Sculpt-a-Light (using duct tape)

After self-powered LEDs, what if rolling the tape piece completed the circuit and lighted it up? Keywon did it!

Startup advice from a startup master

Rick Borovoy has started a series of video posts on how to start a company. He presents the very early stages "where you're trying to put together an idea with a technology that can implement it with a group of people who will use it, another group of people who can an build it, and a third group of people will fund it". Rick Borovoy co-founded a startup in 2002 based on his Media Lab Ph.D. work on technology for face-to-face community building. On top of that, he has gotten many social technology-oriented projects off the ground, and has thought a lot about the process.

The Pony Diving video


His next video is about you needing partners and not employees... but it is the next step!

What a visionary anime!

I've just finished the awesomness Denno Coil anime, only 26 episodes, an epic end. Everyone out there working on HCI should give it a try, it's not just about wearing VR glasses and having a secret child's world, it is about fusion between anime culture, with a tiny revolution: girls use their brain quite inventively, and a vision of a digital world merging physical, microscopic illegals that needs special encodes, kids collecting metabugs to gain more credit, with a digital police that can also be hacked. O well, I had fun watching these!!

A "trailer" with a soundtrack I never heard before!

An illuminating paper book ...

Absolutely gorgeous! A pop-up book that explores the integration of paper, electronics, mechanics, and computation by Jie Qi, Leah Buechley and TungShen Chew

Electronic Popables is an interactive pop-up book that sparkles, sings, and moves. The book integrates traditional pop-up mechanisms with thin, flexible, paper-based electronics; the result is an artifact that looks and functions much like an ordinary pop-up book, but has added elements of dynamic interactivity.

Enter the Barbie world

Barbie Cafe



After the Barbie Cafe in Shanghai, China by architect Hayes Slade designs the first ever Barbie Flagship for Mattel. The 35,000 square foot store holds the world’s largest and most comprehensive collection of Barbie dolls and licensed Barbie products, as well as a range of services and activities for Barbie fans and their families.



Mattel wanted a store where “Barbie is hero”; expressing Barbie as a global lifestyle brand by building on the brand’s historical link to fashion. Barbie Shanghai is the first fully realized expression of this broader vision. Mattel worked with BIG, the branding and design division of Ogilvy & Mather, to develop creative concept, identify project location, explore featured activities and identify creative partners.





The central feature is a three-story spiral staircase enclosed by eight hundred Barbie dolls. The staircase and the dolls are the core of the store; everything literally revolves around Barbie.

The staircase links the three retail floors:

The women’s floor (women’s fashion, couture, cosmetics and accessories).

The doll floor (dolls, designer doll gallery, doll accessories, books). The Barbie Design Center, where girls design their own Barbie is on this floor. This activity was planned by Chute Gerdeman Retail and designed by Slade Architecture.

The girls floor (girls fashion, shoes and accessories). The Barbie Fashion Stage, planned and designed by Chute Gerdeman Retail, where girls take part in a real runway show, is also on this floor.

For WoW insiders only: We don't date n00bs we pwn them!!

A video that is hilarious, for World of Warcraft insiders only!!!

PUYO-CON: the soft controller!

This new controller technology goes far beyond traditional button-type devices. It enables input based on direct touch, force, and shape transformation. Because the soft material is "crash-worthy", the controller can even be thrown.

Human beings use many different types of sensory information to perform a broad range of activities. But most conventional game controllers limit sensory input to a small, fixed portion of the sensorial spectrum. Players can press or release buttons or move the controller in space, but the controller must always be held in the user's hand. With PUYO-CON, sensory input is far more flexible because players can control activities by applying force to soft material, grasping the controller, and transorming its shape.

The goal of this project is to enhance entertainment experiences for millions of game players around the world.

K-12 Embodied and Mediated Learning

SMALLab @ Arizona State University - 2009 from aisling kelliher on Vimeo.

What can you make with your USB key?

USB is used as a synonym for a universal connection, so designers envisioned rings to know if people are suited to each other, if they are really compatible, or to know how long it will last! Synchronizing via USB, transforming the shape of the device can lead to a multitude of concepts. Customized USB devices have gone beyond imagination, such as the USB pregnancy test that combines both your digital data to your bio data, a very sexy trend, however it was only an April fool… People also flirt with the idea of a USB key which size changes depending on the data it contains. Pretty neat! Will it ever blow up when it reaches its limits? How to represent the type of data it contains? Does it complain when it is out of data? However all these neat design sketches are exclusively at the level of concepts.


It is still possible to customize your device in any ways you want. There is a company that offers Personalized jump drive: to create your USB sketches in any color or material you can think of: if you want a USB carrot, it is probably possible. Apparently the company accepts any request. You never have enough USB keys in your bag and imagine if you could possess the USB key of your dreams! I am not sure how they offer to harvest the USB power pin to power up an external device, but they might, after all there is a USB key that exists exclusively to recharge alcaline batteries!

A USB fire extinguisher for Kidde Aerospace and Defense.

Technical objects make music

Yuri Suzuki and Naoki Kawamoto want to contribute to the design of daily domestic noises. alarms, mobile phones, a doorbell; They reexplore their sounds. The musical kettle is a part of series 're-design soundscape'. As the kettle boils it whistles your favorite tunes.

I particularly love the way the kettle is outfitted, but I also love the idea of reinventing the sound of objects!