Posted on

Trace of Time


Conceptual simple/smart product from RCA ID graduation show student Il-Gu Cha

A planning clock for office or studio, “The Trace of Time” clock not only tells the time but provides a place for users to make notes: The face of the clock is made of glass and stainless steel. Messages are erased by means of the integrated eraser.

Reactions and comments:

“This idea is incredibly simple yet incredibly stupid at the same time, awesome!”

“People have had whiteboards for years, and they are preferable because they self erase themselves if you’ve decided to put something off etc etc”

“Someone is getting laid at 8pm tonight.”

“The way that the word “genius” is used in that first sentence drives me crazy.I prefer to think of this as made for procrastinators.

“Deadline? What deadline?”

If your passing through London follow your nose down to the excellent Summer Show at the Royal College of Art. Teaching staff [Platform 12] Sam Hecht, Durrell Bishop, Andre Klauser.

Posted on

Divergent + Convergent Ideas

Ideas Worth Sharing? Obviously that’s an improved TED’s tag line but it got us thinking about ‘lens’ and ‘filters’ on what we share, to whom and why, especially in this twitter frenzy world. Concepts like ‘pass it forward’ are certainly nice gestures to the community. Keep it simple/smart is our philosophy, ask yourself today how to be USEFUL, with your relationships, your designs, to your users, now step it up, ask yourself how to be VALUABLE?

Tim Brown (IDEO) talking about PLAY and CREATIVITY. In essence: It’s the need for playful ideas to firstly branch out in large quantities before rightfully converging, revealing deeper insights and sparks of excitement. His talk about the need for PLAY is a central theme of IDEO. This really is a philosophy that accidental experiments happen during the course of designing, which spark new ideas, which lead to better big picture thinking. I wish Tim had cited more frames of reference to fully bake this idea into more tangible terms. Great talk.

David MacKinnon view on creativity

Full disclosure: Tim taught as a guest lecturer on our RCA CRD course in London.


Posted on

RCA 1995-1997

Dan Sellars post-graduate design study was at the Royal College of Art. The image above is taken from the interactive narrative project that he directed/designed as part of the industrial design/computer-related design 1997 show.

Nine Star Ki was a late-night interactive film experiment running on three TV channels simultaneously. You would be allowing viewers to experience a thriller by switching between opposing points of view. This conceptual interactive tv prototype could be deployed assuming three UK network television stations would agree to run the films simultaneously.

Posted on

RCA Design Interaction shift

RCA

The name of the Interaction Design Department at the RCA has now changed to Design Interactions ….

“designing for the complex, troubled people we are, rather than the easily satisfied consumers and users we are supposed to be.”

Design Interactions is a small change, but we think it is significant. It reflects our emphasis on designing interactions of all kinds – not just between people and digital technologies, or even other emerging technologies, but also between people and possible futures, and between design and other fields of art and science.