially outline this innovation and thinking, presented in reverse order:

10.  Everything on the go. Just over a year ago the iPhone opened up computing for the mobile world and drove a paradigmatic shift in how we utilize our mobile devices and access and interact with information. The cloud is a central player in this paradigmatic shift with everything potentially living in the cloud and accessed from anywhere.

9.  Search through all my email. Google’s 25 gigs of personal email storage allows you to save and search everything. We live in email and this makes it actually work for us allowing you to do email how you want, where you want, when you want.

8.  Chat with customers and partners in any language. In cloud computing you can tap services like real time translation. The ideal of the individual knowledge worker working in isolation is arcane. We are always collaborating and language barriers are falling away because of these tools. Matt demo’d the translational tool in Google Talk chatting with a team member in Spain. Very cool.

7.  Collaborate simply and securely on projects with sites and docs. Google Docs was launched at Office 2.0 two years ago, and in that time has been refined into a seamless and effective collaboration tool.

6.  Organize all of my business travel with email. Matt demo’d Tripit, a service that takes any travel related confirmation email message and builds a personal itinerary and feed for you to more easily access and manage your trips. It offers a seamless integration with your calendar and a great mobile interface, with email as the integrating medium. Fascinating.

5.  Easily collect data from co-workers and customers in Forms. Matt demo’d Google Forms which allows you to create a custom form in Google Docs and embed it for use. He did this and we watched as it populated and autofilled live. Very cool.

4.  Build any scalable business application on the cloud platform. Basically, the ginormous and complex infrastructure needed to do this is done (Google App Engine, force.com, Amazon Web Services). You just need to pay for what you need and use as a service. The platform is the service? Salesforce.com already has 80k+ applications.

3.  Use online templates for documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. You can create custom templates for these tools and use them for your business, accessing them from anywhere and allowing easy collaboration or use of them from anywhere.

2.  Run fast, secure, and stable with web applications. Essentially, the recently launched browser, Chrome, from Google is the next generation of web applications (Mac support is happening ASAP…). Chrome is the term for the area around your browser, and the goal of this team was to get rid of the chrome (ironic naming). The browser is the new desktop, but with speed and stability that eliminates browser hang, crashing. Matt bench-marked  Chrome’s speed against IE. Chrome rocked by a significant factor. It is also open source, pushing the state of the art. Much excitement in the room around this.

1.  Securely share video in applications. This is a powerful medium, and with the security that business needs in order for it to be useful. It empowers the use of video in business and offers a paradigmatic change in the way we collaborate. This is made possible by the cloud and by the reality that we all now have video recording embedded in our mobile devices and computers.

Matt ended with an amazing statistic. Business adoption of Google’s tools is skyrocketing, with 3,000 new business sign ups EVERY DAY. This is one of those shifts in thinking that can wipe away entire careers and subject matter expertise, and it is a rare opportunity to actually witness a paradigmatic shift as it is happening. For some, cloud computing is all blue sky. For others, it is a looming and business model challenging storm.

Before I get into Steelcase, allow me to announce this piece as the inaugural “10 Things” post on schneiderism. My plan is to use 10 Things as a way to recap some of the more interesting experiences and information I come across. I have added 10 Things as a category in the category menu and am planning on writing several posts of this nature in the coming week or so to get the category going.

Last week I had the opportunity to spend an intense day meeting and interacting with some of the more fascinating aspects of Steelcase at their HQ in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Most will hear the name of this company and think first, and perhaps only, of office furniture and cubicles. They do design and manufacture a lot of both, but that is not why I made this visit. Steelcase has developed tremendous assets with regards to workplace and human factors research, as well as what would appear to be an organization-wide relentless focus on innovation and understanding the complexities and preferences of human interaction. The building in the image above is their WorkSpace Futures Research headquarters, and is essentially the nexus of design and innovation for this nearly $4 billion global enterprise. Yes, that building is a pyramid and yes, it does appear to have fallen out of the sky.

The following are 10 Things from my visit:

1.  User experience, user-centered design, user-focused process was everywhere. It has become the company. Everybody speaks in these terms and they are passionate about understanding people, their needs, and designing solutions and systems from this perspective back to technology and materials. This was an incredibly consistent theme.

2.  Design thinking is the practice and methodology. A few years ago Steelcase very smartly acquired a controlling interest in IDEO, which remains a stand-alone business. Most people hear this and are very, very surprised. That is because IDEO is much more than a portfolio piece for Steelcase, the value being the relationship between the two companies, a relationship between a David and a Goliath. It has become an invaluable strategic partnership.

