I’m impressed by a shipyard’s ability to dry-dock a cruise ship. I’m also impressed by limousine manufacturers being able to cut, stretch and weld a Town Car.
It never occurred to me that these two pieces of manufacturing prowess could be combined, but several years ago, Hamburg-based shipyard Blohm + Voss—who’ve been plying their trade since 1877—received a commission to “stretch” a cruise liner. Watch and be amazed as they transform the Norwegian Crown into the Balmoral, the latter ship being 90 feet longer than the former:
Interview: over dinner in an apartment inside a historic clock tower, Airbnb co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky told Dezeen how two young design graduates built the home-stay booking website that is now bigger than most hotel chains.
The venue, The Clock Tower apartment (main image) in Sir George Gilbert Scott’s 1868 gothic revival hotel at St Pancras, is one of Airbnb’s elite rental properties. Guests share the property with its owner, Peter Tompkins, who rents rooms through Airbnb for just £150 per night (although it gets booked up months ahead).
The Clock Tower at St Pancras Chambers can be rented via Airbnb
“I think this really sums up the wonderful authentic feeling you get when you’re travelling,” said Chesky, who founded the company with fellow Rhode Island School of Design graduate Joe Gebbia in 2008. “We’ve kept the feeling of being at home anywhere.”
Inside the Clock Tower apartment, one of Airbnb’s “elite” properties
The duo had the idea for a site that would allow travellers to stay in ordinary homes instead of hotels when, short of money to pay the rent on their San Francisco apartment, they bought a couple of inflatable air beds and rented them out to attendees of a design conference in the city.
The Clock Tower apartment is inside Sir George Gilbert Scott’s recently converted 1868 gothic revival hotel at St Pancras
“We called it the Air Bed and Breakfast,” he says. “From that weekend it’s grown to where we are today, which is 252,000 people every night staying at Airbnb at peak.”
Airbnb’s home page
Silicon Valley didn’t take the company seriously at first, partly since it was headed by designers rather than engineers – and partly because nobody thought anyone would pay to stay in someone else’s home.
Another Airbnb elite property: a loft near Old Street, London
“When we came to the Valley, no one even wanted to invest in Airbnb,” he says. “One of the reasons was they thought the idea was crazy. People thought: ‘I’d never stay in a stranger’s home. That’s creepy’. But the other reason is that they didn’t think a designer could build and run a company.”
Designer Tom Dixon’s converted water tower in west London can also be booked via Airbnb
Chesky explained to Dezeen how the company won over the doubters and built a global business where “everything we do is design driven”.
Images are courtesy of Airbnb.
Marcus Fairs: What is Airbnb?
Brian Chesky: Airbnb is a new way to travel and experience the world. We had this vision: what if you could book someone’s home the way you could book a hotel anywhere in the world? And that’s what we have today. We’ve kept the feeling of being at home anywhere. We’re in 190 countries, that’s every country but four countries in the world. Thirty-four thousand cities. You can get a home, a castle, a teepee, a treehouse, a boat. Really interesting homes. We’re here in the clock tower at St Pancras station; I think this really sums up the wonderful authentic feeling you get when you’re travelling.
Marcus Fairs: You’re a designer. Tell us about your design background.
Brian Chesky: I grew up in New York, my parents were social workers. I know they had a lot of anxiety about me becoming a designer. My Dad wanted me to get job in health insurance one day. I ended up going to the Rhode Island School of Design [RISD] and I was very inspired when I got there because a teacher told me: “You can live in a world of your own design, you can change the world, you can redesign it.” No one ever told me that growing up.
The day of our graduation, my cofounder Joe Gebbia said “Let’s start a company together.” I ended up moving in with him [in San Francisco] but we didn’t have enough money to pay rent. I had $1,000 and I remember that rent was actually $1,150, so I couldn’t pay rent.
It turns out the weekend I went there, this international design conference was coming to San Francisco. All of the hotels were sold out, so we had this idea. Why don’t we turn out house into a bed and breakfast for the conference? Unfortunately we didn’t have any beds, but we had air beds. We called it the Air Bed and Breakfast.
