Hasta La Ideas

The latest version of the affordable XO tablet, designed by Yves Behar for the One Laptop Per Child Association, goes on sale this week (+ movie).

The seven-inch touchscreen Android tablet will be available for $150 at Walmart stores across the USA this week, marking a move away from the product’s initial focus on the developing world.

The new version features a rubber exterior and a carrying hook, while the bilingual English/Spanish software comes with a suite of pre-loaded apps, games and books.

The XO tablet is the fourth iteration of the One Laptop Per Child concept, all of which have been designed by One Laptop Per Child’s chief designer, Yves Behar of San Francisco design studio fuseproject.

The first, nicknamed the “$100 laptop”, was a clamshell design with a keyboard that could be charged by hand-crank and was intended for children in remote villages without power.

The product was one of five winners of the Index Awards for sustainable design in 2007 and won the Design Museum’s inaugural Design of the Year award in 2008.

Its successor, the XOXO laptop, was unveiled in 2008 and featured two hinged touch-screens.

The third version, called the XO-3, was launched last year. This was a tablet with a removable rubber cover that could also house solar panels to recharge the battery.

“The new tablet is an evolution of all the things we have learned with the original XO Laptop,” says Yves Behar. “The new user interface is colourful and easy to use, while the protective rubber exterior features a carrying loop similar to the original XO finger hooks.”

See more stories about One Laptop Per Child »
See more design by Fuseproject »

Here’s some text from One Laptop Per Child:

FUSEPROJECT AND ONE LAPTOP PER CHILD ANNOUNCE NEW XO TABLET DESIGNED TO SPARK THE CHILD’S IMAGINATION

The fuseproject-designed XO Tablet arrives in Walmart stores across the country this week. Developed in collaboration with the One Laptop Per Child Association, the tablet harnesses the power of a touchscreen device to create new ways for children to learn. The powerful Android tablet has a new user interface and protective cover that delivers the continuity of the design language of the original One Laptop Per Child with a new learning experience.

Centered around the idea of aspirational “dreams”, the main screen is organized by topics rather than applications. A clear hierarchy of information makes tiers of learning within each dream easy to follow and access, a key element of the new child-centric XO Learning System Interface. A simple sentence “I want to be an…” is the opener to a myriad of software, games, and applications grouped around each of the subjects of interest.

“The new tablet is an evolution of all the things we have learned with the original XO Laptop,” says Yves Behar, fuseproject founder and Chief Designer of OLPC since 2006. “The new user interface is colorful and easy to use, while the protective rubber exterior features a carrying loop similar to the original XO finger hooks. What is unique about this version is how we crafted the user interface and the industrial design simultaneously. We wanted to make sure that together they would deliver a cohesive experience while stimulating discovery and offering a few surprises.”

The seven-inch tablet, made by Vivitar, is running Android OS, and is the only multilingual (English/Spanish) and Google-certified tablet for kids on the market. It includes content curated and selected for age-appropriateness by OLPC in collaboration with Common Sense Media, a leading non-profit organization dedicated to helping parents and teachers make informed decisions about media.

The pre-loaded software includes 100 free pre-loaded apps, games, and books. Special parental controls such as the XO Journal tool, allow parents to track how much time children spend on each app and can provide insight into where children’s interests lie.

The One Laptop Per Child Association has distributed 2.5 million of the original XO Laptop in 60 countries, and is now launching the new $150 tablet in the US starting at Walmart, as well as in developing countries such as Uruguay, Cambodia, and Barbados.

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for One Laptop Per Child appeared first on Dezeen.

Industrial designers Adrienne McNicholas and Michelle Ivankovic have launched a range of silicone caps designed to preserve leftover fruit and vegetables (+ slideshow).

Named Food Huggers, the brightly coloured caps slip over half-eaten tomatos, lemons, apples or kiwi fruit to form a seal with the cut side, keeping the natural juice in so the food stays fresh for longer.

The upper edges wrap around the produce to keep the caps in place and the four different sizes overlap slightly to there’s a good fit for any item.

There’s also an Avocado Hugger with a bobble that fits over the stone if it’s protruding or presses inwards if the stone has been removed.

The soft caps nest neatly inside each other for storage and come in four different colour palettes.

The products are available through Kickstarter until Friday 13 July.

Other clever kitchenware on Dezeen includes an extendable egg tray, an espresso maker for the microwave and silicone dishes for steaming food.

See more stories about kitchenware »
Read our Food and Design report we produced with Scholtès »

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and Michelle Ivankovic appeared first on Dezeen.

Japanese studio Nendo has designed packaging for coffee-flavoured beer by adding little bean-shaped stickers to the brewer’s existing bottles.

“Adding coffee beans to beer during the brewing process gives the resulting beer a rich, deep taste, thanks to the beans’ bitterness and aroma,” says Nendo.

The studio created the packaging for a collaboration between Anchor Coffee of Kesennuma city and Sekinoichi brewery of Ichinoseki city, both located in northern Japan.

“Both Kesennuma and Ichinoseki were devastated by the earthquake and tsunami of March 2011, so the beer is a charity project to fundraise for disaster relief,” the designers explain.

