Bin: The bin is designed to put in residential buildings permanently to provide people a space for recycling old or broken electronic goods, batteries, etc. Also, users can sell high value old items via the website and send them through the bins. These high value items will be provided with packaging by the bin to ensure better protection during transit.

Cart: The Cart is a provisional mobile venue for bigger items that is recycled frequently as well as a place to reuse unwanted items for the inhabitants of a building. Users can ask for a cart through twitter and either can leave those unwanted items to be picked up by the company or announce to residents of other buildings that they would like to sell these items.

Truck: The truck accumulates the e-waste from the carts and bins and delivers the waste to official recycling and refurbishment center.

Website: People can get to know about the system, their services and can place request for a bin or cart for their residence through the website after agreeing on a price.

Twitter: The system will be notified that a bin is full by using Twitter. Moreover, users can request carts for larger and less often recycled items and can inform residents of other buildings about the items they are giving away through Twitter.

Designer : Smart Design

Designer : Nathanael Finlay

Text from Fabiano :
There are over 25 million legally registered vehicles on the UK’s roads today. Car manufacturers supply the basic tools that are required to perform the task of changing a wheel with every new car; these tools should be sufficient to complete the task successfully but is this really the case? Research suggests that people are reluctant to perform this task themselves.
Flat Tyres were the AA’s 3rd highest reason for call-out in 2005, beaten only by flat or faulty batteries and Lost keys.

Several user centered analyses were performed with volunteers who matched our key user profiles most closely. Existing products available for purchase were used. Many problems were highlighted in particular:
•  Safety, low posture is often required, particularly in removing wheel studs and jacking the car. If the flat is on the drivers sided, the task must be performed in the road as traffic passes. This posture hides the user from passing traffic and also makes it hard for the user to see the traffic approaching. This problem is increased at night.
•  Visibility of tools is poor at night. Existing tools tend to be black or grey in colour.
•  Clear instructions required, particularly for those who have never performed the task before. They serve to increase the users confidence in completing the task successfully and safely.
•  Psychological issues were also a key factor, many users remarked that they fear of failure would likely prevent them even attempting the task.

In every case we found that it was not possible to complete the task using the tools provided by the car manufacturer, a telescopic wrench was needed to increase the torque applied to the wheel studs.

The design concept behind the product changes the paradigm of how the most problematic task of changing a flat tyre is performed. The product minimizes the steps of changing a flat tyre by undoing the 4 studs of a wheel instead of undoing individually, using the motion force of the car.

• Utilizes the weight and motion of the car to release the 4studs, reducing required effort
• Does not rely on physical strength of user
• Improves road safety in reducing time spent in path of traffic

CONCLUSION

The final developed product is an innovative solution to the problems witnessed when changing a wheel. By loosening all four studs simultaneously, using the forces generated by the turning of the car wheel, the task becomes less demanding for the user while also reducing the time taken.

Designer : Fabiano Pottes

(Click to view bigger image)

Designer : Xiao-Fang Shen and Nikolai Ruola

E-book readers always keep one thing common that is a very high definition display and the entire surface area is almost occupied. Few e-book readers are available in only black and white colors but there are many supported with full color display capability. The main advantage of e-books is you don’t have to worry about your encyclopedias, technical documentations, catalogues, brochures, magazines and comics to get aged. Moreover, e-books are updating continuously and since most of e-books don’t kill your storage device with a gigantic volume, you can store a previous version documents easily.

Designer : Massimo Marrazzo

But it may have become the harbinger of future mobile phone concept developments. With Pilotfish, a new development in the concept of phone music editing was born. The Ondo combines the touch screen ability with a back that lithely twists and turns to allow for fast and comprehensive editing of desired music on the phone.

This new concept according to Pilotfish is a bid to lessen the burden of mobile phone manipulation especially for those who find it hard to even understand the features and also make music enthusiasts happy. Of course we can not conclusively judge the efficiency of this designed concept but the need for a classy easy to use music editor has always been in the heart of mobile phone music lovers who want a calling phone with an Ipod like concept among its features.

[Press Release]
Pilotfish Launches Ondo Music Editing Phone Concept

Play it, mix it, rock out to it! Ondo enables a more flexible and physical experience in mobile phones

MUNICH, Germany – April 20, 2009 — Pilotfish, a progressive industrial design and product development studio based in Munich, Amsterdam and Taipei, today introduced Ondo, a dedicated music editing phone concept. The Ondo concept enables OEMs to visualize a new form of user interaction for mobile phones. User The target user for “Ondo” is the music enthusiast who seeks to interactively capture and edit sounds. Going beyond software-based solutions of other products, it is specifically designed to effectively collect pure sounds and is specially constructed to create a tactile sound editing experience.

