John Winsor

Designing QR Codes

For a while now I've been interested in QR codes as a way to connect the physical and virtual worlds, yet the codes have always looked a little bit like a wart on a product, ad or poster. Tonight, I caught this on JoshSpear.com.

How many of you know what to do with the image to the left? Hopefully most of you. Aside from identifying it as Murakami work, it’s a QR code for your mobile phone. QR (quick response) codes are like the Japanese version of bar codes, because they started in Japan. The code is scanned into your mobile phone via the camera and outputs a link. Think of it as a way to add hyperlinks in the real world. Normally, these QR codes look like deformed boxy versions of bar codes. But as soon as Murakami touches one we are all gaga. It’s amazing what a little Louis Vuitton pattern and color can do to a QR.

Also, check out the other incredibly designed QR codes from SET. It's inspiring to see how design can
radically shift something from a wart to a beauty mark.

Never Lose Your Keys

LaCie has just introduced a new mode of storing and transporting digital content.  LaCie, who is recognized as one of the leading manufacturers of computer peripherals, is offering three styles of it’s USB key drive: itsaKey, iamaKey and PassKey. The USB keys were designed by 5.5 Designers, recipients of the “Grand prix de la creation” by the city council of Paris. The keys mirror that of a standard house key, which is compact and fits easily onto any keychain. Being made of metal, the keys are virtually resistant to destruction.

The LaCie Keys are available now, starting at $9.90. The itsaKey and iamaKey store up to 8 gigabytes of flash memory, whereas the PassKey has a microSD card reader.

What's the Difference Between Co-creation and Remixing?

Have you seen Thru You yet? It's worth checking out. An artist, Kutiman has taken samples of YouTube videos and made them into quite interesting songs. It begs the question: What's the difference between co-creation and remixing? Are you still co-creating if someone else has used your material and remixed it with something else? Either way, it's another example of the power of the collective. With so much information flowing in so many interesting directions, peopel can act as shapers and editors creating new genres of anything.

Here's one of Kutiman's creations:

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle...Barter?

With the economy in the current state it's in, people are going back to the old ways of exchanging goods and services with others. This is nothing new, as people have been doing it for centuries. What is new, is that thanks to the internet, your reach and possibilities are infinite.

According to the Associated Press 2/25/09:

Bartering ads on Craigslist have increased about 100 percent since last year, said Susan MacTavish Best, a spokeswoman for the online classified advertising service. Traffic is also up at local organizations like the Midwest Barter Exchange, a Kalamazoo, Mich.-based outfit that acts as a go-between for about 1,000 business clients.

As well as being cost-effective, bartering can also be quite fun. Heather Wood, a beautician in Boise has traded her services for daycare, as well as dental cleanings, and even a car pain job. She states, It's fun, and it builds a whole different kind of a relationship...They're getting what they want and I'm getting what I want. I would much rather do that than make cash most of the time.

Gary Forman, president of Dollar Stretcher, a company that publishes methods for saving money feels that people are yearning for more human interaction and that, [t]he human element and the relationship between buyers and sellers becomes more important when we get involved in bartering transactions.

Seems like a win: win situation for everyone.

The Rise of Unproducts

A friend of mine just sent me a link from an interesting design article penned by Ben Terrett. Here’s a snippet:

This is the year of economic crisis. Last year it was the year of climate crisis. That hasn’t gone away. I can’t help but feel the two complement each other. One idea emerging from the creative community as a means of fighting climate change is to give more value but produce less stuff. We’re beginning to call this “unproduct”. Have I ever bored you with this idea? No. Really?

Originally coined by the designer Matt Jones and built upon by the strategist Russell Davies, among others, unproduct is basically maximum idea, minimum stuff. Because it is such a new concept, good unproduct examples are very hard to find. However, clothing company Howies is making something called the Hand Me Down range - a range of jackets and bags designed to be very long-lasting. Guaranteed for 10 years, they come complete with a certificate where you state who you’ll pass it on to when you’ve finished with it. And it’s high quality, expensive stuff, sort of in line with Bruce Sterling’s last Viridian note.

Expect to see the trend of more value/fewer products accelerate.

The Future is Here?

Quote of the Day

“If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they’ve had said a faster horse.”

– Henry Ford.

Always a good one to remember.

Design to Value versus Design to Cost

Strategy+Business has an interesting article about the difference of designing to value versus designing to cost in the context of the auto industry.

We call this process “design to value.” It’s a far cry from “design to cost,” the typical approach used to make cars, in which a final price is set and the new car is then engineered to be sold profitably at that price; the concept of how consumers perceive value does not really enter into the equation. Design to value, on the other hand, involves a series of complex, varied, carefully thought-out decisions about which types of engines to use; which equipment should be standard; what safety add-ons to include; how parts and materials are engineered; and which designs are most attractive to the target customer base. And if an automaker hopes to differentiate its products from others in the market, these decisions must be made in light of the kinds of value decisions competitors are making.

The idea of baking in customer input by designing products to value can have a huge effect for companies well beyond the auto industry.

Overcoming Dematerialization

A couple of years ago CP+B bought it's first 3D printer to help bring to life the products we were creating. Now, with the growth of our Industrial Design group we've been using them more and more to overcome the dematerialization that's been brought on by our digital age. In a world were everything has become virtual and digitized, from books to communities, it's nice to have a tool that reverses the trend.

Today, I was doing some research about the future of 3D printers for Baked-In when I came across an article that painted a fantastical picture of the future:

Whether or not they arrive in the home, 3D printers have many promising areas of potential future application. They may, for example, in future be used to output spare parts for all manner of products, and which could not possibly be stocked as part of the inventory of even the best physical store. Hence, rather than throwing away a broken item (something unlikely to be justified a decade or two hence due to resource depletion and enforced recycling), faulty goods will be able to be taken to a local facility that will call up the appropriate spare parts online and simply print them out. NASA has already tested a 3D printer on the International Space Station, and recently announced its requirement for a high resolution 3D printer to produce spacecraft parts during deep space missions. The US Army has also experimented with a truck-mounted 3D printer capable of outputting spare tank and other vehicle components in the battlefield.

Another possible future application is in organ printing. This is where replacement parts for the human body may be printed via an inkjet style process with the nozzles outputting layers of organic materials. This is also an area of rapid development, with the US National Science Foundation currently funding a multidisciplinary project (see organprint.missouri.edu).

As reported by Nature in March 2008, a company called Organovo has already managed to output blood vessels and cardiac tissue via a printer that dispenses cells instead of ink. The material so created actually fused into living tissue just 70 hours after being printed, and started beating 20 hours after that. Replacement bones or parts thereof are another obvious application for 3D printers in the future, with 3D patient scan data used to enable doctors to print precise replacement parts before any flesh is cut.

The future will materialize faster than we think.

What Were They Thinking?

A couple of days ago I rolled into Salt Lake City for the annual Outdoor Retailer trade show. Avis gave me a brand new Ford Mustang to drive. I was actually a bit disappointed because the car was so small.

As I parked the car at the convention hall, my contacts started bugging me. It's always an unnerving experience. In a hurried effort to try and get a new contact out of my stuff in the trunk I threw the keys in and shut the door! After a few phone calls to Avis and AAA I was informed that Mustangs have no trunk latch release in the car. It's only on the key. You can imagine how happy I was when I found out. Who decided that? Was it a cost cutting measure?

This was one of those times when I was glad to be a AAA member. But, the time I burned waiting for them, made me loose even more faith in Ford. The littlest product design issues always cause the biggest problems for the brand.