From that weekend it’s grown to where we are today, which is 252,000 people every night staying at Airbnb at peak. I think part of the reason we’re so successful – and it’s partly luck, we’ve been very fortunate – is that we’re from a design background. When I was at RISD, everyone talked about how design could get in the boardroom, how you could get the boardroom to listen to design, how you could influence the CEO.
But I thought: “Why should design be in the boardroom? Why can’t design run the boardroom? What would happen if two designers ran a technology company? What would that be?” That could never happen before. We are that experiment played out and I hope that we’re successful because of it. When we came to the Valley, no one even wanted to invest in Airbnb. One of the reasons was they thought the idea was crazy. People thought “I’d never stay in a stranger’s home. That’s creepy”.
But the other reason is that they didn’t think a designer could build and run a company. They were straight up about it. We weren’t MBAs, we weren’t two PHD students from Stanford. Being designers they thought we were people that worked for people that ran companies. That’s what they told us. We never believed that; we thought designers were the perfect people to run a company like this. A human-centred company, built around empathy, using creativity. I thought we were the perfect people and we certainly have something to prove.
Airbnb Hoxton Loft interior, London
Marcus Fairs: So is Airbnb more of a design-led company than most other Silicon Valley startups?
Brian Chesky: Absolutely.
Marcus Fairs: In what ways?
Brian Chesky: We’re very much a design-driven company. Everything we do is design driven, not just the products we make or how we design them. Every decision, from the board meetings we run, through how we hire people, to our office design.
We have this methodology that’s called Snow White. It’s inspired by the film Snow White, the feature-length animated movie. It was the first time Walt Disney created storyboards, and we did that for the trip. We storyboarded what was the perfect trip, from the time you book your trip, you leave your home. We did every frame, which in our business is the story board trip. We design it and make sure it’s great every time.
We created this whole end-to-end service design system, design every part of the trip. Hotels, Expedia, booking websites, they don’t do that. They typically use financial data to make their own decisions. We make decisions based on people. We do the same things with employees, how we recruit them, how they join, how we train them. We storyboard and try to design the end-to-end system. We try to see things very differently. For our office design, we redesigned meeting rooms to look like apartments because we thought meeting rooms were ugly and meetings suck.
We have really simple core values that are really like designing the culture. I think there’s a lot of intent around things that before us, there weren’t a lot of intent around. And they weren’t considered from a human basis. Typically they were done from a financial basis.
Marcus Fairs: How is the hotel world reacting? I heard a rumour tonight that they’re getting a bit defensive.
Brian Chesky: Well we’re as big as they are now so there’s a little bit of angst to them. But I think I can’t yet generalise the whole hotel industry and I think it’s because a lot of people have a lot of different views. Some are trying to figure out what we are. I was just in Davos [for the World Economic Forum] and met with a couple of CEOs of large hotel chains. They were actually really friendly and one of them said: “We don’t know what to think about you yet, how should we think about you?” and another said “We don’t actually think of ourselves as competitors with you.” But I heard off the record that another one does think we’re a competitor and has some concerns. So I can’t really generalise, they all have different views.
But I don’t think we’re as much competitors as people make us out to be. Most hotels make all their money in business travel. There’s not a lot of profit for them in ordinary people. We’re the other way around; we have some business travel but most people on Airbnb are using it for vacation.
Airbnb Spitalfields loft interior, London
Marcus Fairs: We’ve seen over the last few years the rise of design hotels, boutique hotels, design filtering into the hospitality industry but do you think that’s just a bit superficial? You’re talking about designing the whole trip experience rather than just the lobby or the room.
Brian Chesky: I think there’s two things there. The first is that I ask myself: “If the internet was around 100 years ago, what would it look like today?” My conclusion is that it would look a lot like Airbnb or be more of a home. I think home design has been an amazing thing that’s lived on for generations, and we kind of celebrate existing home design. I think home design is more authentic than hotel design and I think the idea of home is just more authentic. It’s not manufactured to simulate something, it’s got to be authentic because it has to be there year round. So it’s got to be honest.
