From the future-forward aesthetic and unique manufacturing processes of Mykita eyewear to the sustainable ‘buy-one-give-one’ business model that is Warby Parker, we’ve seen quite the gamut of what’s possible for eyewear design and manufacturing in the past few years. Belgian industrial designer Frédéric Gooris has expanded that bubble by a few more breaths with his Kompas Sunglass Collection for the iconic Alessi brand that uses magnets rather than screws or clever material folds to create a ‘floating hinge’.
‘The Floating Hinge’
Consisting of eight frame styles and a wide range of color options, the Kompas collection was inspired by the ‘simplicity and brilliance of a compass’ according to designer Frédéric Gooris. The thin embedded magnets located at the hinges aren’t just for looks either; these floating hinges also allow you to unfold the frame one-handed with a simple gesture using the magnetic orientation the same way a compass needle always points North. Additionally, the floating hinge allows much more flexibility in adjusting frames for different face sizes and the absence of screws means less maintenance-related problems. The frames themselves are made from both handmade acetate and hypo-allergenic titanium:
Having graduated from Hogeschool Antwerpen in 1998, designer Frédéric Gooris spent the next 5 years working for Philippe Starck and Stefano Giovannoni on a wide range of projects for companies ranging from Target to Lavazza and Nissan to Siemens. In 2004 he founded Studio Gooris in Milan doing product design and concept design work for companies ranging from Alessi to Ferrero and Levis to JCPenny. Currently, he is residing in Hong Kong where he describes his new home as “one of the most dynamic cities in the world and located at the doorstep of the factory of the world”.
Few things can drive a human being more than passion—but coffee might be one of them. For this reason, it makes great sense that people are passionate about coffee. Some of the innovations that have surfaced in the realm of kitchen gadgetry in recent years have been pretty profound, but the coffee maker itself seems to be one culinary contraption that still has room for improvement. Enter Bonaverde—a Berlin-based upstart on a mission to manufacture the world’s first true “all-in-one” coffee maker, capable of not just grinding and brewing, but roasting as well.
The underlying concept is simple, and undoubtedly, many have pondered it before: in order to achieve the freshest cup of coffee possible from a single machine, then you will need to have a single device capable of executing all three preparatory steps—roast, grind, brew. Bonaverde has taken a very unusual path toward tackling the task of creating the super-machine that can make this happen. The company has posted their coffee maker conundrum as a design challenge on Jovoto, an online creative incubator in which a public user community can collaborate to solve design dilemmas and pitch concepts. Currently, there are just under three days left in the challenge, the ultimate winner of which will receive €1,500 ($2,029 USD), plus a €0.80 royalty bonus on each machine sold after production has begun. Additional “Community Prizes” are also being awarded in monetary form—€1,000 for second place, €750 for third, €500 for fourth, and €250 for fifth-through-seventh places.
The November Seventh deadline for the competition is fast approaching and the challenge has attracted some quality talent from around the globe since its October Tenth opening. After the challenge closes, submissions will be considered during a seven-day review period, after which the winners will be announced. Once a final design has been chosen and solidified, Bonaverde plans to post the winning concept on kickstarter to crowd-source the funds necessary to actually put the device in action, and ultimately take it to market.
Thoughts on the Business Aspect
Paying upfront costs to attract talent on Jovoto and then transposing the biz to kickstarter is an interesting strategy, and it is certainly one which defines the current era of capitalizing on the benefits of social media. Establishing a dynamic personality for an upstart these days is becoming an increasingly critical step in the digital age, and it is an important one especially for companies that want to attract the attention of niche subcultures. Using social media as a lever to award your brand with cult fame seems to be a popular way of gaining appreciation for grassroots flavor, and more importantly, for attracting people who are not only willing to endorse a product, but the values of the entire company behind it. The coffee market is perfect for that—the past two decades have certainly made it obvious that folks are willing to pay a premium for an artisan-brewed cup of their favorite roast. As we have seen, being a Barista these days is not just a job, but an art form, lifestyle and career, all rolled into one.
At this point in the game, Bonaverde has produced 135 prototypes and has had over 15,000 people tasting the products that have percolated out of them. The challenge that the company has posted on Jovoto is mainly geared toward refining the aesthetic appearance of the device, whilst keeping the principal three-step process and relevant machinery in mind (and in one single sleek chassis). Essentially, it is a challenge in industrial design, or more pertinently, a test of the age-old balancing-act of form versus function.
