design | Peter Bihr

My phone, the brick

03-01-2012

Over the holidays, I had quite an interesting experience: My smartphone was bricked. I hadn’t jailbroken it and screwed up along the way or anything. The only thing I did was go on a brief vacation, in a tiny remote town in the eastern part of Germany.

The town had practically no data coverage at all. It also had no ATM, but that’s a different matter altogether.

My smartphone was a brick – it could only make phone calls, and allowed me to play chess. And let’s be frank, making calls is the tiniest part of how I use my phone these days. Even tinier than playing chess.

Just think about this for a second: If you live there, in this small vacation town, owning a smartphone doesn’t really make any sense. You’d be wasting a few hundred bucks for some apps, and for surfing at home in your own wireless network.

So that happened in Germany, one of the richest, most industrialized countries worldwide. The effect is much more common in other, less industrialized parts of the world.

That offline weekend serves as a valuable reminder. It’s important to remember that not everybody has a smartphone, and not every smartphone owner has network access all the time.

We need to take that into account when designing mobile services. Allow for offline sync where possible, reduce data transfer as much as you can. Design your apps and mobile sites to degrade gracefully. You might thank yourself later, when you’re on vacation.

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The NYTimes Reveal isn’t your usual bathroom mirror

By: Peter Bihr

07-12-2011

connected world, How to work the internets, product design

The New York Times R&B department, NYT Labs, just showcased the Reveal. It is a prototype of something we’ve seen before as design studies: an interactive bathroom mirror. But here we have a prototype, built more or less from off-the-shelf compontents. A screen, speech recognition, a Microsoft Kinect. It’s all there, combined into a new device that could blend right into our daily lives without too much fuss.

By using a special semi-reflective glass surface, the users of the mirror are able to see both a normal reflection of the real world as well as overlaid, high-contrast graphics. We’ve dubbed this “augmented reflection”. Conceptually, the idea is that our mirror can reveal the halos of data around real-world objects, including ourselves.

If you spot some interesting stuff while brushing your teeth, tap your phone against the mirror and you can read the articles on the subway. It is, at least in theory, a smooth, embedded experience. Not an interruption, but an enhancement of your daily routine.

It’s also a glanceable of sorts, a screen that wouldn’t necessarily require our focus, but gives us easy-to-access information at a glance, without drawing much attention.

As such, it’s quite amazing. In fact, I’m convinced that we’ll see a whole new market segment emerge of this type of thing: Highly networked devices that add an information layer to the things in our lives that have, so far, been quite passive and inanimate. Things that won’t stand out much, no major investments or eye catchers, but day-to-day objects. Like bathroom mirrors.

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Emerging Themes Around ‘Mobile’

By: Peter Bihr

24-11-2011

connected world, How to work the internets, media, product design

3-5 Emerging Themes to Consider Around "Mobile"

View more presentations from Kyle Cameron Studstill

Interested in the big trends that drive & shape the mobile sphere? Please take a few minutes to read this great presentation by Kyle Cameron. He knows what he’s talking about.

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Ronen Kadushin, folding chairs

By: Peter Bihr

06-12-2010

commons, design, product design

“Recent Uploads” – Exhibition Opening from annika. on Vimeo.

My friend and extraordinary open designer Ronen Kadushin (see these blog posts) recently had a vernissage for his new exhibition called “Recent Uploads”.

Ronen says:

Each chair drawe its inspiration from different narratives: design references, emotional states, city life, and street art. (…) The chairs are laser cut from a 6mm aluminum sheet, and bent and assembled by hand. Bending a piece this thick is made easy using a hallmark detail I formulated a few years back; (…) The designs of the chairs were recently uploaded onto my website for anyone to copy, produce or experiment with.

In the video above, you can see how Ronen assembled (or rather: folded) a number of his open design chairs from a flat sheet of metal. It’s pretty amazing, really.

The designs are realeased under a Creative Commons license (by-nc-sa), so you can download and cut them yourself, or buy the complete pieces at Appel Design Gallery, Berlin.

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DesignSmash: From idea to product in four hours

By: Peter Bihr

09-11-2010

How to work the internets, product design

My friends Enlai Hooi (oooold website), Fabian Mürmann, Martin Bauer, Wiebke Herger and Jens Nikolaus and a handful of others have kicked off a pretty sweet project, DesignSmash.

When Enlai first approached me to bounce an idea on me we ended up chatting and plotting well into the first night, then again a few days later. And while I had to pull out because I have a full plate these days anyway, Enlai pushed forward and and got the crew together. All that happened in less than two weeks.

So what is DesignSmash? It’s getting from an idea to product in four hours. More concretely, during an event/party, several designers or teams of designers come up with something that can go into the online shop – within just four hours, just in time to join the party.

A number of restrictions apply to make things interesting and shape the process: the designs have to be laser-cuttable, and they have to be shippable in a certain standardized size of envelope.

