Core77

Today's meme is "Invisible Car." See it here.

Thanks for the tip Victoria!

See more here - Thanks Loren!

It's kind of amazing that a lot of our society's infrastructure is predicated on us not being synchronized. For example, there's that college prank where everyone flushes a dorm toilet at the exact same moment, causing water pipes to burst; and an amusing urban legend goes that if everyone in China jumped off a chair at the same moment, it would knock the Earth out of orbit.

Sadly, this if-all-of-us-do-it-at-the-same-time-something-breaks thing may be true of electric cars, at least in Germany. A recent study done by the German branch of the World Wildlife Federation found that if one million Germans in 2020 all plugged in their electric cars to recharge after getting home from work, the resultant power drain would require massive amounts of coal to offset, which would in turn offset any carbon savings.

Today, the German plants that deliver marginal electricity are fueled by coal. That is the main problem, according to the study. The research adds that to produce the same amount of energy, coal emits more carbon dioxide than even gasoline.

"The irony is that you don't need a lot more electricity for electric cars," [vehicle expert Viviane] Raddatz, said. "But the problem is that if they cause these peaks, we would have to have power plants that would be ready to start (as) the massive charging starts."

This apparently would not hold true in the United States, where, amazingly, there are more forms of greener electricity generation in the works.

Read all about it here.

via cnet

To clear the fields of weeds and grass at their headquarters, Google could have hired a lawn-cutting service; instead they went with a greener initiative.

...we decided to take a low-carbon approach: Instead of using noisy mowers that run on gasoline and pollute the air, we've rented some goats...

A herder brings about 200 goats and they spend roughly a week with us at Google, eating the grass and fertilizing at the same time. The goats are herded with the help of Jen, a border collie. It costs us about the same as mowing, and goats are a lot cuter to watch than lawn mowers.

What we'd like to see next: elephants spray-cleaning the windows of the Googleplex.

No need to comment about how completely awesome these are. View more of Oliver Bishop Young's work on Make blog (via Matt).

Core77 is proud to introduce its latest International Design Competition: Wave Sport Kayak Hull Trip-Tych - A Graphics Competition!

Wave Sport has partnered with Core77 to create a new generation of boat graphics for their Fuse 56 river running / freestyle kayak. The Top 5 designs will be displayed at the Outdoor Retailer Summer Market Show in Salt Lake City in July 2009. Winners will also receive a kayak with their own design. Here's the brief:

Design Brief For this competition, Wave Sport is unleashing its new full-color high-resolution graphics capability, challenging designers around the world to create unique graphics that speak to the theme, "Every Journey Has a Beginning, Middle, and an End." Designers are invited to create illustrations that span three huge panels--the triptych--across the hull of the Fuse 56. Graphics can take any form, but designers are encouraged to think about graphic treatments that address the energy and spirit of Wave Sport and whitewater paddling in addition to the competition theme. Learn more about Wave Sport here.

Prizes
The Top 5 designs will be applied to Fuse 56 kayaks and be displayed at the Outdoor Retailer Summer Market Show in Salt Lake City in July 2009, along with profiles of the winning designers. The Grand Prize winner will receive a $2500 cash award plus a Fuse 56 kayak produced with their design. The remaining 4 Finalists will receive a Fuse 56 kayak produced with their design, or $1000 cash award (in lieu of boat).

Important Dates
May 25, 12:59pm EST: Entry Deadline
June 2: Finalists and Semi-Finalists notified
June 4-14: Top 5 Finalists and 15 Semi-Finalists showcased in online gallery; Viewer voting on Top 5 begins
June 15: Grand Prize Winner notified
July 21: Winning designs debut at 2009 Outdoor Retailer Summer Market Show

A panel of judges will choose the Top 5 Finalists and 15 Semi-Finalists. Core77 will publish a gallery of the Top 5 Finalists and visitors to the site will have the opportunity to vote for their favorites to determine a Grand Prize winner. 15 Semi-Finalists will also be published in the gallery, and all 20 designs will appear at wavesport.com. Entries will be judged on the following criteria: design, originality, theme and execution.

COMPETITION IS OPEN! REGISTER NOW!!

Check out the Fuse in action:

Searching for Design Opportunities
Every research project is a journey. This one started in Basingstoke, England, a small city 50 miles southwest of London in a hospital run by the National Health Service. I was there for Modo to think about IV poles—an ordinary piece of healthcare furniture. Modo researches, designs and builds carts and trolleys for medical devices and customers like Herman Miller, Steelcase and Philips. This project was for Cardinal Health, a $60 billion company.

Most projects start with a defined sense of opportunity—"Make it lighter," "Make it faster," "Make it cheaper." This project was different. Simon Annette, a Product Manager at Cardinal Health, had a vague sense that things can and should be better. Cardinal Health pioneered the use of software to improve patient safety and reduce medication errors, but despite Cardinal's many high-tech innovations, nurses still complained about the poles they used to transport infusion pumps. Simon wanted to change things, and he asked Modo to help.

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Introduction
Market research is expensive—not only for the time and money required to execute it, but also for the opportunity cost it represents to the organization sponsoring it. Each dollar or hour given to a project draws on a company's budget, chipping away at the financial and human resources available to direct to other initiatives. For this reason, organizations must be deliberate in choosing both the projects they pursue and the methods they leverage to solicit customer insight. Data gained is valuable only if it's used to inform an organization's development and marketing initiatives.

A quick note about language first. In the title and throughout this article, I've used the phrase "market research" versus "design research" for two reasons: First, "Design research," a term invented by the design community, is not recognized or known outside of this group; the term recognized by other individuals in business (and as an established profession) is "market research." I'm using this term then, as I believe it has more universal appeal and understanding. Second, when the design community refers to "design research," traditional methods such as focus groups and surveys are often dismissed, where more emerging methods like ethnographic research and listening labs get all the ink (or pixels). I'd like to help balance that out.

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The results are in! The latest 1 Hour Design Challenge: Business Card Hacks brought out some serious 3D creativity from the participants, and produced some utilitarian, ornamental, and just plain whimsical business card hacks.

Huge thanks to our sponsors on this challenge: UPrinting and to our guest judge Gino Orlandi. The Top 5 Winners will each receive 1000 free business cards, courtesy of UPrinting, and here they are (in no particular order):

"Business Card Pinhole Camera" designed by Yana

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Another great Consumed column in the Times tomorrow, with Rob Walker discussing the buying and giving of virtual artifacts on the net. Here's a taste:

As more of us live more of our lives in digital contexts, it seems plausible that immaterialism will become more common. Consuming things made of bits might sound weird, but actually it offers a lot of the same attractions that make people consume things made of atoms. Facebook's digital gifting is one relatively mainstream example. Consider the Fort Worth, Tex., company Alamofire. Its best-known creation is a Facebook application called Pack Rat. While nominally a game, it's really premised on a virtual version of the urge to collect things: in this case, the things are "cards" that are basically little pixel-pictures. The company calls its wares "digital collectibles."

Read the whole thing here, today!