Author Commentary
Thus far, over ninety concepts have been uploaded to Bonaverde’s idea page on Jovoto. From an engineering perspective, many of the community submissions that have been posted do not seem terribly practical from an engineering standpoint, demonstrating a lack of consideration for fundamental areas concerning thermodynamic principles, durability, and design-for-manufacture. Nevertheless, the vast majority of the submissions are quite pretty in terms of aesthetics—which is to be expected in any competitive design challenge (and of course it was the main focus of this one).
Despite receiving a large number of submissions that are questionable in terms of commercial viability, there are a handful of really solid-looking proposals which seem entirely feasible to produce under the considerably-generous €100 max on the predicted cost-of-manufacture. My personal favorite is “Coffeebox” by Monstro. While my intuition tells me that the design will need a much taller top in order to house the roasting and grinding mechanisms (which will likely be gravity-fed to a certain extent), I think that Monstro’s concept is extraordinarily practical. It is one of few designs viewable which features an interior cavity large enough to house all of the essential components that will need to fit inside of it. Additionally, the Coffeebox has a very wide base, which is critical in any machine with multiple motors and mechanisms that function asynchronously in close quarters—they will resist each other and offset balance. Here is how I see it:
The roasting component is most likely to be horizontally-mounted, assuming that it functions like a typical roaster, which works like a cylindrical rock tumbler with a heating element underneath. The grinding component will almost certainly be vertically-mounted and gravity-fed, as are most automatic grinding devices for coffee beans, or otherwise. The brewing system will likely require a considerably large motor to actuate a pump mech that can direct the water flow from the reservoir through a heating system (unless the reservoir will be gravity-fed like a commercial BUNN® coffee maker, but none of the current designs exhibit features that imply the use of that technology).
Monstro’s design is one of only a few that takes these basics into consideration. CVAG’s Futura Bonaverde Coffee Machine is another, and was the winner of the “Early-Bird” challenge in the competition, after it was rated the best design to be submitted by October 30th, one week before the final deadline. While the specifics on the dimensions of many of the submissions are vague, both Monstro and CVAG went big (considering that a typical coffee mug is about five inches tall, which would make the two respective designs over 20” tall each—entirely necessary to house all of the innards). CVAG also did a cost analysis for their parts—props!
It Has Been Done Before
A great idea has been something to cherish for as long as humans have been able to think. But in a day and age where great minds are thinking alike more than ever, it is becoming increasingly difficult to capitalize on a thought before someone else does. Accordingly, it is also sometimes difficult to learn if someone else has defeated you in the race to the finish line. For that reason, it is often easier to innovate than it is to invent.
It is inarguable that Bonaverde has demonstrated strong will and passion for the creation of their full-cycle coffee machine concept. It will not be surprising if in five years’ time, the now small German upstart is a respected name amongst households that appreciate a fine brew. The company has clearly begun to pique the interest of their target audience, and has laid fantastic seeds for cornering a growing and evolving market of coffee aficionados. Alas, claiming Bonaverde’s prospective product to be the “World’s First Roast-Grind-Brew” coffee machine is an untrue statement.
Over a decade ago, a little-known company called “UNIMAX” produced an entire line of coffee machines which completed the three-step roasting, grinding and brewing trifecta from start-to-finish, just as Bonaverde intends to do. The UNIMAX brand offered a number of models including the 425si 551i, 555si, 585si and the 2000 “Micro” which all had the three-step process as their main selling-point. From my research, is not entirely clear to me why the company fell and remained under-the-radar during its years in operation, and concurrently, it is not clear to me why the UNIMAX brand ultimately dissolved. It could be that ordering unroasted, raw green coffee beans 10+ years ago was a hassle that even the most particular coffee enthusiasts were not willing to deal with.
There are a small number of avid at-home DIY coffee aficionados who hold their UNIMAX machines very dear to this day. Maybe that notion could imply great encouragement for Bonaverde’s revival of the old concept. Hopefully, for Bonaverde, there will not be any patent issues in the revival process.
Winter is coming, and that means your heating bill might start to mount up, but if you’re constantly battling for control of the thermostat, a new gadget is here to help you and your housemates. Say hello to Wristify, a thermoelectric bracelet which is designed to keep your body temperature at an optimal level, meaning you won’t have to hide under blankets in the winter or hog the air-con in the summer. Read on for all the details!
