Industrial Design Trends

Lauren Sherman wrote an article for Forbes.com called “Ten Industrial Design Trends You Can't Ignore.” I find it a trend in itself the Forbes is “Trendsurfing” following the lead of digg.com, trendhunter.com and perezhilton.com. Okay, maybe Forbes is more business oriented and a little more serious, but they continue to stay at the front-end of innovation. I also enjoy reading Businessweek Innovation and Design articles as well.

Back to the ten Trends for design. Here is a synopsis, but I encourage reading the article in full.

1. Design for a Cause—everyone from Gap, Ralph Lauren and your local fair-trade shop are designing products for a cause whether it is AIDS, Breast Cancer, Poverty Alleviation or the Environment.
2. Simplexity— products that have many functions but are approachable, ergonomically correct and easy to use—like the iPhone.
3. Personalization—Build your own and do it yourself. We are all about being individuals, so why not personalize our products, so we can feel more unique. Check our threadless.com, or make your own shoes at nike.com.
4. Globalization—companies are using designers from all over the world to make their products.
5. Ornamentation-brocades, jewel tones, silk, texture, rhinestones, and other embellishments will be seen on everything from cell phones to home décor.
6. Polarization of design—Companies are either designing products for the high end and the low end. It’s either big-box of luxury brands. Think Ikea vs Bergdorf Goodman.
7. Pink Design—the feminization of product design making geek products geek chic. Cell phones, laptops, PDAs and other usually male-oriented products are becoming prettier.
8. Craft—counter to mass design these products are usually limited edition or one of a kind. Check out etsy.com.
9. Mass Imperfection—Designers are making everything from drinkware to jeans imperfect. The beauty is in the imperfection.
10. The other 90%--designers usually cater to the top 10% of the economy, but what about the other 90% of the population that live in Africa, Asia and Latin America! You will start to see companies like P&G marketing and designing products for this majority.

Collaboration

I joined TED recently. TED is an annual conference of some of the most innovative people. The conference is all about spreading ideas, open innovation, increased knowledge . Although the conference is quite exclusinve, they will now share their information with anyone. Just go to http://www.ted.com/ and become a member. You can then listen to speeches by Jeff Bezos, Bill Clinton, Anna Deavere Smith and Jane Goodall. I highly recommend checking it out.


Collaboration continues to be a hot topic and, in my opinion, a sustainable way to do business. TED has a dozen talks on collaboration. Go to http://www.ted.com/index.php/themes/view/id/19 to check it out.

Check out Corante--an Innovation Blog

Suw Charman writes a great blog on innovation and new media called Corante. She recently wrote an article titled, "Where's Your Innovation" discussing Project Red Stripe at the Economist and moving on to wider issues of innovation and media in general.

A few of the points I found important were:

Innovation does not have a size...it can be a small change that helps solve a big problem.

Innovation is not in a vacuum, and anyone might have a solution, including young people and customers.

Innovation will succeed in business when the business accepts innovation as part of their corporate culture.

It's important to stay connected to technology and what's going on in the outside world and new media if we want to really be innovative.

And finally,
"Innovation is not a buzzword to be repeated in meetings, it's an action, a culture, a day-to-day activity."

Simpsonize Me Now!!!

I admit it. I am obsessed with The Simpsons Movie's viral, innovative marketing scheme, Simpsonize me. If you go to www.simpsonizeme.com you can turn yourself into a Simpsons character. Practically every movie star, even Bono has been simpsonized, so why not me!

The Simpsons Movie has followed a few different trends: personalization and creativity of the customer, using web applications and online games for advertising, creating a viral campaign as people use their Simpsons icons on websites and facebook.

It's awesome!

Almost.

I was on the site for an hour, no make that two hours, trying to find a picture of myself that could work. I tried about 10 photos, none of them were clear enough. I finally put in a picture of one of my friends who was standing in front of a blank wall. That picture worked! I was about to simpsonize my friend, Roshni, and I had even picked out a purple dress for her to wear. I registered and hoped to save my design and then the design was gone!

