Hasta La Ideas

San Francisco designer Yves Behar of Fuseproject has designed a lock that replaces physical keys with a smartphone app.

Developed by Yves Behar in collaboration with technology entrepreneur Jason Johnson, the August Smart Lock is a cylindrical metal device that fits over the existing deadbolt and syncs with the user’s smartphone.

It uses Bluetooth to sense when the phone is approaching in your pocket then unlocks the door automatically, while remote allows you to open the door for guests from anywhere.

With an access code, other people can be given assigned entry times and dates – for example a cleaner could have a code that only grants access on a specific morning each week, or guests staying for a week could have a code that expires after they leave.

It’s possible to send invitations to events and grant access to guests through the app, where guests and owners can also leave notes for each other or share pictures and comments.

The user interface of the app features flat coloured circles to indicate whether the door is open or closed and control who has access when. The lock has an anodised aluminium case and incorporates LEDs to indicate whether it’s locked or unlocked.

The battery-powered device uses the same secure secure communications technology as online banking and August is not dependent on the house’s power supply or WiFi.

“Whereas traditional keys are easy to lose and copy, keypad codes can be easily shared, and biometrics are expensive and a challenge to install, the smart lock is a beautifully designed, easy to install, sociable device accompanied by a single mobile app that runs on your smartphone,” explain Behar and Johnson.

The product will be ready to ship later this year and is the first from new brand August, co-founded by Behar and Johnson, which launched on Wednesday at the D: All Things Digital conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, California.

Here’s some more information from Behar:

August: you are invited

Have you ever lost your keys? I am willing to bet that 99% of us have. In the last year, 20% of Americans have been locked out of their homes at least once. Humanity has been carrying keys, sharp pieces of metal in our pockets, for 200 years…it’s time we think of something else.

This is the task my co-­founder Jason Johnson and I have decided to address: to make home entry magical, safer than keys or keypads, and something that makes our lives a little better. We set out to design the August Smart Lock hardware so that it works with existing deadbolts, it is easy to install and is beautiful on a door. The user interface of the smartphone app is intuitive, and allows for great control about who and when friends, family as well as services will be able to access your homes. The best user interface is often invisible: August auto-­‐unlocks your door as you approach, and sound design creates an audio confirmation.

The name and logo is warm, friendly and elegant; these qualities are extended to the app, which uses a flat design of simple color circles as indicators for door status, a keychain of all your keys, and scheduling guests’ access. The lock itself is also a simple circular extruded shape, hand sized and made of durable anodized aluminum. The craft details increase tactility with diagonal knurling and the LED’s micro-­‐perforations, as well as a physical scoop on the lock, are visual indicators as to whether the door is locked or unlocked.

Changing the archaic key system is also a way to shift the conversation from keeping people out to ways of making our homes both secure and social places that our family and friends can easily access. With a beautiful and minimally designed smart lock, and an easy, safe, social app experience, August is the first step towards seamless interactions with useful technology we will experience everyday in our home.

The post August Smart Lock
by Yves Behar appeared first on Dezeen.

News: English football club Everton FC has promised to consult fans on a new version of its crest after the latest redesign prompted a furious backlash.

Over 23,000 supporters have signed an online petition calling for the recently unveiled badge to be scrapped, slamming it as “amateurish” and “embarrassing”.

Responding to the outcry on the Everton FC website, the club apologised and said: “We regret we didn’t ask every Evertonian about something that matters so much to every one of you.”

CEO Robert Elstone explained that it was too late to remove the badge from next season’s kits, but added that fans would be consulted on a redesign.

“We are turning to you to help us shape and refine the badge we’ll adopt in the future. Evertonians from all sections of the fan base will be pulled together in a fully transparent way,” he said.

The badge was designed in response to club officials’ request for a simpler crest that could be “reproduced more effectively in the digital and retail arenas”.

Designed by the club’s in-house graphics team, it depicts a more accurate version of the Everton landmark St Rupert’s Tower, as well as the club’s name and the year of its formation, 1878.

However, the badge omits Everton’s traditional laurel wreaths and the club’s Latin motto “nil satis nisi optimum”, which means “nothing but the best is good enough”.

Despite the angry reaction, the club said it remained committed to modernising the logo: “Effective logos are simple and streamlined. Simplicity achieves stand-out recognition. This was our starting point for our new crest.”

We previously reported on Nike’s redesigned away kit for France’s national football team, based on the Breton stripe, and a warehouse in Portugal converted into an indoor football ground – see all football design.

Other redesigned logos we’ve featured lately include a new identity for the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and a revamped livery for American Airlines – see all logos.

The post Fan outcry prompts Everton FC
to ditch new badge design appeared first on Dezeen.

Based in Shanghai and born from a small collective of designers, filmmakers, musicians and entrepreneurs, NeochaEDGE is a multi-faceted and successful creative agency and production house. It’s a pioneering company—founded by Adam J. Schokora and Sean…

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Le idee che stanno dietro gli ultimi prodotti dello studio inglese TILT sono stati concepiti nel corso di workshop con il personale ed i pazienti dell’Ospedale Whittington di Londra. Quiet crea un guscio protettivo consentendo all’utente di sentirsi protetto e accolto, facendolo restare quasi immune dal mondo esterno.

News: a prosthetic hand designed for people with missing fingers has been made available to download from the 3D-printing design database Thingiverse (+ movie).

Dubbed Robohand, the prosthesis was conceived by Richard Van As, a South African carpenter who lost four fingers from his right hand in a work accident.

He got in touch with Ivan Owen, a mechanical props designer from the USA, and the pair designed a set of mechanical fingers printed from plastic with a Replicator 2 desktop 3D printer, donated by Makerbot.

“[The Makerbot] dramatically increased the speed at which we could prototype and try out ideas, and gave us the ability to both hold a physical copy of the exact same thing, even though we were separated by 10,000 miles,” says Van As in the movie.

They then tried making a complete hand for a child with amniotic band syndrome, a condition that causes babies to be born with missing or severely shortened fingers.

The resulting Robohand is worn around the wrist and lower arm like a gauntlet and driven by the motion of the wrist.

Bending the wrist forwards causes the cabling to pull the fingers closed, while moving it back releases the fingers.

The digits, knuckle block and wrist hinges are all printed by the Makerbot and joined by cabling and stainless steel bolts, all of which are easy to find and replace.

“With the Makerbot, as [the child] grows, all we do is scale it up and print him another one, and the hardware just gets taken from that and put on the new hand,” explains Van As, adding that old hands can then be reused by other children.

The 3D print files for the Robohand are open source and available to print from the Thingiverse website.

Other uses of 3D printing in medicine include a 3D-printed bionic ear that can hear radio frequencies beyond a human’s normal range.

We recently reported on the possibility of printing human organs in Print Shift, our one-off publication about the emerging technology – see all 3D printing news or see design for healthcare.

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born without fingers appeared first on Dezeen.