Hasta La Ideas

Angela Eagle MP, Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury, hosted a “Design Summit” to identify ways that designers can help government improve efficiency and value for money in public services, and the role design can play in finding innovative ways to achieve savings in government procurement.

The event, held at No 11 Downing Street, took the minister and colleagues across government through some recent examples of how design has helped transform services which, if scaled up nationally, could have a major impact on value for money and efficiency in the public sector.

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Thank you Rem for the now of yesterday’s doomed futures.

pics via archinect

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Photos: UnBeige (left), Areaware (right)

When UnBeige was invited to serve as one of four judges for the inaugural “blogger’s choice awards” at the New York International Gift Show (NYIGF), we jumped at the chance to prowl aisle upon aisle of covetable objects. Twelve hours, two trips to the cavernous Javits Center, and hundreds of product-stuffed booths later, we learned that Sergio Rossi pumps and trade shows don’t mix, but more importantly, we had fine-tuned our list of top picks and completed our Christmas shopping through 2011.

First up on our UnBeige Best of NYIGF list: the Geo-Birdhouse (pictured above), a standout at the stellar Areaware booth. This miniature ceramic version of Buckminster Fuller‘s favorite shape was designed by Kelly Lamb to be used as a nesting place for wrens, finches, and other small birds but would look just as attractive indoors as a dangling, geodesic conversation piece. We particularly like how it beautifully captures the general conclusion about Bucky’s utopian structure: it’s for the birds.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media

Just a hair short of the internet of things, Greener Gadget Top 50 Semi-Finalist Eco-Neighbuzz, designed by Korhan Buyukdemirci, captures our imagination for what a product and service-sharing system could look like in a residential setting.

When thinking about green design, we need to design good services which help us to consume less and share more. This means car-sharing, free-cycling (giving unused items for free), recycling, etc. We should first start doing this with our closest community – our neighbours. Even when we have good relationships with our neighbours, we are still missing a good service platform to improve upon it. Eco-neighbuzz is a great platform to build a greener community with our neighbours. Essentially, it is a voice message to neighbours. Interaction with the device happens through a touch screen and handset, using speech-to-text functionality.

Like this design? Wanna vote for it or leave a comment? Check out this entry or the entire Greener Gadgets TOP 50 Gallery and help determine the TOP 10 for live judging at the upcoming Greener Gadgets Conference.

>>VOTE FOR YOUR FAVORITE GREENER GADGET NOW!!<<

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There’s a high concentration of cutting-edge gadgetry here at Interaction09, but more unusually, a high concentration of people who think long and hard about what effects cutting-edge gadgetry will have on the consumers that use it.

Here’s a quick demonstration by IIT Institute of Design professor Tom MacTavish, of the Livescribe digital writing system, a pen-and-paper duo that records audio, remembers what was being said while you were taking notes, and affords some basic computing function in a wholly analog format. If that sounds confusing, just check out the video; MacTavish does a great job of showing it off.

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