Social innovation

Thanks to my son Nicholas for this one. Innovation and design can lead not only to cool, beautiful, highly-functional gadgets, it can also lead to cool, beautiful, highly-beneficial ideas that serve important social functions as well. I really like this idea of an Innovation Camp -- a place where innovative folks come to work together, dreaming up great new ideas. Good Gym is one of the ideas that emerged from the Social Innovation Camp. Watch the presentation the team put together. Great idea, good pitch -- we can learn a lot from the folks at www.sicamp.org

Function + beauty = positive emotion & great design

Designing new and "better" ways to charge all our gadgets has been a major focus in recent years. Many people are coming up with some great ideas, such as this "Visual Desktop Charger" or the cute, but functional "Toasty Charger" or the functional, cool, and eco-friendly wind charger I have pictured here. Each one of these designs has great functionality, but adds in something that creates a positive connection. The VDC creates beautiful lights and evokes positive emotions from the warm glow. The Toasty is peppy, cute, and attractive to view. As Donald Norman tells us, attractive things work better because we are drawn to use them and the positive moods the create help unclog our cognitive capacities. The Windy appeals to the eco-conscious, but also provides a way to charge gadgets when you are far away from any source of electricity. If you love to go backcountry hiking (as I do) you might want a way to recharge your GPS unit or that emergency cellphone you are carrying. I'm sure there are more cool chargers out there -- post 'em if you find 'em

Videos of things going on BEHIND you

Another shout out to Matt T.: a video camera that records what you want it to record, but also records what is going on behind you. The "Behind the Scenes" camera was design with the insight that when you are taking pictures, your attention is focused forward, toward whatever you are recording, but sometimes great stuff is going on behind you. This camera is designed to overcome that limitation. Another innovation based upon careful observation of users and spotting something obvious that most of us simply overlooked.

Sony's Bravia apple remote

How about this for an innovative remote? Each apple corresponds to a specific device, such as your TV or DVD player. You shake or move the apple to control the device. It looks great sitting on your table, it evokes wonderful, positive emotions just by the way it looks. Holding the apples must be a nice experience too -- most of us like fresh, crisp, sweet-tart apples so that image alone is a happy one. This is a great example of taking a normal device and doing something really great with it. Thanks to Matt T. from innovation class this year for sharing this idea!

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cool idea for an great study space -- build it inside the Commons!

I told some students about a class I lead a few years ago where a group of students and I proposed some renovations for the Commons. We suggested building some "tree houses" back by Commons C (the egg room) as innovative spaces for teams to gather and work. This is picture is something like the ideas we pitched. I still think these would be awesome to have there....Find out more about this real tree house here.

Powered by RAIN!

In keeping with alternative sources of power, how about rain?! This is pretty amazing: use rain drops to power LEDs. If you can light up an umbrella this way, could you light up a room on a rainy day? Could you create a ceiling that creates the illusion of sunshine, powered by rain, so it turns on automatically on rainy days? How about something like this on our cars, along with photovoltaic cells on the roof, plus the kind of dynamic energy recovery the Prius already uses to power its battery, plus...who knows?

why didn't I think of this

I can't count the number of times I have plugged in something to charge -- cell phone, camera battery, GPS unit -- and had no place to put the unit itself. But, unfortunately, I always had my "user-centered observation" button turned off. Now I see this and I think, "DUH!".

Powered BY the people!

This is a great idea for green energy: powered generated BY people walking! It's called piezoelectric My mind is spinning with the possible applications. Think of all the places where hundreds or thousands of people walk every day. Then, think about harnessing energy from their foot steps. Pretty amazing! It looks like one of those ideas that might be catching on, in a big way!