3.  IDEO/Steelcase has done an expert job positively influencing, infecting really, how Steelcase approaches its business, and that is a truly amazing outcome.

4.  Telepresence is an intense area of focus, and they actively experiment with technology on themselves in an effort to shrink distance and remove the obstacles presented by working remotely. Steelcase CEO Jim Hackett is all over this, so much so that he and IDEO’s David Kelley have a direct telepresence connection between their offices. Jim is in Grand Rapids and David is in Palo Alto. This link is referred to as “the wormhole” and is a connection that is much more than symbolic. They benefit greatly from the opportunity to virtually sit across the table from each other to ideate and challenge ideas. I was fortunate to visit Jim Hackett’s office and actually see how this works. Very cool.

5. Innovation at Steelcase begins at the top. Literally. In many ways it appeared to me that as well as CEO, Jim Hackett also functions as a Chief Innovation Officer. Many initiatives and innovations began with Jim asking some questions or believing that something could be better. In fact, he changed the management paradigm at Steelcase physically and functionally by moving executives out of their arcane and isolated top floor 1950’s executive suite and into a functioning, experimental workspace laboratory that allows even Steelcase executive leadership to be their own lab subjects.

6. “Furniture is a given, and is not what we really need to be talking about.” Furniture is a commodity, Steelcase is not in the commodity business. I heard this a couple of times during my visit, and I believe it was attributed to CEO Hackett. This is somewhat revolutionary in terms of how this organization is thinking about itself. The opportunity is in innovating at a level that their products as physical elements almost fall away with the focus instead being on the thinking behind the products.

7. It’s not about technology, it’s about human factors and the seamless integration of technology into the communication and collaboration needs of teams and the individual. There is much effort being put to understanding the tensions between presentation and collaboration, or presentation vs. collaboration. More collaboration, less presentation.

8. The goal is the strategic application of space. Steelcase is moving way beyond a product mindset and into areas of research that positions them to help organizations map their physical and virtual workplaces to their unique business model. This was a favorite quote, “Stop talking about space, though, and instead look at the table of contents of the latest Harvard Business Review. That is what Steelcase is concerned with, with understanding, and with integrating into our needs response.” Architects and interior designers should take note of this, immediately.

9. “The change in the mindset is that our work is not about saving our client’s money, it is about helping them make money.” It is also about business model alignment and business model innovation. It is about identifying the critical success factors for an organization, at a complexity of levels, and integrating this into the needs response.

10. More than a few people that I met spoke to me about ubiquitous computing (ubicomp), and about “the cloud.” Steelcase knows that these ideas will change the way we work and interact. They choose to be the vanguard by investing serious resources in researching and investigating exactly how this might happen. The Workplace Futures team is constantly projecting out years into the future and hypothesizing about what our interactions might be like, about what new technologies may be of use. Let me remind you that this is happening at a $4 billion global office furniture company. Tom Brown, CEO of IDEO, and Steelcase CEO Jim Hackett conceived of an idea 18 months ago that would provide comprehensive media and communications seamlessly integrated with telepresence, information capture, and idea sharing. They rapid prototyped and iteratively and incrementally improved the concept. Media:Scape launches in the spring of 2009.

There was so much more that I experienced and that is worthy of writing entire posts on. I’ll get to all of it, especially my time in the Learn Lab and with Details president Bud Klipa, but for now these are my 10 Things from my time with Steelcase. I came away very impressed and inspired.

The above image is the Vela concept that came out of a partnership between BMW and the Transportation Design School IED in Turin, a city that continues to embody its position as a design epicenter. BMW asked students there to design what BMW’s might be like in 2015 consistent with BMW’s “language evolution and trademark essence.” This simple brief resulted in a very interesting and creative response by the students, like the Vela pictured above and the ZX-6 concept pictured here:

Pretty wild. 2015 is only seven short years away and while these concepts may be unrealistically radical BMW is smart to take advantage of the way the students at IED are thinking to look for innovative design opportunities. It’s hard to say what cars may look like in seven years. If you think back to seven years ago today cars are not really that different at all. Still, much can happen to change our expectations of what an automobile is in this short time.

More at car body design.

