Hasta La Ideas

Securing a Discovery Of The Year Award as well as a Platinum Winner Award at the European Product Design Awards in 2019, The Row-1 by Ciara Crawford surely has stumbled on a brilliant solution for a problem that no designer recognized before. The Row-1, simply put, is an inclusive-design wheelchair that lets disabled and elderly patrons at an airport go straight from the check-in desk to inside the airline, and de-board the flight at their destination. The wheelchair works exactly how you’d expect it to, allowing the disabled to cover large distances within an airport (with help from airline staff), but where it really shines is in the way it rolls right into the aircraft and secures itself to the airplane seat.

“1 million travelers with disabilities took 23 million trips over the past two years, spending $9 billion on their flights”, says Ciara, a design graduate from the University of Limerick, Ireland. The Row-1 aims at bettering their experience by eliminating the need and the associated discomfort of changing seats every time a disabled person boards or deboards a plane. The Row-1 wheelchair comes with a nesting design and inward-folding rear wheels that help it integrate itself comfortably into a seat the first row, giving the patron extra leg-room while keeping them closer to the washroom too. This way, the passenger never needs to change seats through their entire journey, with the exception of passing through the security check. The wheelchair is even equipped with its own seatbelt that proves useful within the airport while traveling on ramps and air-bridges, as well as inside the plane. The same wheelchair goes from the airport of departure to the airplane, and finally escorts the passenger out at the airport of arrival. The wheelchair even comes with its own joystick-panel for manual operation, as well as space under the seat for storing handbags.

The Row-1 Wheelchair System is a Platinum Winner of the European Product Design Award for the year 2019.

Designer: Ciara Crawford

The cup does for NASCAR races what the binoculars did for the Opera. Now mind you, this invention isn’t from any recent time. In fact, it was invented in 2009, over 10 years ago, and only just regained relevance after Jalopnik did a throwback. It’s simple, quirky, and a mystery as to why it never became the cultural norm post its release. Designed by Wieden+Kennedy for NASCAR and ESPN, the Cup and its unique profile helps patrons watch the race uninterrupted while sipping on a beverage of their choice.

The Cup was made as a limited-edition beer-holding vessel, to be distributed to patrons at NASCAR races as a promotional giveaway. Its cutaway shape doesn’t obstruct your vision when you’re chugging down your drink, allowing you to constantly keep your eyes on the race, even when you’re enjoying your favorite race-accompanying beverage… because using a straw to drink your beer clearly isn’t a good look for anyone! Drinking from The Cup is (or rather, was) great for two reasons. Firstly, it’s a wonderful way to show patrons you care about their user-experience, and secondly, the cup’s unique rim allows it to be used only at a particular angle, which makes it great for branding purposes because you know exactly what side of the cup faces outwards, making it perfect to print on! Sheer genius.

It’s a shame that The Cup didn’t permeate the cultural zeitgeist and find its way into the next decade, but it’s a great reminder that the internet never forgets! And who knows, if someone from NASCAR or ESPN is reading this, it may just make a comeback!

Designer: Wieden+Kennedy NY for NASCAR & ESPN

With CES 2020 only days away, a new decade for tech starts with comprehending the human body

Important developments in technology, both consumer-facing and industry-specific, oftentimes debut (or meet their demise) at CES, the annual conference held by the CTA in Las Vegas. Sometimes a pool of novel, albeit unnecessary announcements, the show acts as a reliable pulse on the industry as a whole. And, as years pass the show floor shifts its focus to correspond to current cultural interests and to pitch lofty ambitions for the future.

This year, collective attention shifts to fixations with our bodies and ailments. For instance, new inch-by-inch patches could relay real-time status reports on our blood pressure, the quality of the air we breathe, how our body is reacting to something we just ate, and whether or not that food was actually bad. These are just a few of the hundreds of thousands of products—found on CES’ Innovation Award Honorees list—to be shown at CES 2020 that highlight the potential of a category currently reserved for specific use-cases rather than general synchrony between data and delivery.

Lab-on-Skin

Embeddable into patches or performance wear, Xsensio’s Lab-on-Skin wearable surveys the bevy of information that can be collected from the surface of our skin and conveys it in real-time. It relies on just a few nanoliters of sweat and returns information on electrolyte and metabolite levels, hormones and proteins, and other gauges of overall wellness. Imagine, in the same way you can toggle in and out of earbud settings with a slight touch, a moment where health data can be accessed simply by tapping your miniature chip.

