As a response to Ken Segall‘s recent blog entry about how “arrogant” Apple is I fell inspired to become arrogant myself. Ken Segall, former Creative Director at Apples describes how arrogant Apple is by thinking that they can re-imagine products, like the iPhone and iPad that others, like Nokia and Microsoft have tried to develop for years – and failed.
I too want to question the decisions and designs made by companies now setting the standards instead of just fitting in and using badly designed products. I want to follow my own vision and realize my ideas.
Ken Segall describes Apples arrogance:
This company was practically founded on arrogance. Imagine, two guys in a garage thinking they could out-compute companies like IBM and HP. In later years, they’d tell us to abandon the standard PC interface and use some silly mouse to control our computers. With smug superiority, they’d cut out the floppy disk we’d come to love. Errgh.
If only we thought to stop them then.
Because it wasn’t long after that Apple — a company without any real consumer electronics experience — had the gall to build the music player that Sony or some better-qualified company should have built. This self-appointed savior of the music business somehow seduced the record companies with an online music store that forces us all to go along with “their vision” of how music should be sold.
I’m current writing my bachelor project at DTU together with the Danish Electric car distributor ChoosEV. The project is about defining the role and opportunities of the electric car by minimizing the drawbacks and enhancing the powerful features of the electric car.
This is what ChoosEV say about themselves, translated from their Danish web page:
ChoosEV supplies electric vehicles, charging stations, financing, management, consulting and environmental optimization in relation to electric vehicles and infrastructure. Our goal is to be a leader in the market for electric vehicles and infrastructure. In this way we contribute to making a positive difference for the environment and the community – both locally and nationally.
Here are some pictures from our preliminary research.
German industrial designer, Dieter Rams is perhabs one of the most influential designers of the 20th century. His name has been strongly associated with the consumer products company Braun for which he had been working for over 40 years, and the Functionalist school of industrial design. Read more on Yatzer
Dieter Rams’ ten principles to “good design”
Good design is innovative
Good design makes a product useful
Good design is aesthetic
Good design helps us to understand a product
Good design is unobtrusive
Good design is honest
Good design is long-lasting
Good design is consequent to the last detail
Good design is concerned with the environment
Good design is as little design as possible
Gestalten Books has compiled “Less and More” a book which features images of of Rams’s products, his sketches and models while it elucidates his design philosophy. Buy the book – I did…
At the Copenhagen Conference on Climate Change COP15, MIT researchers and the municipality of Copenhagen debuted the Copenhagen Wheel, which transforms ordinary bicycles quickly into hybrid e-bikes that also function as mobile sensing units. The Copenhagen Wheel allows you to capture the energy dissipated while cycling and braking and save it for when you need a bit of a boost. It also maps pollution levels, traffic congestion, and road conditions in real-time.
Controlled through your smart phone, the Copenhagen Wheel becomes a natural extension of your everyday life. You can use your phone to unlock and lock your bike, change gears and select how much the motor assists you. As you cycle, the wheel’s sensing unit is also capturing your effort level and information about your surroundings, including road conditions, carbon monoxide, NOx, noise, ambient temperature and relative humidity. Access this data through your phone or the web and use it to plan healthier bike routes, to achieve your exercise goals or to meet up with friends on the go. senseable.mit.edu/copenhagenwheel/
