Hasta La Ideas

The smell of stale urine is an unfortunate issue that many city dwellers must endure on a daily basis. After becoming fed up with the omnipresent stench, citizens of the St. Pauli neighborhood in Hamburg, Germany decided to take action against the……

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Inspired by her childhood surrounded by stunning and rare artworks and objects, Turkish designer Begüm Kiroglu’s affinity with the Ottoman style and all things Istanbul is echoed in these cufflinks. The opulent accessories boast plenty of sapphires……

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To match Electrolux’s spiffy new look (dat logo tho!), Electrolux Design Lab is getting a makeover of its own! The 13th year of the challenge features a new theme, new focus areas, new judges, new experts to guide the finalists, and… DOUBLE PRIZE MONEY! Mmmhmm. So get amped about this year’s theme, Happy Healthy Kids… because… after all, you were a tike once too! REGISTER HERE and get your submission in by the April 8th deadline. Then hit the jump to check out our very own brainstorming tips!

Stumped on where to start? That’s normal. If we learned anything from interviewing last years finalists, it’s that inspiration can come from anywhere and everywhere, sometimes when you least expect it. Here are a few of our pointers to get your wheels turning!

• Read the 2015 brief… over… and over… and over.
• Don’t procrastinate. Register now so you can focus on your submission.
• Check out the 2014 finalists and see what set the winners apart from the rest.
• Watch last year’s live presentations. Listen to the judges’ questions!
• Get in the field: Go where kids go! Hang out with a little brother, niece, or friend’s kiddo! Ask their parents questions!
• Fall in love with Electrolux: Familiarize yourself with the brand’s aesthetic, history, products, and design principles.
• Play: Pick up some kid-centric products and channel your inner youngster.
• Imagine yourself as the user. After all, YOUR design is a reflection of YOU!
• Relax: Take a warm bath. Walk in the park. Let your brain reset.
• Don’t relax: Go on a hike! Hit the gym! Endorphins get your mind moving.
• Think BIG. Don’t play it safe.
• Read the brief. AGAIN!

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(ENTRIES OPEN for Electrolux Design Lab 2015! was originally posted on Yanko Design)

Related posts:

1. A’ Design Awards 2015 – International Call for Entries
2. The Top 25 Entries of Electrolux Design Lab 2010
3. Top 25 Entries of Electrolux Design Lab 2011

Voici le trailer de la dernière pépite de Pixar : « Vice-Versa ». Le pitch ? A l’intérieur du cerveau de la petite Riley, toutes ses émotions se trouvent incarnées par des personnages. Mais petit problème, la joie et la peur vont se perdre dans l’imagination de la protagoniste et lui causer quelques troubles mentaux dont on aura compris qu’il s’agit de la métaphore de notre esprit pendant l’enfance. Une sortie prévue le 17 Juin.

In the last century, cars transformed American life and its landscape—city surfaces became places of vibrant, visceral physicality and driving ushered in the viability of suburban developments and the notion of travel by expressway. When cars were first created, design departments didn’t exist — that came much later when Harley Earl established the concept at General Motors in the 1950s. Instead, in the early days of the automobile, design was an inherent aspect of product development, a carryover from the bespoke coach build process.

Today, the concept of mobility is being challenged as alternative fuel sources, computerized cars and self-driving technology become reality. These changes are ushering in a return to the early days of the auto industry, where automotive designers are working in tandem with engineering to play a key role in the development process. At this year’s North American International Auto Show (NAIAS), lead designers provide insight into how designers are in a unique position to steer the auto industry into the future.

Automotive UX

As technology transforms the car industry, the role of an automotive designer is also shifting to define the way drivers interact with their vehicles. Designers determine and mitigate the pace of technology as its introduced into the car. They flesh out touch and appearance of user interfaces, integrate the sound of sophisticated sensors and select the myriad of materials used on hard surfaces.

Karim Habib, BMW Group

“I realized that being a car designer today is not the same thing as being a car designer in the past,” says Karim Habib, who heads BMW Design. “Building these beautiful sexy shapes, these driving machines, is not only what we do. We have to do a lot more and a lot of that has to do with the experience, the user interface.”