WELT Smart Belt

Rather than address bodily issues after they’ve made an impact, WELT works to invent preventative solutions. Their Smart Belt, which will be on display this year, detects variations in normal walking patterns and overall balance to predict susceptibility to falling. Though it’s initially intended for the elderly, the belt’s unique ability to detect the precursors to tumbles or tasks the individual may not be physically prepared for poises it for applications in deterring drunk driving, identifying injuries, and so much more—especially since it’s an accessory many wear already.

AerNos

AerNos, an implantable chip that also docks to IOT devices or wearable technologies, can detect changes in air quality, the presence of pollutants harmful to the skin or lungs, smoke, and even subtle changes in the environment that can be attributed to climate change. The device doubles as a personal health tool—one that knows your immediate environment better than you do—and as an actionable assessment of the status of your sliver of our planet.

Skiin Connected Innerwear

After unveiling a blood pressure monitoring shirt at last year’s CES, Myant aims to expand the Skiin‘s potential by expanding the same textile computing technology to other garments—namely bras, underwear and undershirts. Advanced sensors and actuator technologies provide data-driven feedback—your heart rate, how stress is impacting you, your temperature, activity level, sleep stage, and more—and allow for a consolidated, exported report to be prepared from it all. The goal is for users to be more connected to their bodies—particularly its irregularities and inefficiencies—and take action to correct or address the problems. One day, it seems, our clothes will be our own interconnected system, culminating in a dashboard-like delivery system where reports could live.

EXOsystems

Technology companies are working not only to make prolonged pain and decreased range of motion more tolerable but shorter-lasting and less prohibiting. Namely, exoRehab by EXOSYSTEMS works to speed up the process of rehabilitation after an injury or neglected ailment pertaining to knees. A wearable device with programmable settings and smart features, exoRehab stabilizes and supports the knee joint and records the progress of your recovery program. If you’re behind, or there are better or worse days, the device can gamify a session and even defer to neuromuscular electrical stimulation for strength training. Though the knee is the primary focus at launch, exoRehab could eventually cater to each of the body’s most at-risk areas, and perhaps one day pivot to preventative measures.

Cocoon Health Baby Monitor

Not a wearable, but tangential to some of the aforementioned tech, Cocoon Health‘s newest baby monitor employs AI and movement recognition tools to detect when a baby falls asleep or wakes up, and even how restful their sleep was. The device captures sound, but it also acts, inherently, as a second opinion on wellbeing, leaving room for potential applications within the homes of elderly or at-risk people.

Images courtesy of respective venues, hero image courtesy of Xsensio

The very antithesis of touch-sensitive displays, the Chubby Buttons aims to serve you wherever touchscreens fail. Be it in the bathroom when your fingers are wet, or while bicycling when you can’t really look down at your screen to see what you’re pressing, or if you’re hitting the slopes and the gloves are too thick for you to operate a touch interface, the Chubby Buttons Remote and its significantly large buttons help you navigate playback in a way that’s easy, swift, and extremely intuitive. With just 5 buttons, you can even operate the Bluetooth remote without looking at it.

In a world where touchscreen interfaces are making their way into cars (we’re looking at you, Tesla) it’s worth really realizing that while touchscreens are incredibly versatile, they’re still a tactile nightmare. It’s still exceedingly difficult to use a touchscreen without actually looking at it, and impossible if you’ve got gloves on, or you’ve got wet hands, or worse still, a bandage. That’s sort of what Chubby Buttons is trying to solve, with its massive, simplified interface. Perfect for anywhere from biking to bathrooms, the remote lets you do a pretty good job of controlling music or podcast playback. The waterproof, dustproof, and snowproof remote comes with a nanosuction surface on its rear, allowing it to be stuck to flat surfaces in your bathroom, kitchen, or your Tesla, while two wide eyelets on the top and bottom allow you to strap the remote to your hand, letting you control playback or even take selfies, without having to look at your screen, or take off those protective gloves. Plus, it comes with a battery that lasts for months, so you’re sorted all through skiing season!

Designer: Chubby Buttons

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When I was living in Japan, I worked at an elementary school. After having lunch, each and every one of the students would take their empty milk cartons and meticulously flatten them. These flattened cartons then all went into the same transparent plastic bag, and I was surprised to see how many it held. A teacher explained to me that this system was utilized because it meant using fewer trash bags, and making less trips to the dumpster. If this system were spread across every school in Japan, the savings would be significant.

Go to any coffee shop in America, and as you look down the silver-lined waste tube thingy, you’ll see paper and plastic cups in an ungainly pile, taking up way more space than they ought. However, this café in Korea has a better idea:

Image credit: laxanh

I say it’s almost good design, because while it does mitigate the problem, it looks a bit ungainly and unintegrated with the rest of their waste collection system. I also think it can’t be easy for the workers to fish the stacks out. But I do think this is a step in the right direction.