design

This week (parent.thesis) is reporting from Japan

For some Americans visiting Japan, Tokyo Disney would be the resort of last resort, but for our family, we decided that spending our first two days and nights there would be a good way to motivate our 8-year old to tackle the 11-hour jet lag head-on. The resort is made up of two parks, Disneyland, which is a near-exact replica of the California original, and DisneySea, a unique park that opened in 2001.

I have read that DisneySea was a design originally considered and rejected for an additional park in California, but to me DisneySea melds perfectly with Japanese style. It is amazing to see what can be done with current technology and design--going well beyond the 1960's "magic" used to create Disneyland. Instead of Sleeping Beauty's castle, there is an erupting volcano anchoring the center of the park, containing one of the best rides I have ever been on. Journey to the Center of the Earth is a combination themed attraction/roller coaster that culminates in a simulated free-fall shot "up and out" of the volcano.… Read more

This one falls directly into the category of "why do I feel like such a wastoid when I read these kinds of stories?"

An 8-year-old boy who lives just outside of Austin, Texas, has been helping out chipmaker Actel with its software evaluation.

This didn't spring up out of nowhere. Carson Page, a third-grader, has been tinkering with technology since he was 2, according to an article in the Austin American-Statesman.

By 4, he was fixing driver problems and installing operating systems by himself. At age 7, he started programming circuits with software from Mountain View, Calif.… Read more

Apparently round is the new square.

This sort of guarantees itself as a conversation piece. Displaying this in your living room, office, or where-have-you, is sure to inspire furrowed brows, curiosity or both.

This is one of Suissa's takes on the personal computer, which can be completely customized and built on either Intel or AMD chips. Suissa is a Canadian designer that has a demonstrated history of putting a decidedly different spin on the rectangular box-style PC. They're also not the only company going round--earlier this year Sony debuted the Vaio TP1.

This model, called "Enlighten," … Read more

CHIBA, Japan--The iPhone won't be the only finger-flicking phone on the market for long.

Sharp Electronics is showing off a touch screen at Ceatec, Japan's big tech trade show taking place here this week just outside of Tokyo, that lets you control the interface with finger swipes. Just as with Apple's iPhone, you can flick to shrink the size of images, blow them up, and scroll left to right or up and down. The device is called the "system LCD with embedded optical sensors"--not quite as catchy a name as iPhone.

But it's … Read more

Management's focus on innovation comes and goes in cycles. Right now, it is all the rage again (although it remains to be seen if that's still the case as innovation budgets may be cut when the looming recession hits the US), and the business press is covering it all across the board. Managing innovation is one of the most critical tasks companies face, and yet it remains one of the biggest challenges. Not only do companies need to come up with new ideas, but they also need to nurture a culture that consistently encourages and rewards innovation. If … Read more

San Francisco will host thousands of designers from around the world when CONNECTING'07, the Icsid/IDSA World Design Congress, comes to town October 17-20. As the largest and most influential gathering of industrial designers to date, CONNECTING'07 will fill three major Nob Hill sites with prominent speakers, exhibits, and events. Related activities will also spill into the surrounding city, with many of San Francisco's design studios, companies, museums, design schools and stores holding receptions, open houses and tours. Representatives from nearly 500 internationally renowned corporations, design firms, government entities, and higher education institutions, spanning more than 35 … Read more

Back in the 1980s there was an expectation that when you bought a product, it would work. For example, CDs, pop one in a player and it would play. There wasn't a case of, say, a Version 2.0 CD player that refused to play a Region 9 disc. As far as I can recall, 100% of properly manufactured discs played on properly functioning machines. You pressed "play," and you heard music--no menus, no error messages, no ifs, ands, or buts.

But CD, the first truly successful consumer digital audio format, was introduced before computers sabotaged the … Read more

And here it is, officially, the Gateway One.

Touting the slim, all-in-one desktop as the first move toward a new strategy focused on industrial design (is there any PC manufacturer that isn't doing that these days?), the once-mighty Gateway described the minimalistic machine as an ideal centerpiece for the digital home.

The announcement was made Thursday morning at a press breakfast at the DigitalLife consumer technology convention in New York.

It's a striking-looking machine: black with a glass front and brushed-aluminum back that evokes none other than Apple, the company that remains the leader in aesthetically inclined PCs. … Read more

Steve Jobs shows no signs of retiring any time soon, but Jess McMullin, who runs the great Business+Design blog, thinks ahead and pre-emptively wraps his head around Apple's succession planning. In an open letter to the Apple board, he urges the directors to consider Jonathan Ive, Apple's SVP of industrial design, as Jobs' successor, if need be. (Mullin was obviously inspired by Bruce Nussbaum's "CEOs Must Be Designers, Not Just Hire Them" post several months ago.)

And yet--a designer as CEO? (Wearing the marketing hat for a renowned design consultancy, I am posing this … Read more