Because you won’t survive the apocalypse without secret wilderness Wi-Fi.
From a distance, there’s nothing unusual about this 1.5-ton boulder sitting at the center of a forest clearing in Neuenkirchen, Germany. It’s only once you get closer that you notice part of the boulder has been hollowed out—and the opening sealed with a sheet of metal.
How much do we really know about what makes an interaction pleasurable for a user? These researchers are quantifying the guessing game.
Last week, researchers came together in the Dutch city of Eindhoven for the 10th International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction. The conference explored the bleeding edge of human-computer interaction—think water-based interfaces, soft robots, and new forms of haptic interfaces—and featured researchers studying the intricacies of how we relate to technology.
Jake Knapp, author of “Sprint,” reveals a four-step process for sketching your way to greatness.
Imagine you’ve got a great idea. You’ve been thinking about it for weeks. You go to work, describe the idea to your teammates, and . . . they just stare at you. Maybe you aren’t explaining it well. Maybe the timing isn’t right. For whatever reason, they just can’t picture it. Totally frustrating, right? It’s about to get worse.
Now imagine your boss suggests an alternative idea. It just popped into his head, and you can tell right away that the idea isn’t thought out and won’t work. But all your teammates nod their heads! Maybe it’s because the boss’s idea is vague and each person is interpreting it in his or her own way. Maybe everyone is just supporting him because he’s the boss. Either way, it’s game over.
Okay, come back to reality. That was an imaginary scenario, but it’s the sort of thing that happens when people make decisions about abstract ideas. Because abstract ideas lack concrete detail, it’s easy for them to be undervalued (like your idea) or overvalued (like the boss’s idea).
Sketching is the fastest and easiest way to transform abstract ideas into concrete solutions. Once your ideas become concrete, they can be critically and fairly evaluated by the rest of your team—without any sales pitch.
Video games have been part of the art world for years—but a solo museum retrospective of a designer is a first.
Before you even walk into The Game Worlds of Jason Rohrer, a new exhibition at the Davis Museum at Wellesley College, you play a game.
Stop being intimidated by a blank page!
What makes us creative? Nothing, says Seema Sharma. Instead of a stifling void, she views nothingness as the wellspring of creativity, which is why she created Write Nothing in Here, a doodle and sketchbook that is the Seinfeld of notebooks: It’s all about nothing.
“The Ray” is an ambitious project to convert a Georgia highway into a road that isn’t horrible for the environment.
There are 223,000 miles of heavily trafficked roads in the United States. They slice through landscapes, connecting communities and economies, but also bisecting and contaminating nature. Transportation accounts for more than 25% of total U.S. emissions, and busy roads can produce up to five times the levels of pollutants (copper, zinc, chloride, nitrogen, and phosphorus) than rural roads. In short, roads are energy-intensive, dirty structures—but we can’t live without them.
A Russian photographer spent decades documenting prisoner tattoos—now, his archive has been turned into a book.
Tattoos occupy myriad places in our culture, whether as works of art, the future of wearable tech, reality-show fodder, or just reminders of our terrible decisions. But for Arkady Bronnikov—a criminologist with an expertise in tattoo iconography—tattoos are the secret language of Russia’s criminal underbelly.
The fashion company is back in the provocative ad game with its “Face of the City” campaign.
At first glance, the models in the new United Colors of Benetton advertisements, “Face of the City,” look like women you’d see in any other of the clothing company’s famously provocative and racially diverse ad campaigns: uncannily pretty, clean cut, all different ethnicities. But the one big difference? These women aren’t real. Rather, they’ve each been algorithmically generated to represent, to a T, the ethical make-up of different global cities.
Away’s genius suitcase solves many of the headaches of modern travel—and it has serious design cred.
There is no such thing as the perfect carry-on. Maybe you found a suitcase that’s big enough for your belongings, but doesn’t fit in the overhead bin. Maybe you’re the guy who’s sprinting to make a connecting flight only to bust a wheel along the way. Maybe you found a big, handsome, sturdy piece of luggage, but it costs as much as your entire vacation.
Not everything in life is Likable.
I come to Facebook to share all kinds of things with people I care about — from celebratory posts about practicing yoga for 60 days straight, to mourning the loss of a parent. Those same people who connect with me on my stories also have their own stories to share. Sometimes we just want a simple way to say we really love what they shared, or to express empathy when life takes a turn.
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