A group of MIT engineering students came up with the new tech, and while it’s currently only a prototype, it’s still still a very promising project. The device monitors air and skin temperature, and will then shoot thermal pulses into your wrist to either cool, or warm you up depending if it’s beach weather or ski season. All it’s down to is small, quick changes in temperature on parts of the body with high blood flow, and that’ll make you feel right at home once the wrist-wear has beamed a thermal pulse.
The wristwatch-looking prototype can be powered for up to eight hours, and it can change the body’s temperature by up to 0.4 degrees Celsius per second. Thanks to the tech, the makers of Wristify scooped the $10,000 (£6,225) first prize at this year’s MADMEC, MIT’s annual materials-science design competition with the intention of using the tech to lower overall costs in buildings that use space heating and cooling. The team thinks that if its Wristify tech can stop even just one building from adjusting its temperature by one degrees Celsius, that would help save around 100 kilowatt-hours per month in costs – not bad for a wearable piece of kit.
Motorola’s hatched a new plan to take on the likes of Apple and Samsung in the smartphone game: let you build your own. Want to add your own screen, own camera, own processor, piece by piece? Soon, you might just be able to thanks to Project Ara.
Motorola today revealed that its Advanced Technology and Projects group has been hard at work on a crazy new concept: a modular smartphone, where separate units piece together to create your own personal, customisable handset.
An endoskeleton holds all the pieces together, but according to the Google-owned mobile company, what goes into each module is up to you, from a new screen to a keyboard, battery or a heart rate monitor.
If it sounds a lot like another recent modular phone campaign, it’s no coincidence. Motorola employees recently met with Dave Hakkens, the creator of the PhoneBloks concept, to work on the project, and plan to engage with the community that’s formed around it to draw on their ideas and flesh it out in the open.
Intrigued? The company will be inviting developers to begin work on modules in a few months, and release a developer kit (MDK) this winter. You can see how it might look in the video below – would you piece together your very own phone like this?
This is an excellent piece regarding to connect a product to the internet or not. Also a lot of strong points on consumer research.
Thanks to widespread Internet adoption and over 10 billion connected devices around the world, companies today are more excited than ever about the Internet of Things. Add in the hype around Google Glass and the Nest Thermostat, and nearly every business, including those from traditionally low–tech industries, wants to get on the cloud, track a group of devices, and gather data. The question, however, is not if a device can be connected, but why the company is connecting a previously "dumb" product to the cloud. Or stated differently, if a company invests in making my toaster talk to my lawnmower, is that really a good business decision and why?
Companies that are successfully adapting and innovating Internet of Things platforms are focused on identifying meaningful opportunities, not just technologies. These opportunities bridge a practical understanding of what embedded computing could potentially do with a clear hypothesis about what will change the game for a large consumer segment or cross–section of industries.
To create successful connected device–based businesses, senior leaders should be prepared to answer three questions that I call the Internet of Why: 1. Why does connecting to the cloud create greater value for the user?
Although the cost of sensors and RFID tags continue to decrease, connecting a previously "dumb" device to the cloud often requires investments in new capabilities and features that must be maintained over time, resulting in a more premium product. The higher price point can be justified only if adding connectivity truly addresses previously unmet customer needs or opportunities. For Philips Hue, an internet–enabled light bulb set, understanding why consumers would want connected lighting was the first major step to building a great platform. In the early phases of the project, the Hue product team identified hundreds of use case scenarios, which were repeatedly explored and tested until four consumer value propositions––ambience creation, security, biological benefits, and gentle reminders––were identified. These value propositions, not the technology itself, established the direction for product development efforts. 2. Why are the connected features on your product roadmap integral to the core experience?
When connecting a product to the web, it can be tempting to build the most ideal user experience that fulfills both the grandest ambitions of discriminating customers and the perfectionist inclinations of the product team. However, creating the ideal takes time and money, and assumptions about perfection will change based on customer feedback. Taking a Lean Startup approach, with an emphasis on just the features that need to be deployed, encourages a more focused first–generation product and faster speed to market.
The team behind the famous Pebble watch, which debuted as a Kickstarter campaign, allowed for prototyping and a limited run of the first–generation device.. After demonstrating the value of the core experience, the Pebble team added meaningful features, like waterproofing and an updated SDK, based on actual feedback from users about what they would pay for. 3. Why does connecting to the cloud enhance your business model?
Connecting products offers the potential to fundamentally shift the revenue and cost dynamics of any business, but embedding connectivity also introduces greater monetization complexity. Whereas an unconnected product might have one revenue stream, a web–enabled product can leverage multiple revenue streams spanning a variety of B2B and B2C customers. The potential for new services––both free and paid––and unique possibilities associated with new data streams makes alignment on a business model even more difficult.