Over the last 50 years nothing has driven technology innovation like the military industrial complex. Sure, academic institutions, independent researchers, and private industry have achieved many things, but for sheer volume nothing can touch what the United States military technology research behemoth has accomplished. For researchers, this is where the big money lies and we’re talking about projects in areas beyond armaments and weapons like networking science, trauma medicine, communications, materials sciences, robotics, and transportation. Behind this is DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which is the central force behind the Department of Defense research initiatives that we usually hear about after they are no longer relevant. Their motto is “Bridging The Gap,” which may be a stretch. Regardless, DARPA is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, and along with that celebrating 50 years of technology innovation… some of which is not actually used to kill people.

Oddly silly promotional video for DARPA’s 50th:

Found this video via Ares.

I’ve always found military disruption patterns and camouflage incredibly interesting, and sometimes beautiful. It was a big deal when the United States Army and Marine Corps began changing their decades old camouflage uniforms to a massively researched digital camouflage pattern, and one that was actually substantively tested for field effectiveness. Now, a similar approach to camouflage is being applied to military vehicles and aircraft. The plane above is a Slovakian Defense Forces MIG 29 that has had a digital camouflage technology from the Canadian company Hyperstealth Biotechnology Corp. applied to it. Frankly, I think it is gorgeous. Beyond that, though, it is also incredibly effective. This is much more than just a coat of paint. The finish that Hyperstealth employs is not only applied in a pattern that very effectively breaks up the shape and scale of vehicles and aircraft, it also has stealth properties by reducing radio wave reflection by as much as 45% on subsonic aircraft. I also found this image of the HCMS Calgary next to a U.S. aircraft carrier incredibly interesting, though it looks photoshopped:

David Fearnley, a recent honors graduate of the Transportation Design Course at Northumbria University, has been inside my head. The man has designed what I might have to proclaim as the PERFECT CAR. Let’s run down the criteria:

• Performance focused - check
• Innovative design - check
• Electricly powered - check
• Visually appealing - check
• Can seat three - check

The Eigne concept would currently be the only automobile that meets this criteria. I have usually driven two seat sports cars, but with the relatively recent arrival of my lovely daughter, this is no longer a practical option for our little family. A three seat sports car, though, totally works. One that is electrically powered, even more so. Rarely do I come across something that seems so perfectly tailored to my needs, my passions, and ultimately… my wants. This car must be made.

Fearnley’s design sports a coveted central position for the driver, with seats on the left and the right for passengers. The electric motors for the vehicle are conveniently located at the wheels, in each corner, freeing up valuable internal cabin space for the three seat position. This would be a phenomenal real-world vehicle.

Alas, though, it is but a concept for the moment. At least we are provided this video by Fearnley to appropriately whet our appetite:

I came across the Eigne concept at Car Body Design.

Lot’s of excitement last week with Virgin Galactic’s unveiling of WhiteKnightTwo (WK2), the aircraft that will carry SpaceShipTwo aloft for mid-air launching into orbit, on July 28th. Developed by Burt Rutan’s Scaled Composites, WK2 is an innovative and visually interesting aircraft distinct for its twin fuselage and kinked wing designed to hold SpaceShipTwo for the ride to 48,000 feet. I just came across this video from Virgin Galactic that shows us great detail of the aircraft’s exterior:

I especially like the end of the video which shows Burt Rutan and Richard Branson walking around the craft and smiling widely. This is a big deal, and these two gentlemen are far along in a pioneering effort to begin to make space accessible to a great many more than those that work for governement space agencies. WK2 is an exciting step in this effort, and flight trials of the aircraft are set to begin this fall. Note the functional benefits of WK2’s twin fuselage design. The aircraft can be flown from either side.

We’re talking about graphene, an incredibly strong nanomaterial made from graphite and comprised of a densely packed single layer of carbon atoms that are arranged in a hexagonal pattern like a honeycomb. This forms a two-dimensional sheet, as shown in the image above, with an incredibly simple atomic structure. All of this was entirely theoretical and not thought possible until it was actually made back in 2004. Graphene has been described as an unrolled carbon nanotube. Columbia University nanoscale science researcher and professor James Hone has been working with graphene and testing its strength. Hone likens his one molecule deep sheet to ultra-thin plastic wrap, and compares his test of the material’s strength to stretching that piece of plastic wrap over the top of a coffee cup, and measuring the force that it takes to puncture it with a pencil. Hone says that If he could create a large enough piece of graphene (it has so far been restricted to very small pieces more ideal for high-conductivity transistors) to lay over the top of the coffee cup it would be strong enough to support the weight of an automobile pushing down on the pencil.

While graphene does possess incredible strength, it’s most likely use in the near future is as a replacement for silicon in electonics and semi-conductors.

