Hasta La Gadget!

Geeksugar: So this geeky bracelet is not Hermès. It’s also not $567.

Instead, this Tetris Bracelet ($70) is pretty cool and while exceptionally geeky, it’s not unwearable.

Maybe it’s the disco lover in me, but lucite jewelry always manages to charm me. All I need is the perfect outfit of primary colors to wear it with.

The Tetris Bracelet is For The Disco Geek [Geeksugar]

Inhabitat: Love the idea of flat-pack in concept, but think the reality involves a frustrating wrestling match with an allen wrench and a cryptic set of Swedish instructions? Not so fast! Aiming to improve upon the not-so-user-friendly IKEA flat-pack experience, Way Basics is a beautiful line of eco-friendly, family-friendly furniture that makes flat pack assembly easy and fun. Made entirely from recycled paper, and requiring no fasteners or screws of any kind, Way Basics is the first green ‘no tools’ line of kids furniture on the market, and we can’t wait to check it out.

WAY BASICS Eco-friendly Flat-Pack Furniture [Inhabitat]

There are horologes, and then there’s La Machine à Ecrire le Temps, known less formally as “The Machine that Writes the Time” — which is exactly, literally what it does. This stunning masterpiece was recently unveiled at Baselworld 2009, and while only those obsessed with time will really appreciate the 1,200 components needed to make this thing tick, anyone into whiz-bang gadgetry will find themselves impressed by the vid of just past the break. Oh, and if you’re looking to buy one to dress up your new sitting room, you should be fully prepared to liquidate nearly $350,000 of whatever you have left to squeeze.

[Via OhGizmo]

Continue reading Video: La Machine à Ecrire le Temps writes time, mesmerizes brains

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

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Dell has been long been the Ugly Betty of the PC industry–functional, smart but severely lacking in the looks department.

But over the last two years, the company’s consumer-targeted PCs have gotten a design makeover that would make Tyra Banks proud. Dell’s latest machines offers sleek designs; unusual materials such as fabric, bamboo and leather; and striking covers designed by graffiti artists. 

"You are seeing the switch from total utilitarian, speed-and-specs kind of thinking to something that will fit the personality of consumer," says Ed Boyd, vice president of consumer products at Dell. "It’s the same transformation you saw in cellphone and the automotive industry."

The former global creative director for Nike, Boyd has helped build Dell’s consumer division into a design powerhouse, churning out products that the company hopes will put it ahead of rivals and bring in consumers who want both style and value in their PCs.

The commitment to better design comes at a challenging time for Dell. Dell’s personal computer shipments fell 16.7 percent worldwide in the
first quarter from a year ago. In the United States alone, Dell shipments fell 16.2 percent, according to research firm IDC.  Meanwhile, Dell’s rival Hewlett Packard increased U.S. shipments 2.9 percent worldwide and 12.2 percent. Dell now ranks second to HP in terms of overall market share in the United States.

In focusing on design, Dell is making a risky bet. Better design could help rejuvenate consumer interest in the company’s products — or it could add to costs and make its products pricey at a time when consumers are rushing in droves to buy inexpensive netbooks.

Meanwhile, driven by Apple’s focus on design, customers are increasingly
looking for products that are stylish yet offer value, says Craig
Vogel, associate dean and professor of design studies at University of
Cincinnati.

"The design of the iPod and the iPhone has driven sales to Apple’s computers, which is something that other companies have noticed," says Vogel. "Design is not an option anymore, the marketplace is demanding it."

It took the clout of Dell founder Michael Dell to get the frumpy, utilitarian PC maker more focused on style. Two years ago, Michael Dell stepped back into the CEO seat to take over a company that seemed to be in danger of losing its luster. Dell’s much-admired efficient supply chain process no longer seemed enough to put the company ahead of its competitors. Dell’s customers were beginning to balk at the company’s bulky machines.

"Nineteen months ago, Michael told me the horse that we rode so far wasn’t going to take us to the next level," Boyd says. "Design was going to have to play a much bigger role at Dell."

As the first step, Michael Dell brought on Ron Garriques, the former Motorola executive credited with the success of the RAZR phone, as the president of Dell’s consumer products.

Garriques, in turn, has attracted star designers like Boyd and helped put together a design team that is growing fast. Five years ago, Dell had just about half a dozen designers on its team. Today the company has 130 members on the team. They include a behavioral and cognitive psychologists, usability experts, former designer from companies such as furniture maker Herman Miller and auto maker GM.

There have also been changes to how Dell has organized its design teams. "Earlier, design reported to engineering and marketing," says Michael Smith, who has been part of Dell’s design team since 2003. "But now it is becoming its own entity with equal footing."

The moves have helped Dell get more fashionable, fast. Most conspicuously, the company is experimenting with different materials and finishes. The company’s Studio XPS 13 and 16 laptops use leather trims. The Studio hybrid desktop offers an optional bamboo casing, and the Studio One 19 PC — aka the ‘kitchen PC’ — can come with a fabric panel that fits around the display.

Many of the design improvements have to do with the outermost surface of the Dell’s computers, and that doesn’t go deep enough for at least one industrial designer.

"Dell needs to treat design as something that is not superficial," says
Max Burton, executive creative director for Frog Design in San
Francisco. "What they have right now is more of applique design — [it’s]
more about finishes than real change to the materials and process."

But Dell execs say that their focus on design means more than just looks. For example, a Dell Studio hybrid desktop launched in the last year uses 70 percent less material and power than older desktop models, says Boyd.

