fujitsu hybrid energy harvester
by: Designboom - Weblog, 2010-12-10 15:45:00 UTC
a marked achievement in the development of energy harvesting technology, this single device can efficiently convert both heat and light to electricity.
read more
Buoy oh Buoy
by: Yanko Design, 2010-12-10 09:05:50 UTC
Presenting the full future of sea traffic control. This is a new kind of buoy designed by Tae Hoon Lee and Sung Yong Kim, designed to be not only self-sufficient, but radio controlled. Each one of these devices is powered by EPAM, aka the undulating energy of waves. According to Lee and Kim, the EPAM is “shrunk or extended by the undulating force of the wave, such distortion of EPAM creates the electricity by induction of current drift.” How much power? Hows 5w of current per second? Enough? I think so.
These buoys prevent the colliding of ships in the night with their bright LED lights up top, using GPS signals to make an optimal environment for ships to travel. These buoys are easily tracked and controlled using RFID. Looks fabulous!
Designers: Tae Hoon Lee and Sung Yong Kim
----------
Yanko Design
Timeless Designs - Explore wonderful concepts from around the world!
Yanko Design Store - We are about more than just concepts. See what's hot at the YD Store!
Design of the Decade: ClearRx
by: Yanko Design, 2010-12-10 12:49:09 UTC
The first decade of the 21st century has been frequently accused of lacking coherence. Ironically, coherence emerged as one of the prevailing themes of some of the decade’s most important design work. Target’s Clear Rx bottles—hailed by IDSA’s esteemed jury as the standout Design of the Decade receiving a gold award and it’s designed by a student no less.
The story of the ClearRx begins in the frail hands of a grandmother who misunderstood the labeling on a pill bottle and took the wrong dosage of prescription medication. That mistake made her ill and inspired her granddaughter—then a master’s candidate at the School of Visual Arts (SVA)—to ask simple, yet powerful questions about what had been taken for granted as the acceptable way to store and distribute medicine.
Deborah Adler—the granddaughter/grad student—identified several problems with existing pill bottle designs. Why were so many different styles of labels used? Why did information about the drug provider so often trump information about the drug itself? Why was the type so tiny? Why were so many factors unwittingly conspiring to increase the risks associated with taking prescribed drugs?
When Adler completed her SVA thesis in May 2002, she had arrived at a solution that changed a long-neglected form factor and fundamentally overhauled the communication design of the pill bottle. She produced a compelling prototype that offered a safer, more usable means of storing and distributing medicine—but it was still just a prototype.
Adler’s original Safe Rx design raised almost as many questions as it sought to answer. Would it satisfy all of the mandates laid out by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)? How would it change the workflow of the average pharmacist? Could any single company effectively deploy the design as a business solution?
Target, of course, chose to become that company, and it has been rewarded pretty handsomely. Since the ClearRx launched in 2005, Target’s pharmacy business has experienced double-digit sales increases. That return followed an investment in design—and a very thoughtful commitment to the design process.
After Target engaged with Adler, the company coordinated resources to develop her prototype as both a product and a system equipped to serve the product. It hired Sonic Design’s Klaus Rosburg, IDSA to shape the industrial design process. He joined Adler and Target’s native design team to reimagine the bottle design so that it would achieve all of Adler’s original communication design objectives without upending Target’s supply chain or adversely affecting the work of its pharmacists.
A D-shaped bottle designed to be read more easily evolved to become a wide, flat container capped at the bottom to create more space to communicate with the user. The original design featured an unusual semicircle cap that would have faced difficulty obtaining child safety certifications from the FDA. The final design encountered no such problem.
Color-coded labels aimed at personalizing the pill-taking experience were not feasible given the expenses associated with installing and maintaining color printers, but the need for personalization was paramount. Consequently, the team developed a cheaper, equally effective personalization system featuring six primary color rubber rings that attach to the neck of the bottle.
While Adler’s original information hierarchy remained largely unchanged as the SafeRx morphed into the ClearRx, she did tap her mentor, Milton Glaser, to help redesign instructional and warning graphics to be consistent with the intentions of her information hierarchy.
Along the iterative path, Target’s technology services, pharmacy team, pharmacy operations, pharmacy training and marketing team were tasked with figuring out how the product would be produced and handled. Target upgraded its CRM and point-of-sale IT systems, leveraged its pharmacists to create new workflows and exploited marketing to explain to consumers the new ways they would interact with their meds.
All of this may sound like something of a creative miracle—and it is, to a degree. The story of Target’s ClearRx also represents some of the most elemental and very best design practices: identify a consumer problem, develop a solution, scale the solution to make it compatible with your business and collaborate with all the appropriate stakeholders to bring that solution to market.
In this case, a designer with a superior idea initiated a complex process to deliver a solution that made a quantum leap in clarity for a business and the consumers it serves. The Target ClearRx was, according to Design of the Decade Chair Chuck Jones, FIDSA and his fellow jurors, the finest example of design that was realized during the first decade of the 21st century.
Design of the Decade is hosted by IDSA. You can view the other winning entries here.
