If you need an excuse to sleep through that Psych 101 lecture instead of taking notes, just come to class with one of these $20 Claustrophobic Notebooks that are designed to be hard to open. To access the pages within you’ll actually need to tear the cover and individual sheets on one edge. More »
The Fukushima Daiichi meltdown and other recent disasters like Deepwater Horizon highlight a very real need for robotic first responders that can operate in inhospitable environments. In response, DARPA recently issued a Robotics Challenge addressing the issue. Here’s the design that Carnegie Mellon University’s National Robotics Engineering Center (CMU NREC) hopes will take home the challenge’s $2 million purse—and save lives some day. More »
Why suffer through all the boring parts of the Star Wars movies when this set of self-adhesive vinyl decals lets you perpetually relive the best part: that epic space battle from Return of the Jedi. For $30 the collection includes a squadron of X-Wings and TIE Fighters (TIE Bombers or Vader’s TIE Fighter if you want to get picky) and of course the rebuilt Death Star just waiting to get exploded all over again. [Etsy via Nerd Approved] More »
The Battersea Power Station is an iconic London building, but it’s been tragically unused since it was decommissioned in 1983. Now architectural firm Atelier Zündel Cristea wants to turn that around with a proposal to make the abandoned spot a roller coaster. Where do we sign? More »
Wander down any highway as recently as 30 years ago, and you’d be confronted by storefronts, banners and billboards that were all hand painted. Sadly that tradition has declined—but this amazing documentary attempts to shed light on the lost art of sign painting. More »
Some times, the good ol’ fashioned ways are the best. Seems Facebook would certainly agree: according to a blog post, its new news feed was developed using paper, Post-its, and a large blank wall. More »
Credit: Yoshikazu Tsuno/AFP/Getty Images
Hitachi has revealed a tiny single-seat vehicle called Ropits; that’s Robot for Personal Intelligent Transport System. Ropit is a robot vehicle that can pick up and drop off passengers independently. Just punch in the destination and it will take you there. The vehicle is meant to travel on sidewalks and Hitachi had demonstrated its capability in the city of Tsukuba today. There will be more tests to come. (more…)
By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Flying Cars Better Off With Robot Chauffeurs?, PhotoBot robotic camera takes pictures on its own,
We’ve seen the new Facebook News Feed quite a few times lately, with all its redesigned goodness. While the features, changes, and other particulars have been detailed over the past weeks, Facebook has given us an alternative look into what went into the redesign – namely, a huge floor-to-ceiling paper storyboard and a stack of cards.
The stack of cards wasn’t the only element, of course, but it does provide an interesting visual for what was a fairly elaborate brainstorming process that went on behind the scenes. Facebook’s Jane Justice Leibrock posted a detailed write up about how the design process incorporated user feedback over at Facebook’s User Experience Lab.
According to the piece, the most common feedback Facebook users supplied was, “My feed is cluttered.” Thus the process began of determining what precisely this meant, something that is said to have involved methods from both anthropology and psychology. The meaning of “clutter,” as supplied by users, was deconstructed using the open-ended interview method, which revealed that the complaint of clutter involved posts more than design.
A look at the rote data, however, showed that this was also the content – page posts, songs listened to, games played, etc. – that users interacted with the most. This, then, necessitated a task to offer this content while separating it from the News Feed. This involved the “card sort” method, which was used to determine the splitting up and displaying of various feeds. The participants in the research were given a stack of cards that displayed recent content from their Facebook News Feed. These participants were tasked with sorting the cards, picking out the ones featuring content they were interested in.
These stories were then sorted into different categories based on why the participants liked them: funny, friend update, etc. While part of the results of this included obvious things, such as that Facebook users prefer content from close friends, a couple unexpected discoveries were also made: that people prefer content relevant to their interests, as well as a category for Facebook friends who aren’t close real life friends, but whose statuses they enjoyed seeing.
This information led to the redesign that Facebook users will see in the near future, which will hopefully prove more intuitive and less that what you see on the social network right now. You can get a run down of what to expect from our guide here.
[via Facebook]
Facebook reveals how the updated News Feed was developed is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
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Starbucks baristas will write your name on the side of your coffee cup, but that’s no where near the level of personalization the Barista Bot is capable of. After snapping your portrait with a webcam, it uses a robotic arm to then draw your face in the milk foam atop your latte. That’s overkill in the best way possible. More »
Howard Meister is a fifth-generation furniture designer. His pieces have places in galleries all over the world. And in the 1980s, he was making some crazy chairs that looked like they belonged on the set of Beetlejuice. More »
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