Progressive Insurance's Snapshot program is an example of how dramatically the Internet of Things can transform a traditional business model. In exchange for inserting a telematics device into the car's diagnostic port, Progressive will provide a discounted policy rate based on how an insured motorist actually drives, including how hard he or she brakes and the time of day the car is used. By offering this type of usage–based insurance, Progressive is better able to match insurance premiums to the actual risk profile of individual policy holders, resulting in significantly higher per–policy profitability and improved pricing for safe drivers.
In the age of connected devices, access to technology is no longer a barrier to entry; open–source hardware tools such as Arduino and Raspberry Pi can be purchased for under $35, while software and web services from Amazon are available for pennies per terabyte. Instead, the challenge is to bridge the technology to a larger context and understand why connecting to the cloud creates greater value for the user, product experience, and business model. Companies that are actively addressing this contextual challenge, as opposed to focusing on technology and hype, are having the most success and enabling true differentiation in the connected–products space.
As designers, we all want our designs to last forever but we are also beginning to see what a terrifying world it would be if everything we create really did last forever. The permanence of plastics has gone from a dream to a nightmare where literally everything that we have made out of plastic that hasn’t been recycled or burned will remain in its current state for 1000’s of years. Luckily, there is hope on the horizon in the form of Arboform, a 100% biodegradable thermoplastic made of lignen, the structural part of a plant’s cell wall and a waste product of paper manufacturing.
Plastic Qualities + Wood Properties
Arboform was created by two german scientists, Helmut Nägele and Jürgen Pfitzer in 1996. Through their company Tecnaro, they have created over 900 variations of the material and are continuing to develop more. Arboform comes in pellet, sheet, and stock forms and has been used in the production of designer high heels, speakers and, luxury vehicle interiors. Recently they have developed a version called liquid wood for toymakers and have produced an eco-friendly nativity set just in time for the holidays. Arboform has been used in the production of designer shoes, high end speakers and Tecnaro is currently working with Porsche to create more sustainable vehicle interiors.
The material’s qualities are quite impressive because it marries the structural stability and molding capabilities of thermoplastics with the ecological, acoustic and visual properties of wood into a sustainable and affordable material that outperforms many hydrocarbon polymers (here’s a chart from Tecnaro if you want to get specific).
So maybe instead of our designs lasting forever, Arboform will allow them to return to the Earth from whence they came after they serve their purpose. For more info, be sure to take a look at their Material Overview PDF.
Planes, trains, automobiles, structures, tools, hardware, cameras, machinery, weapons, appliances—these are all things you can design, and they're all things that can rust. The simple curse of the oxidation process has given birth to entire industries that attempt to treat, prevent and halt this damaging process. It's something scientists have been working on with some success but certainly not anywhere close to the scale of what researchers at Rice University are proposing.
You've seen us post about graphene before, and you'll see us post about it again. Because this one-atom thick layer of graphite, which rocked scientists' world more than a decade ago, is the new superstar of material science. It will be everywhere, as ubiquitous as glass or steel, and its uses will be beyond our imagination. But the application for graphene that's currently coming into focus is the prevention of rust.
Scientists at Rice have created "white graphene" using thin sheets of hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN). It's basically a sheet of atoms that look a lot like chicken wire. And it can protect pretty much any material from rusting. It's been tested in temperatures as high as 2,012° F. It's thin, light and invisible. It could be used for anything from delicate electronics or photonics, for example, protecting solar cells from humidity, heat and water.
These "white graphene" sheets were created using a process called chemical vapor deposition. Scientists first grew the material on nickel foil and tested it within an oxygen-rich, super hot environment. Then they grew the h-BN on a layer of graphene and could transfer this combo to copper or steel with perfect results.
Here's a photo of an extreme close up of the before and after applying the h-BN coating.
Incidentally, boron nitride has already proven itself a formidable material as it can soak up pollutants such as oil spills. It can absorb up to 33 times its own weight in oil and solvents. (Typical materials used to soak up oil can only absorb up to ten times their weight.)
Stay tuned for more from the world of graphene, as this material is incredibly strong, light (it's only one atom thick, which makes it essentially two-dimensional!), transparent, and an excellent conductor of electricity and heat. Since 2004, we've seen an explosion of research that has only scratched the surface of potentialuses for graphene.
Allied Electronics (Allied) and RS Components (RS), the trading brands of Electrocomponents plc has introduced DesignSpark Mechanical, a new 3D solid modelling and assembly tool that is available to all -- totally free of charge.