I am so deflated, but I did look at Burger King advertisements for an hour, so I guess they have succeeded. I am sure I will continue to try, but this web ap still needs a little improvement before we can all be cartoons.

30 minutes later...

I finally got it to work!

The Before Shot ---------------------------------------- Julia Simpsonized

What is crowdsourcing?

What is crowdsourcing? It is essentially outsourcing to customers and other average people.

Want a more technical definition? Crowdsourcing is the act of taking a job traditionally performed by a designated agent (usually an employee) and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people in the form of an open call.

Procter & Gamble, as I discussed in Connect + Develop, employs more than 9000 scientists and researchers in corporate R&D and still have many problems they cannot solve, so they go to the crowds. They now post these on a website called InnoCentive, offering large cash rewards to more than 90,000 “solvers” who make up this network of backyard scientists, according to Open Inovators. P&G also works with NineSigma, YourEncore, and Yet2, as well as BrainReactions.

BrainReactions essentially is organized and controlled crowdsourcing. Companies outsource their idea generation to us to help them develop new products, packaging or marketing messages. We deliver those ideas to them and promise confidentiality. This type of outside innovation works very well, because it comes from the customer, and it is less expensive than internal R&D.

Other famous users of crowdsourcing include YouTube, Threadless, Lego, iStockphoto, and Digg.

To read more about crowdsourcing please check out the OpenInnovator blog. To learn about specific strategies of crowdsourcing, check out Sami Viitamaki’s FLIRT model.

Wired wrote a bunch of articles on crowd sourcing this summer.

The Rise of Crowdsourcing.
Look who's Crowdsourcing.
What does Crowdsourcing Really Mean?
Exploring the Dark Side of Crowdsourcing.
Creative Crowdwriting: The Open Book.
Using Crowd Power for R&D.
News the Crowd Can Use.
The Experts at the Periphery.

That's enough reading for one day! If you want a brief overview of some of these articles check out the SourcingInnovation blog.

Crowdsourcing and Politics??? That's right, in just a few hours you can watch youtube users interview democratic candidates on CNN.

$100 dollar laptop

Ever since I heard about One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) and the $100 laptop a few years ago, I have been excited about where innovation trends are leading us as a global community, towards opportunities for better access to education and means of poverty alleviation. Although this may be a utopian thought, I appreciate any real step in the right direction. I applaud Nick Negroponte for his vision and further more for the execution of the $100 laptop. According to BBC columnist Jonathan Fildes, OLPC is finally putting the $100 laptop (which currently costs $176) into mass production, and should be in the hands of Children as early as October 2007.

Even critics are joining the cause. Intel, whose chairman once called the laptop a "gadget" recently partnered with OLPC to manufacture its memory chip. Other partners include Google, Red Hat, and AMD.

OLPC designed the laptops with developing world conditions in mind, and has been testing them in Nigeria and Brazil. I recently read a Yahoo! news report titled "Nigerian school without power receives 300 laptops." The article highlighted the pitfalls of having laptops where electricity is scarce and irregular. The article confused me considering the $100 laptops can be charged with solar or human power. They have also been designed to use as little power as possible, with no hard drive and a low-power screen.

I am excited to see how the One Laptop Per Child movement takes off. Please read "$100 laptop' production begins" at the BBC to learn more. Or visit the OLPC website. OLPC is a nonprofit organization with a mission to advance education in developing countries. If you would like to support OLPC click here.

Photo from BBC article.

Other organizations are also finding ways to improve conditions in developing and war torn countries. Check out Concrete Canvas, the winner of the Saatchi and Saatchi Award World Changing Idea of 2005. Please comment if you know of other innovations that are helping developing countries.

Banksy-An Innovative Artist

Like Graffiti? Like Modern Art? I love Banksy. He is an innovative artist and he always starts a buzz. Check out his website. In the meantime, who do you think is an innovative contemporary artist?