Colleague made this as part of a project, I like it!
Paper hills.
I’ve been going back and forth between work and the town centre of Bray for the past few weeks to do all the arrangements for accommodation, tax numbers and bank accounts. I’m happy to say pretty much everything is covered at the moment. Hopefully by the end of the month I’ll have everything sorted and I won’t have to worry about that anymore. I haven’t had internet in my apartment so far, I’m currently in the process of fixing that.
My first few weeks at Design Partners have been a lot of fun and have already been very rewarding in many ways. My colleagues (hailing from all over the world) are all highly talented, highly creative and incredibly kind. People seem genuinely friendly and interested in me and my graduation project. On a design related note: It’s fantastic to see how quickly concepts move from brainstorms to sketches to tangible models. Prototyping is a strong component of the majority of the projects here and they’re greatly skilled at doing it too.
Speaking of projects, my time at Design Partners is divided into two segments of the week; working on live projects and working on my graduation assignment. My role in live projects is kind of a trial for Design Partners as I am the first to be carrying out the role of Interaction Design so explicitly (that is to say, I’m the first designer to have the practice as their core focus within the company).When not doing live projects though, I’m working on my graduation thesis. I’ve been trying to formulate a topic, but it’s been tough going. More on that soon.
[Flash 10 is required to watch video]
One of my colleague’s downloaded a new iPhone app and decided to try it out. Do you think he likes me?
Week three in Ireland
It’s the beginning of week three in Ireland and after some minor hick-ups (i.e. a realtor I had been in contact with pulling a no-show) I’ve scored myself a nice, modern and extremely centrally located apartment in Bray. Bray is a small town, about 40 minutes away by train from Dublin City Centre and it’s situated in the county of Wicklow. Design Partners is situated in an industrial estate on the outskirts of town.
I previously considered living in Dublin city because I felt like living in a big city again. But after careful consideration and experiencing first hand how lacking and expensive public transport logistics are over here (and how high the prices of (non-shared) accommodation is in Dublin) I decided to find myself something closer to work. My lovely girlfriend Tracey helped me move in to the apartment last weekend, so I officially have a home now.
It’s lovely to live so close to work and to be so close to the seaside (15 min. walk from my apartment). I even bought myself a gorgeous bike to cycle to work everyday, yeah!
On the topic of cycling: first-hand experience so far has taught me that the hilly roads of Ireland pose quite a strain on my crappy stamina. And with an incredibly steep road between me and Design Partners I suspect it will be some time before I can leisurely cycle to work. Not giving up though!
Tomorrow I’ll be leaving for Ireland, where I will work (at least) for six months at a product design company called Design Partners. My suitcases are pretty much packed, and everything else is prepared for the grand journey over. Super, super, super excited to be doing this.
Disclaimer: luggage featured is not all mine ;-)
Digital vs. Physical
There’s a feeling of thinness that I believe many of us grapple with working digitally. It’s a product of the ethereality inherent to computer work. The more the entirety of the creation process lives in bits, the less solid the things we’re creating feel in our minds.
- Craig Mod in Digital-Physical
Truer words have never been spoken. Feels great to read Craig Mod’s thoughts on this as I’ve been struggling with the intangibility of the digital world and my place and purpose in it.
The essay itself is a must read for anyone working with or working in design.
Signed, sealed, delivered. Got a signed copy of my graduation placement agreement. It’s really official now :)
A different route.
Pun intended.
For the last few months I had my heart set on doing an internship in the automotive sector. To pursue that dream I made quite an effort; I read a ton of research, attended a conference in Salzburg and even met people from the automotive industry. In short: I learned a lot (though certainly not everything) on the topic in a very short timeframe.
As I was applying to companies and speaking with them on opportunities, I started to discover that I didn’t know what I really wanted with this topic. There were two things I did know:
- I wanted to apply my knowledge on interaction design to help design objects in a physical world that are more user-friendly.
- I liked the idea of applying my knowledge on connectivity to design for a world filled with connected things (call it ubiquitous computing/an internet of things/physical computing, whatever).
As I was doing more research into automotive HCI and speaking to more companies I felt as though there wasn’t a way for me to - at present times - make a meaningful contribution to the field. So I went back to basics and chose to pursue a topic that was ‘closer to home’, and closer to what I wanted to do. I applied to a range of companies that designed physical products or appliances (basically doing industrial design/product design/products’ UI design).
After a bunch of interviews with lovely companies I was lucky enough to be invited for an interview at a company called Designpartners, based just outside of Dublin on the outskirts of the little town of Bray.
Designpartners is a product design company focussing on consumer electronics and medical appliances. It houses big ambitions, a lot of talent and an impressive portfolio.
Starting May 2012 I’ll be doing a graduation internship at designpartners. I will be setting up and experimenting with how interaction design would work well with industrial design and be able to contribute to the already existing human centered design attitude present at designpartners.
Going from cars to consumer electronics is quite the change, but I’m positive it’s the right one. Over the course of the next few weeks I’ll be rounding up school related stuff and forming a concrete project proposal together with designpartners.
The first step towards getting my diploma has been made, exciting stuff.
A new in-car motion-based interaction concept by Mercedes-Benz.
Okay, so picture this:
You’re driving down a busy highway, suddenly some jack-ass cuts you off when you’re going 70 miles/hour forcing you to turn a hard right, consequently flinging your cup of fresh coffee through your car.
In a responsive reaction your hand shoots out to grab the cup, the computer detects the motion and translates it into turning up the volume of the stereo up to 100 and activating another myriad of functions that give you an even worse fright and send your car crashing in a ditch.
Of course, the above is a highly exaggerated version of what could happen. But the truth is that implementing motion-based interaction in a car like this (however cool and ‘Minority Report-ish’ it might be) could be truly deadly and is in general very dangerous.
Even though I realize this concept is much like what a catwalk would be for fashion (conceptual work, a display of trends and vision), it’s clear that not a lot of research was done in sense of context, ergonomics and safety implications (or user research in general, Mercedes?)
My hands are itching to redesign the solution Mercedes-Benz is presenting here. And I think I will. Who knows, might even land me a job somewhere.
ringobarbie: The original Care Bear
.. is here to remind us graduating students that we’re doing ok!
(Source: howtopronouncelaneia, via my-own-melt)
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