I also think that we think about designing the entire trip experience, like Snow White. That entire end-to-end storyboard. We’ve come out with some things, some things haven’t come out yet. We’re really thinking about every frame.
Marcus Fairs: Give us some examples of how you’ve improved the sequence in the storyboard of a trip for travellers.
Brian Chesky: Most of my examples are things we’re coming out with this year. I can give you 100 examples but unfortunately we haven’t announced any yet. I guess our app… with a lot of hotels and a lot of booking sites, their app and how you book is a bit of an afterthought. We design every part of the experience. We even thought about when you get off a plane at the airport, how you pull up your itinerary, how you would check in. The whole app was designed for someone who is a traveller and using it while travelling. A lot of sites, the don’t really think about the use case.
Marcus Fairs: There’s that scenario with conventional travel where you have to print off all these different bits of paper the night before you leave…
Brian Chesky: We have an app that’s super consumable, it’s super easy to use and these are just some of the basic things. Let me give you another example: the host site [where people offering their apartments for rent on Airbnb upload and manage their details]. We were looking at the storyboard of a host and we realised that parts of it were really hard. One part that was really hard was taking photographs of your home. So we created this network of 4,000 to 5,000 professional photographers. You click a button and a photographer will come and photograph your home for free.
This is something that we never would have considered had we not been designers. But we put ourselves in the shoes of the user and realised how hard this was. Then we thought “What would magical feel like?” and that’s how we approach design problems.
So here’s a great design lesson that we learned. We had a mentor who said: “Brian, it’s better to have 100 people love you than a million people sort of like you.” To create the perfect experience for one person and then scale that; work backwards. A lot of companies don’t do that; a lot of companies make a small tweak for everyone, measure it, make another small tweak and get that out and measure again. You keep turning dials, kind of arbitrarily, hoping you get a good signal. We said “Let’s just design something from the ground up for one person, make it as great as possible and then scale it.” That’s how we came up with a lot of our concepts. We designed the end-to-end system for a small number of people and scaled it.
Airbnb Spitalfields loft interior, London
Marcus Fairs: You were saying earlier that Silicon Valley doesn’t take designers seriously.
Brian Chesky: When I got to Silicon Valley they were not taken seriously.
Marcus Fairs: Is that changing then? There’s Apple, there’s fuseproject… Is there a culture change going on?
Brian Chesky: Well Apple was successful in 2007 when I got to the Valley. Their value wasn’t higher than Google or Microsoft then. Engineering was considered what made the most valuable companies. Apple’s a funny case. Now people in the design community see Apple as a design-driven company. In technology, a lot of people didn’t think it was design, they just thought of Steve Jobs as a God. They’d go: “Oh it’s because Steve Jobs is a visionary, that’s why Apple’s successful.” And I said: “No, he’s just a great designer.”
But we had totally different views on it and now you have a lot of young startups – us, Pinterest, Square, SoundCloud – all these companies are really well designed, so I think it’s changing. I think more and more the experience and the design of the system and product are becoming the epicentre for the user experience. I think they’re really important right now. I would like to think we played a very small part in shifting that narrative and sentiment, and giving a bit more visibility to designers.
News: spectacle-wearing tech fans will soon be able to use Google Glass for the first time after the tech giant today unveiled four designs for frames to hold prescription lenses (+ slideshow).
The tech giant has also unveiled two designs for shades and five new colours for the original Glass product, giving a total of 40 different combinations for the high-tech device.
“It’s our first collection of new frames,” said Isabelle Olsson, lead Glass designer at Google’s secret Google X research lab.”We’re finally at the beginning point of letting people wear what they want to wear [when using Glass].”
Google split frames
The move sees Google positioning Glass as a customisable lifestyle accessory for the first time, as well as making it available to people who already need to wear glasses.