Music Editing
Made from form-sensitive flexible materials, “Ondo” allows the user to modify recorded sounds by physically twisting and bending the device. Like a guitarist pulling on a whammy bar, users can feel and hear the musical effects as they create them.

Jamming
Another innovative feature of “Ondo” are the three removable display ”sticks”. In their normal state, the “sticks” act as a unified touch display for the mobile device. When removed, each can be separately clipped onto a musical instrument or person to capture live sound. Like a portable recording studio, “Ondo” makes mixing tracks easy, because each “stick” picks up isolated sounds from each individual instrument. The recordings can be immediately sent via MMS (Multimedia Messaging) around the globe allowing musicians at different geographical locations to jam together.

Mixing
In party mode, “Ondo” works as a digital mixer enabling the user to create seamless transitions between songs. This is made easy with interactive touch functions combined with integrated software support.

Market Opportunities
The advantage of such a device is that a range of services and accessories can accompany it in order to enhance the sound capturing and editing experience. From a business perspective, most of the players in the mobile world can benefit: for example, content creators – by providing sound libraries or musical games for download; operators – by facilitating increased user interaction; and device manufacturers – by producing accessories such as input devices, Bluetooth instruments, etc.

Designer : Paul Loury

Yusuf Muhammad, was the winner of Living Room category and joint overall winner. His Yu Type design sits on the computer keyboard and allows ‘hunt and peck’ two fingered typists the opportunity to increase their speed and confidence. He is now thinking about developing the idea and hopes to include features like spell checking and predictive text to increase its appeal. Judges praised the way he addressed a social issue of an aging population within the urban context.

In response of this question “What next for your design?”, Yusuf says:

“I’m definitely going to set aside a fair chunk of the prize to develop it. There’s a lot of people who would benefit – 79% of people who use a keyboard hunt and peck, disproportionately older people and first time users, and even dyslexic users. I’m dyslexic and I would definitely benefit from a device like this.”

Dominic Hargreaves, was winner of the Garage category and a joint overall winner. His concept for a bike lock which sits at first storey level on the front of a building is designed to hoist bikes out of the reach of potential thieves. Along with Yusuf Muhammad, judges felt that Dominic’s design would benefit the most from money to develop the idea further.

In response of this question “How are you going to develop your design?”, Dominic says:

“The initial prototype was just for personal use. I would really like produce a public one, which would lead to a much better design. At a train station it would encourage commuting and free up the roads and the tube.”

Graeme Davies took the first prize in the Kitchen category. His Quicksnap icetray design solves the problem of dropping two ice cubes on the floor for every one you manage to get in the glass by creating an undercut to release individual ice cubes. Judge Lance Scott called it “An innovative solution to a very simple but annoying problem”. Graeme, who has a patent on the design, is looking to have it on sale by the summer.

In response of this question “Did you feel confident in your design?”, Graeme says:

“I think what’s really been good about it is that the design is really simple. People appreciate and get it straight away. That’s probably what made it stand out. The next stage will be tooling and hopefully we will get it in production by the summer.”

Source : Toyota iQ

Freedom Phone is a small pre-paid phone for travelers who cannot use their usual mobile phones while being abroad, or it could be a solution for those users who just don’t need all the fancy features a last-generation phone has to offer, that is unique in design and unique in out it works. Upon arriving into the new country, you have the option of purchasing the Freedom Phone with 60, 100 or 200 minutes. There’s no fuss remembering Roaming tariffs, no extra prefixes to remember when being abroad, you have complete Freedom when calling home.

No SIM card needed – no roaming charges and in 10 short minutes, the Freedom Phone is charged. The phone number, important service and other information are located on the back of the Freedom Phone. Best of all, the Freedom Phone is so tiny; there won’t be the frustration of lagging the phone around with you on your trip. The bottom line, Freedom Phone, is a perfect and new solution to your traveling needs.

Not all the manufacturers have realized that there’s a huge market out there for people who are just interested in making and receiving phone calls, no need for advanced and complicated devices, which are used only at 5% of what they could really offer. There’s also a huge market comprised of elderly users, not at all the tech-savvy type, for which producers should remember to keep things simple, as simple as possible.

This concept simply grants you a phone that is used for nothing more than making and receiving calls. Its design focuses on ease of use and practicality.

Designer : Vadim Kibardin

Text from the website:
The Freight*BUS is designed for several possible propulsion systems, including batteries that are automatically recharged when the bus stops and the potential for fuel cell operation in the future. Thanks to in-wheel electric motors, the bus can manoeuvre into tight bus stops in a ‘crab’ like movement.

Designer : Hugh Frost via Yahoo