Lovely look at many designed objects with films about their production
http://bencollette.com/productbyprocess/

People keep asking me to have more notice for the talks so I am putting them up here in advance – please check back regularly for updates.

Monday 21st November – Thomas Twaites talking about making a toaster from scratch.
Monday 12th December – Kate Sclater talking about Hyperkit
Monday 23rd January – Nick Marsh talking about Sidekick Studios

Talks are open to all. I am open to suggestions for speakers so if so have anyone you would like to hear talk please e-mail me with your suggestion and the reason why you would like them to talk. Alternatively you can make suggestions using the forms on the Design Means noticeboard in the department.

The next Design Means will be on the 21st November at 5pm in the usual place. I am very excited to have Thomas Twaites coming in to talk about the Toaster Project. If you want a sneeky preview about this work you can check out his TED talk, he is also publishing a book.

A talk that will be particularly relevant to a brief we are running for the BA design second year students in a few weeks but will be interesting for all courses, staff and students – demonstrative of a bullish determination to find out where things come from.

Thanks to Goldmsiths design alumni Zoe Stanton and Mary Cook for coming in to talk about their company UsCreates: a social change agency. The talk was followed by some interesting discussion around the definition of design and how it relates to what they do, what design has meant to them in the past and what it means now, how politics affects their work and how they have created a business model around working a 4 day week.

As promised, here are the films Zoe and Mary from UsCreates wanted to show you:
A paper website prototype produced in a co-design workshop:
Watch it on Vimeo

They also spoke about the Girl Effect:
Watch the Girl Effect on YouTube

Uscreates was set up in 2006 by ex-Goldsmiths design students Mary Rose Cook and Zoe Stanton who had an idea that they could use their design skills to tackle social challenges. Now, in 2011, the Uscreates team is a mix of disciplines from journalists, to designers to management consultants and works internationally on social challenges world wide.

The founders and directors will share their experiences, methods, ideas and current work around happiness, early diagnosis of cancer and The Girl Effect.

Come and hear their talk:
5pm Monday 31st October
Open to all
The Hexagon, Lockwood building
Design Department

Design Means is a talk series hosted by the department of design at Goldsmiths. We are interested in speakers who can talk about their creative process, they need not be from the field of design. If you work in the department and would like to host a talk please get in touch, or if you would like to make suggestions for speakers or would like to speak yourself please contact Nadine n.jarvis[AT]gold.ac.uk.

Speakers coming up:
Liliana Ovalle
UsCreates
Thomas Twaites

Design Means is back!

Liliana Ovalle will be talking at Goldsmiths tomorrow to kick off this years Design Means series, open to all, Lockwood building, the Hexagon room, 5pm.

i.materialise Machine Man Human Augmentation Design Challenge

Link to the competition here

http://bit.ly/mMdinP

The i.materialise Machine Man Human Augmentation Design Challenge is inspired by Sci Fi author Max Barry’s book Machine Man. Max, together with other judges, Fab@Home founder and Cornell bio-robotics professor Hod Lipson and 3D printed prosthetics designer Scott Summit will be looking for a design that urges us to look at the future of 3D printing humans.

It’s a double whammy this week, Tim Hunkin will be coming in today to do a Design Means talk from 4pm in the Hexagon. This is the last one of the year so don’t miss it!

Thanks to Usman who came in yesterday for his inspiring Design Means talk in which he spoke about sensors and sensed enivronments. Usman is an architect and founder of Pachube, an open source platform for publishing sensor data.

The speakers coming up in the series:

Noam Toran - Monday 28th March

Usman Haque – Tuesday 3rd May

Tim Hunkin – Thursday 5th May

Thanks to Nelly for a wonderfully energetic talk on Monday; the first of this years Design Means talks. Amongst other things she spoke about her recent Gold Sonic Boom installation in Shunt – a giant 50 meter-long experience of what it might be like inside the Super Kamiokande in Japan: a neutrino observatory.

The best bit for me is that she revealed aspects of her process – whilst preserving the mystery – a key component of Nelly’s work. Hopefully the disarming messiness behind those polished photo shoots will inspire us all to get making and experimenting.

Image via nellyben.com

Nelly Ben Hayoun e-flyer

Design Means... is a lecture series started in 2009. The speakers are invited from a vast range of backgrounds to demonstrate the breadth of thinkers within the design industry.

The lectures are open to all and are free of charge.

If anyone has any suggestions for speakers for the coming series of Design Means or if you would like to give a talk yourself please e-mail n.jarvis[AT]gold.ac.uk.

The Interaction Research Studio features in the January and February 2011 edition of the Interactions Magazine, published by the Association for Computing Machinery. The article is the first in a series of  features on research laboratories and studios associated with the CHI community.

A good article outlining the current international state of Design Education with a vision of its future.

The Prayer Companion is featured in this months Icon magazine.

Poor Clares, York | Photograph © Interaction Research Studio, Goldsmiths

This week the work of the Interaction Research Studio featured on the BBC’s World Service Program ‘Digital Planet’.

“A community of nuns in the north of England is using a digital dot matrix display that gives a news feed of global events and updates of the emotions and feelings of bloggers around the world. For the last 18 months the Poor Clares nuns from St. Joseph’s in York have been using the device designed by Goldsmiths, University of London to guide their prayers. Bill Gaver from Goldsmiths explains how.”

More
BBC Digital Planet

Thermal Aneometer | Photograph © Interaction Research Studio, Goldsmiths

A quiet summer, but last Friday we deployed our first experimental sensor node in a house in Lewisham. The sensor node is a combination of multiple sensors that monitor various environmental factors. The device is battery powered and the sensor readings are  wirelessly sent to the Pachube web site, by way of an Arduino set-up. The sensor will be in this house for a couple of weeks before we move it on to another home.

Sensor Node | Photograph © Interaction Research Studio, Goldsmiths

Gas Sensor | Photograph © Interaction Research Studio, Goldsmiths

André Knörig, who is working with the Interaction Research Studio on the ERC funded project ‘Legible Landscapes’ and who works for IxDS (Interaction Design Studios in Berlin) and coordinates the Fritzing project, brought in the experimental sensor modules we’ve been developing together.

André Knörig | Photograph © Interaction Research Studio, Goldsmiths

Fritzing is a really useful project that enables designers working on electronics to make the step up from prototyping, using breadboards for example, to producing PCB’s. It’s something that could be beneficial to introduce to students who are interested in employing electronics in their work, using Processing and Arduino for example.

Experimental Sensors | Photograph © Interaction Research Studio, Goldsmiths

More

http://www.ixds.de/
http://fritzing.org