Habib leads 120 designers at the iconic German luxury performance brand. BMW is known for it’s driver-centric experience, but one that prides itself on being perceived as cutting edge; it introduced iDrive’s high-speed function in 2001 production vehicles. “We have to keep the driver and the act of driving in the forefront,” Habib says. BMW designers create the layout of the head-up display, shape the look of the digital cluster and will eventually integrate the autonomous driving experience for the consumer.

I spoke to Habib at NAIAS, where the company was focused on launching the new BMW 6 Series model. But Habib, like many other auto industry professionals, was still buzzing from the recent announcement at the Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas, where BMW introduced its latest technological thinking with the next generation iDrive: gesture-based commands. Staying true to BMW’s driver-centric philosophy, his team had to determine what gestures would be intuitive, while mitigating risk and the propensity for distraction.

The race to introduce new technologies tasks the design team to sort out the user experience and implementation of the technology—this is where car design departments are recruiting and hiring. For a new generation of automotive designers, it’s not enough to be able to model the shape of a car. Designers must be able to think in more expansive, future-minded ways, and quickly adapt to shifts in consumer perception.

The year car companies and technologists came together

Ralph Gilles, Fiat Chrysler

“It’s amazing how the tech world is diving into the auto world,” explains Ralph Gilles, Senior Vice President Product Design for Fiat Chrysler Automobiles. “It’s colliding in an interesting way. I’ve gone to the last four Consumer Electronic Shows and I’ve seen a dramatic interest in the automotive world as they see the potential in this huge market. People are in their cars for hours and hours and they want to tap into that time.”

One of the most innovative strides in the car industry was discussed just outside of the auto show at the Automotive News World Congress, where Chris Urmson, head of autonomous vehicle research for Google, addressed the audience. He expressed Google’s interest in working with major manufacturers to have autonomous cars on the market in five years, an ambitious assertion, but one that is backed up by Google’s high profile engineering and testing efforts.

These industry shifts also open the doors for new players. The Phoenix-based company Local Motors demonstrated the potential of a fully operational 3D-printed car built in micro-factories at Cobo Hall. Some of the tech progress won’t be brand driven, but collaborative efforts, which will ultimately impact policy. The University of Michigan plans to open M City, a test roadway to collect autonomous data, by this Spring. 

The Anthropology of Automobiles

It is these sorts of innovations that are transforming the role of automotive design departments— how much digitized information is necessary, what makes sense for the consumer and how technology should be consumed. “One of the more interesting things for those who are involved with cars is that certain objects have a different meaning as society evolves and changes, and the car is definitely one of those. The meaning of what cars stand for is changing, and it’s changing quickly,” Habib says.

As long as consumers invest in automobiles, human behavior and the desire for individuality remains key to creating and selling successful cars. But as lifestyles continue to reflect an increasingly digitized world, out-of-the-box thinking becomes necessary. Even the way cars are being imagined requires a new approach to design. BMW’s context design team reports to Habib and is charged with studying future trends around the globe. Instead of dreaming up the shape of cars, this group of 8 designers embedded within BMW Group Design Munich study and anticipate the future of mobility by traveling the world and studying how people in different cultures live.

To sort through these questions, Habib turns to the tenets of classic design. “In my experience, really good designers are the ones that worry about two things — one is authenticity. What are the intrinsic values of an object? What does it do well? The second aspect is the environment and sociological changes and how we evolve and the values that come with those changes. That’s the amazing thing. [In car design] there’s anthropology and urbanism.”

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We’re in the early stages of a new tech-driven auto industry. As car companies move toward autonomous driving, key developments will demand the skills of designers as consumers use their sense of touch, sight and sound to operate their cars. It’s a heady time for the automotive industry, in which the pace of progress seems to be stepping ahead of the product and predictions. It’s the designers who are in the position to translate that imagined experience into the tangible aspects in the new world of mobility.