Readymade News

An Illustrated Weekly of World Design - December 31st, 2006

IKEA has just launched what could conceivably be one of the key innovations of 2007 in the UK. From the Guardian,

The good news, though, is that Allen keys will not be required, as thetimber-framed homes will come ready-built. The houses - known as BoKloks in Scandinavia, Swedish for "live smart" and pronounced "booklook" - are being launched by the flatpack furniture group as a solution to Britain's lack of affordable housing.

Why stop at Britain? Is this not a concept, once adapted to local conditions, that could provide affordable housing to those far more in need of such?
To be or not to be? A fitting close to the year 2006 is a look back at the much awaited $100 laptop or as its also known, the OLPC [One laptop per child] program.  Awaiting its delivery expectantly are children in Brazil and Thailand, though some controversy surrounds the project in Bangkok. Meanwhile, John Maeda tells us the first working model arrived at MIT's Media Lab back in the beginning of December and links to John Fadel's blog, Froth. Worth following the story since Fadel is Director of Finance and Operations for the OLPC project. From his blog,

A basic study of sustainable development will reveal that in order for this to be achievable on a truly global scale in an economically meaningful and environmentally strategic way, the emerging populations will need to technologically leapfrog the rest of the world. The most penetrating and instantaneous way to make this happen is by deploying to the youngest segments of the population.

We argue against the positioning "most penetrating and instantaneous" since it requires the approval and support of third world governments. India has already turned down this program, refering to it as "pedagogically suspect". Alternates include mobile phones, which have significant penetration in the most backward areas of the nation, better than instantaneous, and new technology allows phone to TV hookups creating the virtual equivalent of a monitor and keyboard. Said Google's CEO Eric Schmidt at an Indian conference recently,

... every analysis had shown that the mobile phone is the “simplest, biggest space for us” because prices are falling dramatically, people carry it all the time, and there’s so much you can do with a phone. “We are trying to find out what are the applications you can put on the phones —there’s gaming, e-commerce….”

And then there's banking and healthcare - speaking at the Dr Anji Reddy Gold Medal Oration, Dr. CK Prahalad shared the success story of an innovative diabetes management eco-system, incorporating an array of diagnostic, medication and treatment services, affordable insurance, incentives and facilities for a compliant lifestyle, and a sound delivery infrastructure.

It took ICICI Prudential nine months to create commercial value from this intersection of disciplines with its "Diabetes Care" product, which it offers in partnership with a number of pharmaceutical, hospital and fitness institutions.
[...]
"If we can pull this off for diabetes, the next target is HIV," says Dr. Prahala

A Brand new X.mas courtesy Michael Beirut and his partners at Pentagram, a notable graphic design studio. The coordinated Brand Standards for this millenium old festival should put the spark back into an outdated look, says unBeige while the NYT positively gushes. Meanwhile, British muslims are positively offended by local attempts to rebrand Christmas into something a lot less meaningful,

They have expressed their disbelief at revelations this week that the local authority in Birmingham has named its seasonal celebrations “Winterval”, while Luton has attempted to change Christmas into a Harry Potter festival by renaming its festive lights “Luminous”.

Angry at these moves, the newly-created Christian Muslim Forum has fired off a strongly worded letter to local authorities up and down the country pleading for the real meaning of Christmas not to be stamped out.

Design is heating up in Asia - Taiwan's OEM's are making waves as they morph into innovators and design powerhouses, beefing up their studios and increasing their competitiveness globally. Apparently 4 out 5 laptops are now designed inhouse as firms move from a "do what you're told" mentality to a "let's innovate" one, transforming the "Made in Taiwan" label. China too seems to be pushing for originality, a move still recieved with some scepticism,

When Chinese cars come here, we can be sure of one thing: they will be cheap. But will they be any good? That’s not as easy to answer. These are new companies moving at breakneck speed. They make use of some of the world’s best engineering consultancies and design houses and are equipped with the latest manufacturing equipment, but they lack experience in the demanding markets of the West.

OXO on the other hand, learnt a hard lesson in the world's most demanding market, Japan, recently. Here's a snippet,

What wasn't perfect, however, was the feedback from the market when OXO tried to introduce regular U.S. products into Japan. In fact, the response was almost unremittingly negative. Many of their products were laughed out of the room for being too big.

