Hasta La Ideas

Le 8 octobre 2013 a eu lieu l’exposition 3D : Printing the Future au Science Museum de Londres. L’occasion de découvrir les dernières avancées et prouesses dans le domaine de l’impression 3D, notamment grâce à des photos de Oli Scarff. Plus d’images des projets sur le site et dans la suite de l’article.

I was asked to give 10 creative ways to use a pencil, other than for writing…some of the answers that I came up were: as a hair-knot clip, chopsticks, stirrer… you get the drift, right? Similarly, a creative way of using a mouse, other than with the computer is – a pen! A Folding Pen Mouse!

Designer: Yoon Son

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(Two Uses To A Mouse was originally posted on Yanko Design)

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2. Mouse-Key-Key-Mouse
3. Mouse Pen?

News: designer and entrepreneur Gwendolyn Floyd has launched an e-commerce platform that allows female artisans from developing countries to overcome “economic discrimination” and sell jewellery using just a mobile phone (+ movies).

Named Soko, the platform is aimed at turning women in places like Africa into entrepreneurs, selling their creations directly to customers rather than through traditional supply chains that leave them with little profit.

“Women in Africa produce 60 to 80 percent of the continent’s goods, yet they earn only 10 percent of the incomes,” said Floyd. “Soko empowers craftswomen to become global entrepreneurs by transforming the ubiquitous mobile phone into a tool that expands access to economic opportunity for women, giving them a greater share of the profits of the global craft industry.”

By using Soko, makers are able to upload a vendor profile, product images and descriptions to the website using SMS, allowing them to trade even in areas without internet services.

Consumers can then browse, order and pay for the designs on the website. The credit card payments are transferred into mobile money, which is sent via text message to the retailers on purchase of their goods.

They then claim the cash at designated kiosks where they also deliver the goods to be posted anywhere in the world. This means the retailers receive the maximum amount of profit for their wares.

“Soko disrupts the traditional export supply chain, removing the middlemen to enable direct peer-to-peer exchange of goods and money between global artisans and online consumers,” said Floyd, who graduated from Design Academy Eindhoven in 2005 and co-founded Soko with MIT graduate Ella Peinovich and ICT developer Catherine Mahugu.

The service is open to men as well as women, Floyd explained, but added: “Women face economic discrimination that leads to disproportionate representation in the informal economy, leaving them unable to access financial services such as banks, loans, or credit, and vulnerable to the dangers and limitations of the cash economy.”

The lack of economic opportunities for women is one of the greatest barriers to sustainable development, Floyd added. “When women are able to overcome the institutional discrimination they face in the workforce and earn incomes, they make more equitable decisions about sons and daughters’ diet, education and health, they favour sustainable environmental practices, and domestic violence rates go down.”

A video promoting Soko (above) explains further how the site can help women. “Although these women are poor economically, they are rich in cultural capital,” it says. “Millions of women across Africa attempt to earn a living by supplementing meagre incomes by making and selling crafts – a skill that roots them deeply in culture and community. However, due to a costly export supply chain, their crafts are limited to the local economy with inconsistent demand.

Earlier this month design strategist Tim Kobe told Dezeen that women are the world’s “fastest emerging market” and will transform the design of everything from products to interiors.

Mobile phones have also been used in Africa to redesign to bus routes in Ivory Coast. See more stories about mobile phones »

Floyd sent us the following information:

Introducing Soko: A Global Platform for Innovation, Style, and Impact

Soko is the online destination for shoppers to discover stunning handcrafted accessories from around the world and purchase directly from the makers. Using Soko on a simple mobile phone, designers and artisans in the developing world can upload and sell their jewelry pieces online, with no need for a computer or a bank account.

Innovation

Soko’s unique technology platform allows artisans in the developing world to create online storefronts, sell to global shoppers and get paid, all using their mobile phone, even if they do not have access to a computer or bank account. This innovation, and our drive to continue building innovative solutions to promote the work of artisans, is at the heart of Soko.

Style

With Soko, you can discover incredible design and creative ingenuity made in communities that lay outside of the digital economy. Soko brings you exceptional style in the stunning handcrafted jewelry designs created by artisans the world over, directly to your door.

Impact

This unprecedented direct access, created by transforming the mobile phone into a tool, expands access to economic opportunity for women in underserved communities creating real, immediate impact and disrupting the traditional export supply chain.

The post New website helps African craftswomen
become entrepreneurs appeared first on Dezeen.

