Archive for the ‘Ramblings & Inspiration’ Category



Fix Fonts on Non Mac External Displays

Turn Fugly into Fine
Posted Monday November 28 2011 by in Design & Inspiration, Ramblings & Inspiration
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If you attach a non-Apple external display, you might find fonts look a little faint or gritty because the font antialiasing hasn’t been correctly set. The fix is easy—open a Terminal window (Finder→Applications→Utilities→Terminal) and type the following, logging out and back in afterward for the changes to take effect:

defaults -currentHost write -g AppleFontSmoothing -int 2
Should this method not work for you or if you’re unhappy with the results, open a Terminal window and type the following, logging out and back in again for the changes to take effect:

defaults -currentHost delete -g AppleFontSmoothing

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OpenIDEO

Creating an open planet to share ideas and solve problems together.
Posted Tuesday November 15 2011 by in Design & Inspiration, Ramblings & Inspiration
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“ OpenIDEO is a place where people design better, together for social good. It’s an online platform for creative thinkers: the veteran designer and the new guy who just signed on, the critic and the MBA, the active participant and the curious lurker. Together, this makes up the creative guts of OpenIDEO. “

The beautiful thing about OpenIDEO is that it is a co-creation platform that promoted collaboration rather than solitary responses.

• Ideas can come from anyone and anywhere
• You don’t need to be a professional designer to think like one
• Extrinsic rewards are as important as intrinsic rewards when it comes to motivation

The Community Operates of 5 Principles.

Principle #1: Inclusive
Principle #2: Community-centered
Principle #3: Collaborative
Principle #4: Optimistic
Principle #5: Always in Beta

OpenIDEO is also spawning new channels which include Open Planet

Check out the OpenIDEO website to learn more.

Perceptual Maps

Visual Maps for a Red or Blue Ocean Strategy
Posted Thursday November 10 2011 by in Design & Inspiration, Ramblings & Inspiration
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One of the my favourite tools as a designer is a perceptual map. Perceptual maps also know as bartle diagrams are a clear visual way of understanding core attributes or markets and understanding any points of differentiation. IDEO defined innovation models using a perceptual maps to identify whether you products were incremental, evolutionary, or revolutionary.


Source IDEO HCD Toolkit

Games uses perceptual maps to understand player types to design game mechanics.

Also Canon recently used one to explain it’s new product road map. Being a Canon geek I had to include it:

Image Source (NL)

“the arrow to the right reads “Motion Picture” while the arrow to the left reads “Still Photography”. It seems like the C EOS DSLR in development is mostly aimed at Video instead of Still. BTW, the arrow up is “Professional” while the arrow down is “Consumer”. “

Worlds Best Design Schools

A list of great schools, with a couple we would like to add.
Posted Tuesday November 8 2011 by in Design & Inspiration, Ramblings & Inspiration
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World’s Best Design and MBA Schools According to Business Week.

I think the VFS Digital Design Program ; don’t forget to check out their blog OOMPH

 

 

and the OCAD Design Strategic Insight and Innovation should be on the list.

 

Google’s Self Driving Car

Google's secret project.
Posted Monday October 24 2011 by in Design & Inspiration, Ramblings & Inspiration
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Once a secret project, Google’s autonomous vehicles are now out in the open, quite literally, with the company test-driving them on public roads and, on one occasion, even inviting people to ride inside one of the robot cars as it raced around a closed course.

Google’s fleet of robotic Toyota Priuses has now logged more than 190,000 miles (about 300,000 kilometers), driving in city traffic, busy highways, and mountainous roads with only occasional human intervention. The project is still far from becoming commercially viable, but Google has set up a demonstration system on its campus, using driverless golf carts, which points to how the technology could change transportation even in the near future.

Stanford University professor Sebastian Thrun, who guides the project, and Google engineer Chris Urmson discussed these and other details in a keynote speech at theIEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems in San Francisco last month.

Read the entire article at IEEE.org

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(T)ether Gesture Tracking Technology

Intuitive interaction with volumetric data
Posted Tuesday October 18 2011 by in Design & Inspiration, Ramblings & Inspiration
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T(ether) is a novel spatially aware display that supports intuitive interaction with volumetric data. The display acts as a window affording users a perspective view of three- dimensional data through tracking of head position and orientation. T(ether) creates a 1:1 mapping between real and virtual coordinate space allowing immersive exploration of the joint domain. Our system creates a shared workspace in which co-located or remote users can collaborate in both the real and virtual worlds. The system allows input through capacitive touch on the display and a motion-tracked glove. When placed behind the display, the user’s hand extends into the virtual world, enabling the user to interact with objects directly.

Source MIT Media Lab

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