Design improvements do not have to come out of the consumers’
pockets, says Boyd. It’s about making the right tradeoffs. "We can
take out the non-value-adding functionality, such as too many
connectors, and put value where people find it," he says.

For instance,
designers removed an external button for turning Wi-Fi on and off in
the Dell XPS 1330 laptop. Now users have to go through the software
program to do it. "That’s money I save," says Boyd, "and give it back
to the customer in the form of lower prices or better finish."

"When we do put more money into the finishes and industrial design, we don’t do that arbitrarily," says Boyd. "In those products we see a spike in sales, as in the redesign of the Studio XPS line."

Boyd has also helped the team improve on such things as packaging and accessories, says Smith. Adamo, for instance, comes in a clear package and offers optional accessories such as tote bags from Tumi.

All that may not be enough. Design experts such as Vogel and Burton say Dell needs to take a chapter out of Apple’s playbook. For instance, Apple’s latest Macbook, introduced last year, has a body whose main part is machined from a solid piece of aluminum. It allows for lightweight, yet sturdy, machines and better design.

"The innovation with the aluminum is a big step ahead in terms of process and design especially when Dell is still using injection-molded plastic in many of its machines," says Burton.

That kind of fundamental change in how Dell approaches design could take much longer. For now Dell is walking a tightrope — trying to please its flock that is price-sensitive, even as it tries to court the fashionistas. It’s a feat not many designers have been able to pull off.

See also:
Dell’s New Notebooks Take Design Seriously
Bamboo-zled: Eco Veneers Storm the Design World

Photos: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Do you ever stop to realize that another human being carefully conceived and designed every object you will touch today? It’s a pretty amazing thought, and after Objectified, you’ll be thinking it more often.

And that’s exactly the point. Like Helvetica, director Gary Hustwit‘s previous documentary triumph about the most prevalent typeface on earth, Objectified sings the praises of those very people who, while not necessarily under-appreciated, definitely operate in the background—they design your stuff. It’s a secret little world, and through Objectified, we get to live in it.

Take this lamp I bought at a flea market last weekend. I Googled the only thing on the bottom that would identify it (“WINDSOR L-10”) and got zero relevant results. It’s old, pre-internet for sure, so I wasn’t surprised. But who designed it? It’s so tiny and Wall-e like (essentially a hybrid of Wall-e himself and the task lamp Pixar uses in their logo)—I want to know more! Someone designed this, and I love imagining the moment of its conception.

My lamp only cost $15, so odds are it wasn’t designed by any of the überheavyweights featured in Objectified: There’s Apple’s Jonathan Ive, Smart Design (of Flip Video fame) founders Davin Stowell and Dan Formosa, the legendary Dieter Rams of Braun, the folks at IDEO (who designed the first laptop, among many other things), Naoto Fukusawa (father of the Infobar), Chris Bangle, the infamous (and former) chief designer of BMW, and many others. It’s a star-studded group. Also featured prominently is Rob Walker, who writes my favorite New York Times column “Consumed” in the magazine every Sunday—he is a joy in every scene he is in, including where he dreams of an ad campaign encouraging people to got out and use and be satisfied with the stuff they already own.

But what’s great (and where Helvetica also ruled) is that Hustwit is a master interviewer. He gets his subjects to speak about what can be a jargon and marketing-voodoo laden industry with total clarity and comfort that folks that didn’t go to design school can comprehend freely. Ive, holding up the single aluminum block from which a unibody MacBook is hewn while trying to control his massive biceps, speaks about how designers are ultimately obsessive, borderline neurotic people. He can’t look at an object anywhere without seeing the multiple layers of intent involved-who designed it, who it’s designed for, what it does well. To Ive, it’s an illness.

To others, it’s desire. Marc Newson, who designs everything but is famous especially for aviation-related like the EADS spaceplane, puts it this way: “I want to have things that don’t exist yet,” which I think we can all relate to here.

One place where Objectified gets somewhat tripped up is in its hesitance to boldly define the inherent conflict of the designer, especially now: good design should last and improve with time, which is often directly opposed to the interests of a commercial designer’s clients who want people to keep buying things. This theme does come up in the film, but where Helvetica had the postmodernism vs. modernism conflict-in-a-bubble at its heart, which served as the perfect organizational structure to not only be entertaining, but to also school everyone in design theory, Objectified lacks a similar conflict by which everything can be defined.

I was disappointed to not see more of the good design vs. capitalism conflict mainly because it’s going to be the most important concept in gadget design over the next few decades—not only for the environmental concerns, but because software is more than ever the representation of a gadget’s heart and soul. This is not a new concept: when fondling the Grid Compass (the world’s first laptop computer he helped design), Bill Moggridge of IDEO says it only took a few seconds for the user experience to be completely about the software interface on its 320×200 screen, with the hardware dropping away almost completely. And he designed it! As an interesting contrast, Naoto Fukasawa explains that in Japan, interactions with a tangible object are much more important, culturally, to the Japanese. Which makes sense when you see the horrid software being run by such a beautiful phone as the Infobar.

This concept also fits snugly in with a designer’s environmental concerns—since software doesn’t fill up a landfill, having hardware that can be re-upped to latest and greatest status over the web makes the earth happy too.

This choice to not hang the whole film on this idea was of course a conscious one, and it probably ensured a broader, more appealing film in the end. I just missed the elegance of everything fitting together into nice ideological halves in Helvetica.

But when judged alone, Objectified gets the job done beautifully and does for industrial designers what Helvetica did for graphic designers: lets us step into their frame of reference and greater appreciate, or at the very least notice, their omnipresent work.

Trailer:

More info: objectifiedfilm.com