Nokia is making a design splash with the imminent launch of a slimline phone with which it hopes to take on the MOTO RAZR, that uber trendy rockstar of mobile design. Check out the slideshow of the expected contenders in 2007. Nokia's 2007 plans include new design centres in Rio and Bangalore in addition to Espoo, Finland. Spanning the globe means more than just numbers for this forward thinking mobile manufacturer, though this article on the increasing complexity of smartphones and the rate of returns by consumers due to their frustration and inability to fully utilize their handsets is worth the read.

What is of greater concern is the less tangible qualitative issues at stake. Mobile subscribers are becoming increasingly despondent with mobile technologies, and a frustrating user experience has sadly become the rule and not the exception. Brand loyalty and subscriber churn once again come under fire as mobile users migrate between device vendor and mobile operator brands, in an ostensibly eternal quest for the optimal user experience.

To round up, the Social Design blog has compiled a list of innovations from a solar powered trash compacter to solar powered parking meters. Green is in, according to a survey by the Guardian, while scientists claim they have solved the global energy crisis by making solar power even cheaper and easier to use. Hindustan Petroleum has set up community kitchens to reach new customers as rising oil prices often push individual cooking gas cylinders beyond the reach of far too many households. Seen here is a camel powered water pump designed by the students of NHU for the nomadic Tuareg of the Sahara desert. Happy New Year!

Delay in this weeks issue of newsletter

Greetings,

Some of you may be aware of an earthquake off  the  coast of Taiwan yesterday that damaged a number of undersea cables  - since I'm in Singapore at the moment, this  has affected the speed and ability  of  our telecommunications systems.  This week's issue of the Illustrated Weekly of World Design will be delayed until service gets back to normal - probably by this weekend.  Please bear with us for this unforseen circumstance.

Warm regards and wishing you all a Happy New Year,

niti

Illustrated Weekly of World Design - December 21st, 2006

Welcome to the first official issue of the Illustrated Weekly of World Design and to kickstart this week we have the International Herald Tribune's tribute - Design in 2006: A year of innovation and utility - their take on the impact of design around the world this past year. Here's the requisite snippet to whet your appetite, and the obligatory slideshow of choice designs to browse.

Yet despite the vote of confidence at Davos, political stamps of approval, record-breaking auctions and inspiring examples of humanitarian design, the underlying mood of design in 2006 was tense. New design developments reflect their time, and just as artists have responded to the toll of natural and man-made disasters by embracing a dark, neo-Gothic spirit, designers have adopted an equally somber style.

 

All doom and gloom methinks, and more so than necessary. Look at what Tim Brown has to say to Forbes about the power of design to change the world for the better:

Besides changing the way we bank, do you think design can have a greater impact?

Another big trend is the focus of design thinking on social concerns. Companies are coming to us, saying they want to work on something has a social focus. For example we worked with the start-up company Iomai. Vaccines to develop a skin patch-based vaccine delivery system. It will have incredible potential. It can deliver vaccines for a flu pandemic or malaria. You apply them in environments where there isn't refrigeration and with much less of the vaccine than needed if you're injecting it.

Hooray for the bottom of the pyramid, we say. Bonus, slideshow of IDEO's recent work.

 

Trust The Guardian however to ask the truly important questions - Innovation's back, but does that change anything? They say,

But what kind of innovation? It would be nice to think that this time around, taking on board the lessons of the past, companies would focus on real needs, not least the urgent ones that they themselves have created in previous waves of capitalism: the greatly compromised health of the planet, the welfare of those at the bottom of the pyramid, and the desire of the better-off for personal rather than mass-produced goods and service and for relationships based on trust and honesty rather than rip-off.

Some hope. In another recent issue of HBR, the lead article proudly showcases the new-found ability to print pictures, jokes and trivia questions on crisps -that's right, crisps - as a triumph of worldwide innovation. Another business magazine shows how a credit-card company has harnessed new profiling techniques to sell cards to those who can least afford loans, boosting its profits through late payment fees.

But we believe there's hope yet for the rest of us unwashed millions. The inimitable Jan Chipchase of Nokia is back with an incisive and insightful look at the habits and practices of those who need to share a cellphone amongst many. Well worth the read, as usual, as this introduction demonstrates quite clearly.

The research team identified 6 shared use practices: an informal service called Sente that essentially enables a mobile phone owner to function as an ATM machine; mediated communication that neatly side-steps issues of technological and textual literacy; the ever popular practice of making missed calls; the pooling of resources to buy the lowest denominations of pre-paid airtime and extend the access days for the phone that is topped up; the use of community address books to reduce errors and (supposedly) encourage phone kiosk customer loyalty; and finally Step Messaging - the delivery of text and spoken messages on foot.

