Design Thinking for Mobilists

Today at 4pm Ahmet (http://ingosu.de) and I are holding a Design Thinking workshop for attendees of Mobile Monday 2010, a mobile industry conference. Managers from telcos, free spirits from some of Berlin's hottest mobile startups and other interested persons will ask themselves "how, where and why people connect", possibly invent the next big mobile service or product and have lot's of fun making "some crazy (new) shit".

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Hamburger Philharmoniker plays concert while spread out all over the city!

WOW! Great idea and what a way to "get in touch" with the people!

Over 10,000 of Hamburgs citizens were out on the streets to experience the performance by 100 musicians.

BTW - I know I am a bit late on this one (the event happened in spring of 2010) but I thought it was worth posting all the same.

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The Story of Eames Furniture

If you're into design, this one's for you. And if your into Eames, then check out the new book by Marilyn Neuhart.

Source: Gestalten.tv

Video: The Story of Eames Furniture 

by Core77 on 16. November 2010

Today, gestalten.tv presents an exclusive interview with Marilyn Neuhart, author of the newly released The Story of Eames Furniture, and her husband John in their Los Angeles home. They both worked in various capacities with the Eames Office for over 30 years and describe their personalities and working processes, including an idiosyncratic hatred of the word "creative" and the lack of official job titles in the workplace. Watch the video above, or look over the new release here.

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Plantastic to replace petroleum-based plastics one day?

Research breakthrough opens possibility of plant-grown plastics

found on Core77 on 16. November 2010

You need petroleum to make plastic. But as reported in Plastics News, researchers from Dow AgroSciences and the US Department of Energy have managed to develop a plant that can grow fatty acids that could potentially be used to produce plastic, perhaps reducing the need to drill down for the goopy stuff.

In theory, plants could be the ultimate 'green' factories, engineered to pump out the kinds of raw materials now obtained from petroleum-based chemicals, according to the researchers....

"We've engineered a new metabolic pathway in plants for producing a kind of fatty acid that could be used as a source of precursors to chemical building blocks for making plastics such as polyethylene," said Brookhaven biochemist John Shanklin, who led the research.

Perhaps the resultant material will be called Plantastic.

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Swoodoo and Wanderfly solve online travel search's most pressing problems

I just read this article on Core77. As someone who is passionate about travel, I am always looking for that next great website that helps solve some of the most "pressing" problems in online travel search and booking. In my opinion a few of these are:

• the ability to search for flights based on prices (not destinations),
• the ability to compare prices across both multiple locations AND months,
• the ability to search for countries, regions or states as destinations,
• the ability to search for whole itineraries based on price,
• the ability to search for a cheap weekend get-away,
• and the ability to combine travel information from many different sources (e.g. facebook, foursquare, blogs, etc...).

I found Swoodoo (a German travel website) a couple of months ago and planned my trip to Greece using it. In fact, I only went to Greece because I had searched all warm European countries and found the best prices for a flight to Athens - which happened to return one day later than I had planned but saved me almost 200 Euro!

Swoodoo solves the first couple of "problems" in the list above - esp. their PowerSearch yields incredible results.

Wanderfly seems to top this with integration of social media, new information sources and a great trip planning interface.

Read the article below or check them out directly at Wanderfly.

Wanderfly: Improving the travel experience at the front end

   

Much has been made of improving the design of the travel experience, typically focusing on the actual transportation part; but when it comes to the planning phase of a leisure trip, user experience design has been notably absent.

A new website called Wanderfly aims to change that with a well-designed interface that considers the way people plan trips. Equal parts travel agent, ticket-seller, world-traveling friend and source of travel inspiration, Wanderfly seeks to get you and your suitcase out of the house with minimal hassle.

Sometimes you want to go away, but don't know where you want to go. Wanderfly makes you aware of the possibilities with a simple welcome screen that lets you punch in what you do know: Where you're leaving from and a budget range, letting you set bookends anywhere between $200 and $5,000. Then you enter a rough time window of travel, i.e. mid-November for two days, or next January for 3 weeks.

(more...)

 

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Why ideas spread!

by DesignTaxi

8. November 2010

I spread your idea because…

Ideas spread when people choose to spread them. Here are some reasons why: 1. I spread your idea because it makes me feel generous. 2. …because I feel smart alerting others to what I discovered. 3. …because I care about the outcome and want you (the creator of the idea) to succeed. 4. …because I have no choice. Every time I use your product, I spread the idea (Hotmail, iPad, a tattoo). 5. …because there's a financial benefit directly to me (Amazon affiliates, MLM). 6. …because it's funny and laughing alone is no fun. 7. …because I'm lonely and sharing an idea solves that problem, at least for a while. 8. …because I'm angry and I want to enlist others in my outrage (or in shutting you down). 9. …because both my friend and I will benefit if I share the idea (Groupon). 10. …because you asked me to, and it's hard to say no to you. 11. …because I can use the idea to introduce people to one another, and making a match is both fun in the short run and community-building. 12. …because your service works better if all my friends use it (email, Facebook).

View more at:

http://www.designtaxi.com/article/101209/I-spread-your-idea-because/

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