Once they’re submitted and curated for the shop, the designs will get fixed up to ensure quality control and put on the website. The design files will be shared under a Creative Commons license (which one can be chosen by the artist). Once a product is bought, it’s produced on demand by the local producer – in the case of Berlin that’s Martin of Lasern, and shipped out to the buyer. It’s super lean, and super local.

Parallel events will be taking place in several other cities, the products will be produced locally. And all that just in time to buy Christmas presents: The first DesignSmash event will take place on 20 November at Betahaus Berlin. (Get in touch with the DesignSmash crew if you’d like to host a DesignSmash event in London, New York or another hot spot. Make sure you have access to a laser cutter!)

I can’t wait to see all this in action!

Photo by lasernlasern, some rights reserved

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Announcing the Cognitive Cities Conference

By: Peter Bihr

08-06-2010

atoms&bits, conference, In 5 years...

Update: New date for Cognitive Cities Conference is 26/27 February 2011 (details).

A few friends and I are planning a conference this fall. Please allow me to cross-post from the Cognitive Cities blog:

Our future will be played out in cities. The projections tell us that our planet will resemble some very familiar fictional fantasies: 75% of the global population will be living by 2050 in cities or mega cities. Between slums and mass poverty on one hand and eco-sustainable living on the other hand, there will be both tough problems to solve and exciting visions to realize. We are at a point in time where the paths are set for the future of cities. The Cognitive Cities Conference wants to pick up the vibrant global conversation about the future of cities and bring it to Germany. By bringing bright minds with different perspectives together, it is our ambition to enable not only an in-depth exchange about the current state of affairs, but also to foster new projects. We believe that collaboration and diversity lead to the best results. We see the Cognitive Cities Conference as a platform for exchange and mutual inspiration and invite urban planners, designers, technology geeks, environmental experts, public officials, urban gardening enthusiasts and cultural influencers to be part of the conversation. We can only make our cities more liveable if we work together to improve them. The format of the conference will be a combination of lightning talks and workshop style sessions. Participants will share ideas, thoughts and challenges based on their diverse backgrounds, thus presenting different perspectives and approaches to the challenges we share. We are planning a one track only event, with the option for break-out sessions at any time. Where and when? Cognitive Cities Conference 02./03. October 2010 Coworking Cologne Who is Cognitive Cities for? We believe that diversity is essential for mutual inspiration. Cognitive Cities is aimed at designers, architects, futurists, urban planners, web geeks, activists, urban dwellers, you name it. If you are interested in the future of your city, you are most welcome. Who is behind Cognitive Cities Conference? Axel Quack, Igor Schwarzmann, Johannes Kleske, Markus Reuter, Martin Spindler, Peter Bihr, Welf Kirschner. Powered by CognitiveCities.com. Cognitive Cities is organized on a non-profit basis. We will provide more details and a dedicated link soon.

Until we have a site up, please refer to the original post.

For us, the idea behind Cognitive Cities isn’t just focused on urban planning.

That’s very important, as I’d like to stress that we hope to touch on other fields that are just as relevant to living in a city: think smart homes, smart grids, smart meters. Think augmented reality, Spime, sensors, cell phones, geo-tagging. Think open data. Think transportation, car sharing, intelligent trip planning. (Jetpacks, anyone?) Think reclaiming your city bottom-up. Think street art and locative art. Think green living and rooftop gardens and urban gardening. All of these, and many more, will influence our lives in the city. And all of them should be represented at our conference.

Also, I’d like to briefly put this in context: I know this all is, so far, pretty vague. We’ll get more concrete soon. Until then, we’ll be getting in touch with a first batch of potential speakers and sponsors to cover basic costs and, hopefully, some travel grants for speakers or guests who couldn’t come otherwise. We got to this event via atoms&bits, so there’s a connection here too. Props and thanks to Martin Spindler for getting the ball rolling and getting me on board! Also, thanks to Axel for enabling us to use Coworking Cologne as our conference location. As always, having a location for an event always is a huge load off of our shoulders.

So while we’re setting up the basic infrastructure to organize an event, please feel free to get in touch. For the time being, the best way is to either leave a comment ~~on the original post or~~ here, or to drop any of us organizers a line directly. We’re all pretty easy to reach. (In my case, the contact form or Twitter.) Update: Email us at info@cognitivecities.com.

Thanks for the patience, and for spreading the word. We’re all really looking forward to this.

Update: Official hashtag is #cocities.

Image: Taken with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II., a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from yakobusan’s photostream

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Peter Bihr

My phone, the brick

The NYTimes Reveal isn’t your usual bathroom mirror

Emerging Themes Around ‘Mobile’

Ronen Kadushin, folding chairs

DesignSmash: From idea to product in four hours

Announcing the Cognitive Cities Conference

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