India and China have certainly been on everyone's lips this past year as the drivers of growth, competitiveness, design, business and of course, innovation. This interesting article by Nandani Lynton on the barriers to innovation in China gives pause to the harried fear mongering by the media and some food for thought:

The very structure of Chinese society has inherent barriers to innovation. The country's monolithic culture, growing from a predominantly Han-Chinese tradition, and a deep tendency toward strong hierarchies, does not encourage thinking in new ways or including outsiders. This makes it difficult to understand new markets, to think creatively, or to accept eccentrics. [...] All these habits discourage appreciation of different types of thought, behavior, or people. That stifles the kind of cross-fertilization and cooperation that multinationals tap to boost innovation.

While inherent differences exist between these two Asian giants, Indian industries could take a leaf from Lynton's article, she goes on to say,

Big global companies benefit from spending the time needed to meet local requirements for cheaper, better, differently featured products. The lessons they learn in one country can then be spread to comparable markets around the world.

 

Appropriately, the blog iLeher takes a look at the changes that the now ubiquitious mobile has made in India and analyzes which firms are ready for the next great leap forward, judging from the list it sounds as though there is an immense opportunity space right here, right now.

...here I am concentrating primarily on Internet companies that are leveraging mobile as an alternate medium of providing their service. I was actually amazed to find out that you can do so much even without having data connectivity - just by using simple SMS. My sense is that still none of these have really gained a lot of traction among the masses, but they are taking a step in the right direction and hopefully someone will figure out the magic formula...

 

Globally, the Stern Review Report on the Economics of Climate Change has caused a mild furor amongst learned academics on the validity, veracity and immediacy of the concerns expressed therein. Yale Global has a round up of the most important responses, a summary,

Sir Partha Dasgupta of the University of Cambridge suggests that current generations must engage in massive savings to increase the standard of living for future generations. “The choice of an appropriate policy toward global warming depends heavily on how one weighs the costs and benefits it imposes on different generations,” writes economics Professor Hal Varian. Economists, environmentalists and policymakers have ample data to juggle for setting policies – and future generations will have much to say about which policies were right or wrong.

 

We promised to be Illustrated and here are some images captured by Readymade's Creative Director, David Tait in Khilchipur village, Rajasthan, India recently at the local bangle makers. The traditional craft of making bangles from lac - a local resin - is thousands of years old, but as the finished piece demonstrates, a little bit of design direction can bring a touch of the modern to this ancient art.

India: The New Business Innovator

Is India poised to strike as a design leader? Yeah, we’d like to know too. Here’s a wrap up of an insanely busy and fascinating CII NID Design With India Summit. It’s a collection of coverage by and about Niti Bhan who was at the conference on behalf of our collaborative group, Jugaad. Niti was accompanied by Readymade’s David Tait, and his iron constitution. First, back in May, Niti co-wrote a piece for BusinessWeek with Brad Nemer about taking brands to India. Then Niti wrote about Wal-Mart entering India, and, interestingly, choosing to do so together with a local partner. Bruce Nussbaum wrote about Niti’s part in the conference, calling India a “New Frontier for Innovation and Design”. If you’ve ever wondered what McDonalds sells in India, Niti describes the Maharaj Mac.

 

 

 

On to the conference itself. The full transcript of Niti’s talk, discussing the radical notion of corporate social opportunities for astute multinationals wishing to grow revenues. This is as close to a blueprint for successfully entering the Indian market as I’ve seen. Niti’s first update of the conference discusses the amazing indigenous success of the TATA Ace. Simultaneously, Niti posted a second update for Core77 featuring luminaries from Motorola, Whirlpool, P&G and heavyweight attendees like Uday Danavante of Sonic Rim and George Mathews of Icarus Design. Niti discusses Dastkar Ranthambhore and their world-class indigenous crafts. She welcomes visiting designers to stop by for inspiration and to offer design advice.

 

 

 

Finally, BusinessWeek’s Nandini Lakshman covered the conference including some notable comments by the inexhaustible Niti. India’s  designers are hungry for success and as India becomes bolder in its global role, some of them will undoubtedly become global design leaders. Simultaneously companies looking for growth are finding India ready, provided they approach with understanding and caution.

nokia future concepts

Great presentation! This is definately a logical step for 'mobile computers'.

picked this up from ringnokia who in turn got it from techdigest