Core77 just brought graphene to my attention, and I read this great article with more detail at Berkeley Lab.

Today, July 29, 2008, marks the 50th anniversary of the inception of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The year was 1958, the race for space was heating up fast with the Soviet’s successful launch of the first orbiting satellite, Sputnik, in October of 1957. NASA was, in many ways, a reaction to this event. That first team for NASA came out swinging, though, and they set about an intense range of projects motivated by the urgings of a passionate President. The first 25 years saw amazing accomplishments (Mercury, Apollo, putting astronauts on the moon, Viking, Voyager, Mariner, Skylab, the space-shuttle…) relatively swelled budgets, and endless manpower. The next 25 also saw great accomplishments (Hubble, ISS, Cassini, Mars exploration…), but mixed with the challenges of changed national priorities, increased international competition, the limitations of the space-shuttle, the slowed progress of the ISS, and budgetary constraints. Along the way there have been horrible tragedies and incredibly prolific failures, but when you push the technological envelope and seek to expand the boundaries of human experience there are inevitable risks involved. The astronauts that have died knew these risks well, and still came to work. I would like to believe that the tragedies have been more than balanced by the successes, by the amazing discoveries, and by the advancement of science. NASA has inspired generations, myself included, and provided the United States with a vital rallying point for an optimistic belief in the future of our nation, and for humanity. From those that have been inspired by NASA have sprung incredible private space ventures like that of Burt Rutan and Richard Branson, the Lunar X Prize, and the inevitable development of space tourism.

NASA is definitely not without its problems, but what large publicly funded organization isn’t? The fact is that NASA has been with us for 50 years, has achieved a great deal, and has a plan for the future of the United States in space.

Dubai is undergoing a very visible, rapid and dramatic transformation. The intensity and quality of the building happening there is staggering, and this is to serve the needs of a relatively small elite segment of the population as well as a burgeoning population of investors. Servicing this population is a growing mass of foreign service workers who make their way to Dubai for the opportunity to earn better wages. As of 2007 nearly 85% of Dubai’s 1.3 million population were foreign workers. This percentage is increasing, and by 2015 it is estimated that Dubai will require over 1.3 million in foreign service workers alone, essentially their total current population. Currently, the armies of construction workers and craftsman who are building the future of Dubai live in temporary worker camps outside the city, but the city is growing at a pace to soon surround those camps. What to do?

The video above is an angle on addressing this challenge. Proposed by a team from Sci-Arc, it presents solutions that are frank, pragmatic, and at some level take into account occupant quality and quality of life for the service workers. It’s definitely an interesting piece, and nothing if not just a bit controversial.

I found this video at Architechnophilia, who found it at elseplace. Both are excellent.

Dan Wieden, founder of Wieden+Kennedy, said that line about being stupid when asked about his job by Polly Labarre of Mavericks at Work. I believe that the full quote was “My job is to walk in stupid every day.” His point is that there is no way he could know everything, that he is aware of the obstacle of expertise, and that he will not always have the best ideas. So, coming into work “stupid” keeps his mind open to ideas from anywhere, and open to valuing them when they happened. Clearly, that strategy has worked well for Dan.

I read that Dan Wieden quote at Mavericks at Work a few days ago and have been thinking about it over the weekend. I believe it is a very powerful attitude about how we could approach our work and maintain important perspective. I think there is tremendous value in, every day, going to work ready to learn, anxious for surprises, and anticipating the new. In coming to work looking for change, for improvement, and to challenge convention. We need to go to work knowing that ideas can come from anywhere, and should, and that those ideas should be acknowledged, encouraged, and supported… arriving every day with the intent of building this, of making it happen, of not standing in the way. Every day we need to know that somebody, somewhere is better than us… and that is totally cool because we want to learn from them. We need to come in every day hopeful, hungry, and focused on being in a different place than we were yesterday, on being in a different place this afternoon than this morning. We need to spend more time listening than talking, more time trying to understand and see from alternative points of view and work to avoid reaction and to lessen our reliance on instinct and instead give ourselves the time to own our decisions, and be thoughtful about it. We should spend as much energy on building our team as we do building our careers, and realize that our team is better when it is made up of people who just might be, and probably need to be, smarter than us. Instead of adopting the persona of an expert, we should try that of a student. Being a student was fun, everything was about newness and possibilities. Being an expert is limiting.