News: a vehicle described as “the world’s first solar-powered family car” has come first in a photovoltaic-powered race across Australia (+ slideshow).

Stella, a four-seater car developed by Solar Team Eindhoven from the Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) in the Netherlands, today claimed victory in the Cruiser class at the World Solar Challenge 2013.

The vehicle completed the 3,000 km journey with an average of three people on board at an average of 67 km/h and a top speed of 120 km/h.

The Cruiser class, a new category at the biannual World Solar Challenge, was inaugurated in order to encourage the development of commercially viable solar-powered vehicles. Whereas other categories focus on speed alone, the Cruiser class takes into account practicality for everyday use.

“The team was judged on several aspects like comfort, features, styling and aesthetics but also parallel parking and cargo space,” said Solar Team Eindhoven. “Being the only one with a license plate, the road registration of Stella added up in the final score.”

“I congratulate Team Eindhoven on their innovation, practical design and foresight, to think outside the square and add the extra seats,” said World Solar Challenge director Chris Selwood. “‘Stella’ is a wonderful solar car in a field of exceptional cars and teams. I look forward to 2015 and the prospect of more cruisers as we work toward the world’s most efficient electric car.”

Stella, developed over a year and a half by Eindhoven students, features solar panels on its roof and rear. The rear panels can be flipped up to face the sun, recharging the onboard batteries when the car is stationary. It generates more power than it uses, meaning it could supply surplus electricity to the grid.

“The car generates more energy than it needs, therefor it will be possible to give back electricity to the power net,” said Solar Team Eindhoven spokesperson Charlotte van den Heuvel.  “The car needs only half the power that the solar cells achieve. Therefor the car is energy-positive.”

Solar Team Eindhoven describe the car as “ultralight, extremely aerodynamic and has an exceptionally efficient drive train, with electrical motors in the wheels, a sophisticated energy management system and a minimal battery pack.”

The team developed Stella in order to explore the potential of solar-powered consumer vehicles. “The design of the car of the future has to meet the needs of modern consumers,” the team said when the car was unveiled earlier this year. “The car must be capable of transporting a family from the Netherlands to France in one day, it needs to be suitable for the daily commute to work, and it needs to achieve all this in comfort.”

“Since the Solar Team Eindhoven wants to contribute to the development of a car of the future, the design demands more than just a focus on speed,” the team added. “Comfort, ease of use, and feasibility are all key terms.”

The post Solar-powered family car wins race across Australia appeared first on Dezeen.

News: researchers at Bristol University in the UK have developed a way for users to get tactile feedback from touchscreens while controlling them with gestures in mid-air.

The UltraHaptics setup transmits ultrasound impulses through the screen to exert a force on a specific point above it that’s strong enough for the user to feel with their hands.

“The use of ultrasonic vibrations is a new technique for delivering tactile sensations to the user,” explained the team. “A series of ultrasonic transducers emit very high frequency sound waves. When all of the sound waves meet at the same location at the same time, they create sensations on a human’s skin.”

The Bristol University team wanted to take the intuitive, hands-on nature of touchscreens and add the haptic feedback associated with analogue controls like buttons and switches, which they felt was lacking from flat glass interfaces.

“Current systems with integrated interactive surfaces allow users to walk-up and use them with bare hands,” said Tom Carter, a PhD student working on the project. “Our goal was to integrate haptic feedback into these systems without sacrificing their simplicity and accessibility.”

Varying the frequency of vibrations targeted to specific points makes them feel different to each other, adding an extra layer of information over the screen.

One application of this, demonstrated in the movie, shows a map where the user can feel the air above the screen to determine the population density in different areas of a city – a higher density is represented by stronger vibrations.

In addition to gaining haptic feedback, the user’s hand gestures can be tracked using a Leap Motion sensor to control what’s on the screen, rather than touching the screen itself.

The example given in the movie shows the controls of a music player operated by tapping the air above the play button and pinching the air above the volume slider. The ultrasound waves directed at these invisible control points in the air pulse when operated to let the user feel they are engaging with them, so they can operate the system without looking.

Carter presented the project at the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology at the University of St Andrews in Scotland today.

Last month we reported on gesture-controlled software for designing 3D-printed rocket parts and we’ve also showed a transparent computer that allows users to reach “inside” the screen and manipulate content with their hands.

The post Researchers develop touchscreens
with tactile feedback appeared first on Dezeen.