“This is the next step in the evolution of our design and truly gives wearers the opportunity to make Glass one’s own,” said the company. “This announcement also allows us to serve a new demographic (people with glasses) and starts a new area of the eyewear industry, ‘smart eyewear’.”
Google thin frames
Olsson’s team developed four different spectacle frames based upon popular contemporary designs, which they refer to as curved (pictured top), thin, split and bold. The small display sits above the user’s right eye as in the regular Google Glass. They also developed two sunglasses styles, called classic and edge.
The frames, which will cost $225, are sold separately from Glass, which costs £1,500. This means they can be worn with or without the clip-on high-tech element.
“The frames are accessories,” Olsson told Dezeen. “You detach the really expensive and complex technology from the style part. You can decide to have a couple of different frames so you don’t need to get another Glass device.”
Google bold frames
Google was prompted to launch the spectacles following feedback from its 10,000 “explorers”, the initial cohort of bloggers, coders and others who were chosen by Google to try the product. Some of these people called for a version of Glass that would work for those who require prescription lenses and who could not wear the product over their existing eyewear.
Google edge shades
Manufactured in Japan and made of titanium, the spectacle frames will be available in a range of styles and three colours. Lenses will be supplied by the user’s own optician. Google has also partnered with VSP, the insurance firm that oversees 80 percent of the US for eyecare and vision insurance.
Google classic shades
“There actually aren’t that many styles [of spectacle frames] out there – perhaps about eight,” Olsson said. “We looked at the most popular styles and then condensed them into these really iconic simplified versions of them.”
Olsson joined Google X in 2011 and has led development of Glass from early prototypes, when the product was “still a phone attached to a scuba mask”. She previously worked at industrial design company Fuseproject.
Google active shades
Glass users can send texts, read email, take photos and gain directions from the small screen that sits in front of the right eye. These functions are activated by the user tapping the glasses legs or saying out loud “OK Glass”. They can then toggle through functions using the voice-activated operating system.
Google Glass is not yet available on widespread consumer release. After the rollout of the explorer program in the USA this year, the firm plans a consumer launch in the USA toward the end of 2014. There is no planned release date yet for the UK.
Même si nous ne sommes pas forcément amateurs d’armes à feu, force est de constater que les clichés de Herra Kuulapaa prenant au ralenti divers détonations et les impacts des balles impressionnent. Davantage de clichés dans le même style montrant la puissance du feu à découvrir en images dans la suite.
Produced in collaboration with the Designers Accord in 2011, our Sustainability in 7 video series has aged quite well, if we say so ourselves. Perhaps the best example is Janine Benyus’s short primer on biomimicry, in which the biologist, innovation consultant and author explains how the natural world can inspire and inform design.
Whether or not he’s seen the video, Jeabyun Yeon definitely gets it: His Triton Oxygen Respirator concept was clearly inspired by fish. Just think of all the things we could accomplish if we somehow could sprout gills and swim great lengths without worrying about breathing?
We obtain many things from ocean. It becomes a great vacation spot and provides us with many resources. However, many difficulties are involved in using them, among which the most fundamental difficulty is breathing. To use skin scuba equipment, we must learn very complicated procedures. In addition, there are people that cannot enjoy them from being afraid to breathe under water. I’ve come up with a future product that can solve these difficulties.
Simply love this version of the iPhone 6, it has so much substance to it, and as designer Michael Muyunda puts its, this is a pro version that is conceptualized to release alongside the iPhone 6. It is a version meant for developers and power users and is based on technology that should be available between now and the near future. This concept sees the use of a centered more square battery because the regular iPhone layout will not work with the back ‘windows’ layout.
This concept shows a practical way to run a desktop OS on a mobile phone. Everything unnecessary such as the system UI and desktop has been removed.
The sidebar is used to search all desktop apps.
When a desktop app is opened, Linux is virtually booted and the rest are ready to use.
When you press ‘Close all’, Linux is shutdown.
One of the main problems with a desktop OS is the UI size and this can be easily fixed with a smart zoom feature.
When your finger is hovered close to the screen a zoomed area will appear so you can easily get work done easily.