We all see the well-worn grain of company “culture” begin to show in ourselves and the others we work with. We see the behaviors that are counter to doing things better, to doing them the right way, and we allow this to happen. We see people who have stopped learning, people who no longer have wonder and curiosity and no longer have passion and drive. This is a form of giving up, or retiring from what is important. This is not an option. Dan Wieden nailed it.

In a similar vein, I found an excellent, direct and honest speech by Dan Wieden on the W+K London blog Welcome to Optimism, which I have followed for a long time. Both the speech and the blog are totally worth reading.

One company’s vision of the automobiles of the future. Volkswagen recently launched Volkswagen 2028, a website that explores VW’s perspective on a number of issues and how those issues might manifest themselves through design twenty years from now, a perspective rooted deeply in Volkswagen’s longer term brand strategy (read that as marketing). This is not so much about showing us futuristic concepts as much as demonstrating the response to different needs, constraints, and technologies. Responses that are increasingly important to people. Specifically, Volkswagen provides us with some detail in how, in the near future, they might respond to issues of sustainability, networked mobility, customization and personalization, and accident prevention. All of the concepts offer hypothetical technologies that either replace the traditional human-car interaction, or enhance it by steamlining and focusing the action of driving. It’s a good exercise, and I have no doubt that the issues and ideas addressed by VW here are the beginnings of some pretty sophisticated changes that we will see in automobiles. While I imagine that all automobile manufacturers are digging into these concepts, at least to some degree, it is interesting to see Volkswagen put it out there in such a cohesive and comprehensive way, though this is clearly as much about marketing as it is about showcasing advanced engineering thinking.

There are several components of varying complexity that make up any business. It is the quality of these components, and their unique combination (hopefully), that provide businesses with a competitive advantage in the marketplace. From the investment side, understanding the quality of an enterprise is very much tied to understanding the business model of that enterprise, and how it contrasts to its competitors - what advantages that business model creates for the business in the marketplace, and how those advantages will scale over time. Additionally, there is tremendous value in understanding at a deep level that the framework of a given business model gives an edge as companies survey the competitive landscape for strategic risk, and the opportunities inherent to that risk. It is common for businesses to take a very haphazard approach to analyzing, understanding, and building the foundation of their own business model, it is also common for businesses to miss the opportunity of conducting the same analysis of their competitors. This oversight with regards to understanding their own context in the marketplace is most likely due to myth of complexity as it relates to “putting the pieces together” and taking a hard look at the constituent components of the business in question.

I was excited to find the slideshow above, and the related posts, by Alex Osterwalder. Alex has put forth a model for analyzing, understanding, designing, and contrasting business models that is easy, straightforward, and, I believe, incredibly valuable. He provides detail for what actually makes up a business model here. There is a lot of writing in business pubs right now about business model reinvention and business model innovation due to the nature of the economy and the competitive environment of different industries. This is all good, but often what is missing are the practical matters of creating an effective baseline from which to engage in exercises and experiments into innovation and reinvention. I believe that Alex succinctly provides us the tools for creating this baseline in a way that is quickly revealing of problems and opportunities, and tied to creating understanding.

Take a moment to review the slideshow and then read Alex’s latest post at his blog Business Model Design and Innovation.

I don’t think this is an issue for most of the rest of the world, but for the United States this is a serious design challenge. This is mostly due to our long established culture of valuing big and fast when it comes to our personal transportation. In the U.S., we’re just catching wind of small and efficient, and this is being driven by our pocketbooks at the moment, and not necessarily by doing what is right. Whatever works to achieve change…

Being an absolute gearhead has presented some interesting dilemmas for me, personally, as I reconcile this fact with my work in sustainable design. I love cars, but I do not love the current range of high-mileage fuel efficient vehicles currently on offer. Yes, the Tesla is sexy and it is indeed fast. It is also around $100k and only six or so have been made and delivered (far below the pace for the 650 promised this year). More options are going to be available in the near future from a range of manufacturers, and these options will begin to push into performance territory while also delivering on great design.