To keep costs down they used the brewer’s existing bottles and simply created stickers that are applied by hand so each Coffee Beer bottle is unique.

“Large beer breweries who produce standard products on a mass scale simply can’t offer products like this one, and that’s the point,” the designers add. “We wanted the packaging to convey the makers’ thoughts and feelings with each bottle.”

The most controversial (and expensive) beer packaging we’ve ever featured was made out of roadkill.

Other innovative packaging designs we’ve featured includes laser tattoos for fruit instead of stickers, medicines labelled with symptoms rather than ingredients and famous products without the brand names written on them.

Other recent projects by Nendo include a combined shower and light for tap company Axor, offices that look like the walls are peeling away and a footwear shop full of ghostly white shoes.

See more stories about packaging design »
See more stories about design by Nendo »

Photos are by Hiroshi Iwasaki.

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by Nendo appeared first on Dezeen.

Royal College of Art graduate Jeongwon Ji has made her own bioplastic from crab shells.

Aiming to make a more tactile casing for electronic products, Jeongwon Ji extracted a derivatine of glucose called chitin from crustaceans and developed her own plastic from it by trial and error in the workshop.

The resulting material, which she calls Crustic, combines the chitin with water and small amount of glycerin.

“The Chinese mitten crab from Asia is one of the most invasive species and they are taking over the rivers in the UK,” Jeongwon Ji told Dezeen. “The crabs are unwanted here so I wanted to work out what we can do with them as a resource instead.”

The water-based mixture takes much longer to cure than conventional plastics but the ingredients are completely non-toxic, she explained. “Although production time is longer, this nontoxic process can improve the work life of those who manufacture our electronics.”

In the Design Products department of the Royal College of Art graduate show last week, the designer presented her material samples and experiments alongside conceptual electronic projects with casings made of Crustic, including an alarm clock, humidifier, computer trackpad, torch and WiFi router.

Although they were all made in accurate geometric wooden moulds, the material becomes rough and distorts as it cures, resulting in tactile and organic forms.

“I wanted to challenge the archetypes of electronic products by using tactile surfaces and making forms that look like they are made of something different, something natural,” she said.

A couple of months ago we featured a pavilion based on the structure of chitin in a lobster’s shell and in 2011 Italian designers Formafantasma presented a range of vessels made from natural polymers they’d cooked up themselves.

Other projects presented at Show RCA included paper-pulp helmets for cycle-hire schemes and living food that wriggles around on the plate.

See more stories about plastics »
See more projects at Show RCA 2013 »

Here’s some more information from Jeongwon Ji:

BioElectric

BioElectric challenges the archetypes of electronics through material exploration. Industrial processes have streamlined manufactured products, but what if we allow new materials to be expressive and tactile? Like many of today’s electronic components, the Chinese Mitten Crab comes from Asia. This species invades our rivers, and is an unwanted, local resource.

I extracted Chitin polymers from crushed crab shells, and perfecting chemical-free “slow production” methods to make bio-plastics for the casings of electronic products. Although production time is longer, this nontoxic process can improve the work life of those who manufacture our electronics.

Crustic

Crustic is a crustacean-based biocompatible plastic that Jeongwon Ji developed for her BioElectric project to enhance tactile pleasure.

The production time of Crustic is longer because the use of water instead of artificial chemicals. Crustic is made out of chitin derived from crab shells and water, combining with a small amount of red agile and glycerin.

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Jeongwon Ji appeared first on Dezeen.

This tricycle designed for children by Vietnamese firm a21studio has been crafted from bamboo and finished with ropes. 

a21studio used bamboo to form the frame because it is a versatile, solid, and sustainable material abundantly available in Vietnam.

The tricycle has been locked together with bolts that are also fashioned from bamboo, which have then been covered by rope. It has not been exposed to chemical treatments so will weather and decay over time.

The rope securing the bamboo bolts can be loosened, encouraging children to modify or re-design the tricycle.

“By designing this bike with materials, which can be easily found everywhere, we hope not only to bring true happiness to children but also remind us about our childhood,” say the designers.

We’ve featured a number of projects that utilise bamboo in a variety of ways, including a riverside cafe supported by fifteen conical bamboo columns, a pop-up bamboo theatre, and hand-made bamboo lamps.

See more bamboo architecture and design »
See more tricycle design »

Here’s some more information from the designers:

The tricycle is a long story attached to each child’s memories. It is interesting to see village children playing with bamboo bikes. The simplicity of the vehicles and happiness of children are the inspirations of this design.

Made by bamboo with wooden wheels, which are popular materials in Vietnam, the tricycle is threated with care in every detail without any chemical treatments. The bike may be decayed with time but the kids will learn showing consideration for its nature. Moreover, all the parts are linked by bamboo bolts and then covered by ropes so that kids would be excited to assemble and repair the bikes themselves or modify the design to their needs.

By designing this bike with materials, which can be easily found everywhere, we hope to not only bring true happiness to children but also remind us about our childhood.

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a21studio appeared first on Dezeen.