Mark Cundle, Global Head of Technical Marketing at RS Componentsintroduced the DesignSpark Mechanical
The software package is, says RS, free, fast and intuitive, opening new possibilities from concept design through to manufacturing.
Screenshot of DesignSpark Mechanical's user interface (click to enlarge)
Developed in conjunction with SpaceClaim, the new easy-to-use DesignSpark Mechanical is intended to overcome the prohibitive costs and the considerable investment in learning time associated with traditional 3D CAD tools. RS says, its simplicity of use means that engineers and others involved in product development can become fully conversant with the software within minutes, rather than the weeks or months required to become skilled with traditional 3D CAD tools. And it is available in multiple languages.
Direct modelling methodology
DesignSpark Mechanical employs a powerful methodology called 'direct modeling', which is very different from traditional feature- or parametric-based 3D CAD software. The tool uses simple gestures that enable real-time editing and instant feedback, making it possible for engineers and others to create geometry and easily explore ideas and product concepts in 3D.
All basic designs can be achieved quickly and easily via the use of the software's four basic tools – Pull, Move, Fill and Combine – you can quickly create 3D objects, manipulate shapes, grab and drag faces and/or edges, set levels of transparency, and you can also combine/merge objects, fragment them, and perform Boolean operations on them. In addition you can use a few familiar Windows keyboard shortcuts such as cut/paste, undo/redo within a drawing or between drawings.
Online 3D models library
The DesignSpark online component library gives all engineers a free access to more than 38,000 3D models, and each of these free-to-use models is available in 24 different formats. RS Components has also collaborated with world-leading 3D content company TraceParts to provide access to millions of models from the online tracepartsonline.net CAD portal in DesignSpark Mechanical's format.
Exported in STL for 3D printing
3D designs can also be exported in STL, the standard file format to enable rapid prototyping builds and computer-aided manufacturing, in addition to providing the ability to quickly obtain Bill-of-Materials (BOM) quotes via the Allied and RS websites. The tool can also import circuit layout files in IDF format from any PCB design tool.
A decoiler's installation (click to enlarge)
The software can also be used to:
produce highly detailed dimensioned models and assemblies
create professional concept designs to assist in your bids
remove bottlenecks by making amendments and additions to your design in seconds, rather than waiting for the CAD department to rework in history-based CAD tools
combine your creation with off-the-shelf components from RS Components and the Allied Electronics 3D library
DesignSpark Mechanical will be available for free download via its site from 16 September 2013.
The Reece Slide Tap is a different take on the typical slider phone; it is a faucet that uses the innovation of touch-pads to the fullest. You can turn on the tap by simply sliding the top and control the temperature via the touchpad on the handle. You can present the temperature, thus eliminating wastage.
There are three parts on the top of the tap: two touchpads for controlling water and temperature and one screen that shows the temperature. Slide is a 2013 Bathroom Innovation Award finalist.
SolidWorks should have added an option to output an image with a transparent background, in Photoview 360. At least Photoview creates an alpha channel that can be saved out along with the colored image. This allows you, if you have Photoshop or a similarly equipped image editing program, to manually remove out the background. This tutorial will go into using the alpha channel to mask out the background of a Photoview render and create a transparent png. The first step is to create your render and save out the layered image. This will create two files an alpha channel and a full color image. The alpha channel will look something like this: You’ll now want to open up the two images in Photoshop and go into the channels tab for the alpha channel image. Right click on the “Gray” channel and choose to duplicate the channel. From the document pull down choose the final color output version and click ok. Go into the final color output’s channels tab and ctrl click the newly duplicated layer. Recheck all of the RGB layers and uncheck the “Gray” layer, so that the full color image is showing. Then go back to the layers tab, right click on the background, and create a duplicate layer as you won’t be able to add a mask to the locked background layer. Create a mask over the background copy by clicking on the icon indicated above. Finally, uncheck the “background” visibility so that you’re left with just the transparent image. Save the image as a png and you’re good to go.
From the future-forward aesthetic and unique manufacturing processes of Mykita eyewear to the sustainable ‘buy-one-give-one’ business model that is Warby Parker, we’ve seen quite the gamut of what’s possible for eyewear design and manufacturing in the past few years. Belgian industrial designer Frédéric Gooris has expanded that bubble by a few more breaths with his Kompas Sunglass Collection for the iconic Alessi brand that uses magnets rather than screws or clever material folds to create a ‘floating hinge’.