The VW One-Liter concept pictured above appears to be one of these options, at least from the perspective of design. A concept car from a couple years ago, and not tentatively scheduled for production until 2012, the One-Liter seems to be getting more attention from VW. There are plans to produce limited numbers of this 282 mpg, two seat microcar (around 1000 vehicles) over the next year or so with planning being done around it being a mainstream production model by 2012. I like this car. I like the influences of mid-century automobile and aircraft design that doesn’t feel too retro. I like that you access it via a pop-up cockpit canopy, and that the passenger sits behind the driver. I especially like the interior, which looks purposeful and performance focused:

Engineers at VW made good use of materials like magnesium, titanium and aluminum to greatly reduce the weight of the One-Liter, down to a third the weight of a Toyota Echo. Carbon fiber also figures prominently in the design of the vehicle, and is actually a big reason VW is considering production much sooner for this car. The cost of carbon fiber has dropped dramatically much faster than VW had expected, making the production of the One-Liter much more viable. I want to drive one very badly.

via Wired via Garrick Van Buren (thanks Garrick)

CrunchGear’s Peter Ha spent some quality time with James Dyson at his company laboratories. Dyson talks about design and engineering principles, and the value in personally working his products over. The limitations of the blip.tv player prevented me from embedding my favorite video in the series above, but you can view it here. The video is of Dyson giving an impromptu product test, with mixed results. It is great to see such a design legend come across as totally human, and a little bit fumbly.

“Anyone developing new products and new technology needs one characteristic above all else: hope.”

James Dyson

More video from Ha’s visit here. I will say that the blip.tv video player is a TOTAL pain in the ass.

How many lost opportunities have there been from research projects that seem to have gone wrong, and were subsequently thrown out? Countless. Not so for Swedish chemist Saeid Esmaeilzadeh, who came to Sweden over twenty years ago as an eight year old with his family fleeing from Iran. Esmaeilzadeh’s work is focused on developing new types of glass and ceramics. During this work he accidentally discovered a new kind of ceramic, one that has strength superior to steel, when he inadvertently cooled ceramics he was working with too quickly. It would normally be thought that this compromised the ceramics, and they would be discarded. But Esmaeilzadeh decided to look more closely at his mistake, and in the process he discovered he had created a “Super Glass”. He has started a company to work with Super Glass, called Diamorph, and they are hard at work looking at various commercial applications for this material.

More support for the value in failing forward, taking risks, and looking at accidents. That is where innovation happens. Clearly, you can miss these opportunities if you’re not curious enough to look more closely.

I came across Super Glass at Core77.

There is a very good chance that drilling will begin in the coastal waters of the United States, and perhaps also places like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. This brings the possibility of environmental disasters due to accidents and spills much closer to home. There are arguments for and against doing this, and one of the more interesting arguments for allowing the drilling is that the United States has been outsourcing its environmental disasters for too long, and that the drilling off our coasts is inevitable. We have the technology and care for the environment to drill in a way that will minimize environmental impact and address accidents in a fast and efficient manner. I do not really agree with this logic, but knowing that the drilling is going to happen it is good to have technology on our side.

Enter the OSP robot, a concept by product designer Ji-hoon Kim, which is a modular, easily transportable, solar powered, oil spill containment solution. Once deployed the robots autonomously contain the spill with an inflatable barrier quickly minimizing the impact of the oil spill and supporting the successful cleanup and management of the accident by the cleanup teams. Response to a spill with these robots is swift, as they can be quickly deployed from special dispensers on board helicopters or boats:

This is one of many oil spill containment tools that should be investigated, and it would be good to not wait until we are drilling off the coast of the United States to do so. An environmental disaster in Africa or Asia from an oil spill has reverberations throughout the global environment, and establishing and mandating a response protocol would be a very, very good thing.

via Inhabitat

As construction crews rush to complete the CCTV tower in Beijing the systems for using the building’s surface as a broadcast medium are beginning to be tested. It was intended from the beginning with the original concept presented by OMA that the skin of the tower would be active and dynamic. This video gives us an idea of what that will be like.

via toomanytribbles

I came across this video this morning and it got my attention. Video is coming on strong as an interaction media, and we are only at the very, very beginning of how we will be able to interact with video. The direct manipulation of video as a way to navigate opens up a whole host of possibilities.

I posted about the Mazda Furai concept, pictured above, back in January with regards to how it manifests Mazda’s Nagare, or “flow”, design language. Last week I came across a ton of content at the Car Design Blog with regards to Mazda design and what Nagare means to the organization. Mazda views Nagare as the physical manifestation of their brand and brand heritage, and has put tremendous emphasis on Nagare as the foundation of a future looking design language for the company. Of particular note are the descriptions of Mazda’s design process and the admission by Mazda’s global head of design, Laurens van den Acker, that to realize Nagare they had to break the golden rule of design, which is to simplify:

“Everybody will tell you to remove lines until you have no more left to remove. We are adding lines, which is kind of counter intuitive, but if we do it well it looks natural and creates beauty.”

Laurens van den Acker, General Manager Mazda Design