Credit: Deborah Adler, Klaus Rosburg of Sonic Design, Patrick Douglas, Matthew Grisik
----------
Yanko Design
Timeless Designs - Explore wonderful concepts from around the world!
Yanko Design Store - We are about more than just concepts. See what's hot at the YD Store!
Chinese manufacturer rolls out first solar-powered air conditioner
by: Ecofriend, 2010-12-09 06:30:04 UTC
Eco Factor: Air conditioner powered by renewable solar energy.
China’s Gree Electric Appliances has developed the country’s first solar-powered air-conditioning system that can also send excess electricity to the power grid. The company has stated that the first 50,000 units of the air conditioner will be sold in the American market, after which the system will be made available for purchase in China.
The system, which mainly makes use of renewable solar energy, makes use of normal grid electricity only when solar power is inadequate. The company has big plans for the second version of the air conditioner, which will be 100 percent solar powered.
Via: Xinhuanet
Food and design videos: Design Academy Eindhoven
by: Dezeen, 2010-12-09 14:30:52 UTC
In this short interview we conducted as part of our Food and Design report for luxury kitchen appliances brand Scholtès, Design Academy Eindhoven chairwoman Anne Mieke Eggenkamp presents graduate projects involving food, including this system that uses sand to keep vegetables fresh (above). (more…)
IDSA & Teague announce Design of the Decade award winners
by: Core77, 2010-12-08 19:31:34 UTC
It can't be easy to condense ten years' worth of design into a single series of awards, but that's what the IDSA and Teague have collaborated to do. The duo have just announced their Design of the Decade award winners, honoring ID'ers across a variety of categories stretching from 2001 to today.
Above is the Gold winner in the Consumer category, Target's ClearRx medicine bottle from 2005, designed to make it easier for the elderly to identify and access their pills. And while the expected categories of "[Best] Solution to a Consumer Problem" and "Most Profitable Solution to a Business Problem" feature prominently in the DoD Awards, there's plenty of weightier categories like "[Best] Solution to a Developing World Social Problem," "Best Sustainable Design Solution" and "Most Responsible Design Solution." Check 'em all out here.
(more...)
European Union Bans BPA From Baby Bottles
by: Chemistry, 2010-12-03 13:00:00 UTC
The European Commission has voted to ban bisphenol A from being used in baby bottles.
Eco-minded architect creates sustainable café using bamboo
by: Ecofriend, 2010-12-07 09:26:37 UTC
Eco Factor: Sustainable building made from bamboo and other natural materials.
Eco-conscious architect and designer Vo Trong Nghia has created a sustainable café in the Binh Duong province of Vietnam, which has been crafted entirely from bamboo and other natural materials. Christened the Water and Wind Café, the structure shows how strong bamboo can be without making use of even a single nail.
The dynamic domed structure, which has been created without using any modern machinery or metal structures, has been weaved together using traditional Vietnamese weaving techniques. The 30ft tall structure, which is covered in a local bush plant, has an opening at the top of the dome, which allows daylight to filter through, reducing the overall energy demands.
Via: Inhabitat/Environmental Graffiti
Greenfab plans to assemble Seattle’s first modular home
by: Ecofriend, 2010-12-07 10:23:33 UTC
Eco Factor: Modular home to target LEED Platinum certification.
Seattle-based developer Greenfab has announced that the company will be assembling the city’s first modular home that targets the prestigious LEED Platinum certification. The home will consist of six boxes, each of which is 12 feet wide, 20 feet long and 16 feet high. Built at a factory in Idaho, the boxes will be part of a house that will have 1790sqf of area, with three bedrooms and 2.75 bathrooms.
Designed to reduce construction waste and time, the modular homes are far less likely to develop mold and mildew problems. These green homes will also include systems that harvest rainwater and gray water, which can later be reused. Moreover, the green homes with also include solar panels to offset 23 percent of the home’s annual energy use. Reducing energy demands even more, the homes will make use of efficient systems and appliances and wall insulation 35 percent better than code.
Via: Seattle PI
Innowattech develops pads to harvest energy from passing trains
by: Ecofriend, 2010-12-08 10:34:28 UTC
Eco Factor: Pads harvest mechanical energy from trains.
After testing piezoelectric energy generators that can produce renewable energy from passing cars on the highway, Israel’s Innowattech has now moved to trains with a similar product. The company has performed a project with the National Railway Company of Israel to examine IPEG PAD, a rail pad that can be a solution to the smart rail field.
The test included the replacement of 32 existing railway pads with the company’s IPEG PADs, which feature piezoelectric generators designed to produce electricity for local solutions. The pads harvest mechanical strain and convert it to electrical power, which can be used to determine the number of wheels, weight of each wheel and the wheel’s position. In addition the speed of the train and the wheel diameter can also be calculated.
The company states that areas of railway track that get between 10 and 20 ten-car trains an hour can be used to produce up to 120KWh of renewable electricity per hour, which can be used by the railways or transferred to the grid.
Via: Energy Harvesting Journal
Comments by our Users
Be the first to write a comment for this item.