Designed for the Rest of Us

The University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand has officially opened NZi3. NZi3 is the New Zealand ICT Innovation Institute, a national ‘hothouse’ for transforming ideas from New Zealand’s university labs, across the innovation gap, into industry. I got the opportunity to work with the UC team behind the Institute and they have done a stellar job of developing the concept and bringing it to reality.

The building is also an interesting story in green design – more on that in another post.

A rendering of the New Zealand ICT Innovation Institute building at the University of Canterbury

The Institute has a really interesting value proposition combining Ideas, Interaction, and Investment focused on industry-relevant themes:

Today is Earth Day. Let’s remember to think about sustainability in our work on design. I have included the famous ‘earth rise’ image taken from Apollo 8 in 1968. The BBC provides a great story about how the image came to be.

The earth seen rising above the Moon

Just read a very interesting book by Michelle Kaufmann.  Prefab Green describes the philosophy of her architectural design firm who specialize in design and manufacture of prefabricated modular homes which are green. Michelle got started on this path when she and her husband were struggling to find a well designed, affordable home in the San Francisco Bay Area and ultimately decided to design and build their own home.

Michelle follows five eco principles which guide her design approach:

• Smart Design: Making the most use of space – collaborating with landscape and designing for use.
• Eco Materials: High quality, eco-friendly products and practices in construction. Renewable and recyclable materials, reduced waste in construction, long-lasting and low-maintenance materials.
• Energy Efficiency: High efficiency insulation, solar panels, LED lighting, smart heating.
• Water Conservation: Reducing water intake, rain-water catchment, gray water systems, green roof, bioswales, permeable materials for driveways and walkways.
• Healthy Environment: Non-off-gassing materials, air filtration, foam insulation, hard floors.

Some beautiful ’smart’ design here, and great integration of technology. I would love to live in one of these homes.

It would be very interesting to see what it would take to have the Glidehouse design ‘accessible’, I would bet not much.

Prefab Green by Michelle Kaufmann

Alessi is one of the leading design companies – yet their designers are all external to the company. Marla Capozzi and Josselyn Simpson from McKinsey Quarterly interviewed Alberto Alessi and compiled this intriguing presentation on Alessi’s framework for evaluating a new product design. (Click on the link ‘Launch Interactive’ under the picture of Alberto Alessi) It is a great example of how to capture the essence of your product design strategy and use it as a tool in decision making.

Engineers at Google have developed Eyes Free an application that let’s you carry out some useful functions without looking at the screen. Very helpful for blind and low vision users, the app also makes it easy for all of us who want to do something without having to look at the screen – a great example of universal design. Congratulations to Google engineers T.V. Raman and Charles Chen who developed the application.
Read the story by Miguel Helft of the New York Times.