The dock recognizes the iPhone via NFC and wirelessly streams the display over Wi-Fi to any apple device.
The device will also include a HDMI dongle, which can be plugged into any HDMI display much like the chromecast.
The USB ports can be used to fully convert your phone into a PC by connecting peripherals such as keyboard and mice or you could use Bluetooth.
Michael Muyunda also has a campaign live here, check it out.
What if your gadgets knew how you were feeling? The Rapport project aspires to achieve just that! It’s all about facial expression. You look at it, it looks back at you and suggests some music. It understand whether you like it or dislike the tunes, and depending on your face, it either cranks it up or changes the music! Similarly, it communicates its own “feelings” with familiar expressions. Watch it in action —>
Designers: Joe Smith, Yeawon Choi, Yifei Chai, Yuchang Chow
– Yanko Design Timeless Designs – Explore wonderful concepts from around the world! Shop CKIE – We are more than just concepts. See what’s hot at the CKIE store by Yanko Design! (Emotional Intelligence was originally posted on Yanko Design)
1. Paper Planes Designer Luca Iaconi-Stewart has crafted a stunning 1:60 scale replica airplane model of an Air India 777-300ER from bits of manila folders. Over five years he measured, cut and glued tiny pieces…
Office phones are probably the drabbest ones designed in the industry. So the Callmate (specializes in conference calling) comes as a breath of fresh air with its cool smartphone-esque physique and transparent touchscreen applications. Taking advantage of LCD batteries, Bluetooth and the ergonomics of a curved body, this office phone is sleek and sexy! What do you think?
Btw, the Callmate works with Smartphones, Tablets and Laptops as well.
Interdisciplinary art collective BeAnotherLab has developed a virtual reality headset that allows users to experience what it would be like to live in the skin of someone from the opposite sex.
The Machine To Be Another (pictured above) was designed by BeAnotherLab as a low-budget experiment that examines how people with different social, theological or cultural backgrounds can experience life from another’s perspective.
One of the tests conducted using the technology is called the Gender Swap experiment and invites users to discover, “what would it be like to see through the eyes of the opposite sex?”
Users trying out goggles and a headset that show what the other person is looking at
“Designed as an interactive performance installation, the Machine offers users the possibility of interacting with a piece of another person’s life story by seeing themselves in the body of this person and listening to his or her thoughts,” explained BeAnotherLab.
Users wear a pair of immersive goggles from virtual reality firm Oculus that display a video being transmitted in real time from a camera attached to another headset worn by a performer, who can be an actor or anyone interested in describing a particular aspect of their life.
The user and performer agree on a set of movements and actions and act them out at the same time in identical spaces, with the performer describing their thoughts or feelings about what they are doing and interacting with.
This audio description is picked up by a microphone worn by the performer and can be heard by the user through a set of earphones.
A wheelchair user and performer testing the headset
As well as enabling men and women to temporarily swap gender, performances have been arranged to allow people to gain insight into the bodies and minds of a wheelchair user and an immigrant in Spain. A mother and her teenage daughter have also tried out the headset.
“Our main interest through this approach is to use the Machine as a tool to help promote empathy among individuals of different social, cultural and ideological contexts,” said the designers. “However, we are also open to new points of views and interests that might be offered by the collaborators.”
The performer mimics the user’s actions so the user experiences what the performer sees
BeAnotherLab used readily available technologies including webcams, mobile phones with built in digital compasses for tracking movement, and Arduino microcontrollers to create the low budget set up, which will be made available online as an open source initiative.
The user sees their own image when the performer looks at them
The project is based on a field of neuroscience called ’embodiment’ that examines how the form of the body affects the way we think and act. The designers explained that they are interested in developing the project with psychologists and neurologists working in fields such as rehabilitation, body perception and conflict resolution.
A mother and her daughter testing the headset
The Machine To Be Another project was initiated by BeAnotherLab with support from Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona and tested during a residency at L’estruch, a creative laboratory in Sabadell, Spain.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
Uhhh, that’s a cross-section of a ship
