Designer : Tian Lingrui

(Click the image for bigger view)

Designer : Giulio Sbarigia

Designer : Seungkyun Woo and Junyi Heo

Designer : Tryi Yeh

The main goal of these useful and innovative designs for hospital furniture and apparatuses is to help fight against healthcare associated infections such as MRSA and HCAIs. The prototypes have used cutting edge techniques in order to reshape the patient transport, bedside environment and usual medical equipments keeping easy clean in mind. The design also influences staff and patient behavior to lessen the probability of exposure to HCAIs.

Designer : Design Council via Core77

How it works:
The Capshell is a medication storage device that records when medication was taken and alerts the user at the correct intervals programmed by the pharmacist. If not attended to, then via Bluetooth an SMS alert is sent out to the users phone.

The outer shell slides round, revealing the corresponding opening for the time of day. This eliminates the use of the pinch grip by enabling the medication to easily fall into the palm of the user’s ready hand.

The user reloads the Capshell daily by removing the inner capsule and replacing it with a new one. Each capsule holder has the name of the day on the circular end.

The memory chip in the casing records what time the case has been opened. This information is logged for reference so that the health care professional can monitor if needed. The following week, the user returns to the pharmacist to reload the containers and the pharmacist can check the data. The pharmacist checks whether the user has been able to access the medication and at what times, and whether the user has missed any intervals.

A doctor would also be able to check the device for the same purpose. The recording device in the product assists the doctor in keeping accurate patient records. If the patient’s symptoms have not improved with a prescription, the doctor can discover whether it is due to the choice of medication or if it because of incorrect medical adherence on the patient’s behalf.

Designer : Steven Grech

[Press Release]

MIT unveils EyeStop: an iPhone‐like interactive bus stop for the City of Florence

May 14, 2009. MIT architects and engineers have unveiled EyeStop, an interactive bus stop designed for the city of Florence. On Saturday 16 May the project will be presented officially at the Genio Fiorentino by the President of the Province of Florence Matteo Renzi (dubbed ‘The Italian Obama’ by TIME Magazine).

EyeStop, developed by MIT’s SENSEable City Lab, is an exploration into the next generation of smart urban furniture; it aims to enrich the city with state of the art sensing technologies, interactive services, community information and entertainment. The project is partially covered with touch sensitive e‐INK and screens, so that it can deliver information to people seamlessly. Users can plan a bus trip on an interactive map, exchange community‐relevant information on a digital message board, surf the web, monitor their real time exposure to pollutants and use their mobile devices as an interface with the bus shelter. “Interacting with EyeStop could change the access to urban information in a similar way to how the iPhone has changed our mobile life” commented Carlo Ratti, Head of the SENSEable City Lab at MIT.

At the touch of a finger users can indicate their desired destination; the system will then display the shortest bus route from where they are and the position of all relevant buses real‐time. The EyeStop will glow at different levels of intensity to signal the distance of an approaching bus. Riders and passers‐by can also post ads and community announcements to an electronic bulletin board placed on the bus stop, enhancing its functionality as a public space ‐ a place to gather and exchange community relevant information.

In addition to displaying information, the bus stop also acts as an active environmental sensing node, powering itself through sunlight and collecting real time information about air quality and the urban environment. “EyeStop is an experiment into urban computing: it may be considered an “info‐tape” that snakes through the city, rising up like a pole or cropping out of the sidewalk like a shelter. It senses information about the environment and distributes it in a form accessible to all citizens” – commented project leader Giovanni de Niederhousern.

A generative parametric model produces a unique design for each bus stop, providing both optimal sheltering for users and maximum sunlight exposure for direct photovoltaic powering. Unlike the typical mass‐produced bus stop, EyeStop is designed to fit the physical characteristics of its surroundings, with each unit being slightly different from the others. Furthermore, simple materials like shiny steel, extra clear glass and gray local stone (pietra serena), together with its minimalist design, serve to optimize how it blends into the historic urban fabric of Florence.

“Since the Renaissance, there has been an interplay between the physical form of the city (urb) and its citizenship (civitas),” added Carlo Ratti. “Today’s technologies are adding new possibilities to that age‐long relationship, thanks to the addition of digital information to physical space. It is as if a new materiality were emerging in architecture, with the seamless blending of bits and atoms…”

EyeStop was developed at the SENSEable City Laboratory by Giovanni de Niederhousern, Shaocong Zhou, Assaf Biderman and Carlo Ratti, in collaboration with the Province of Florence and the local public transportation authority ATAF.

Designer : Giovanni de Niederhousern, Shaocong Zhou, Assaf Biderman and Carlo Ratti via Core77

The “evolutional” aspect comes from the EME’s ability to expand its feature set if the user shares his/her experiences with other EMEs. That could be in the form of videos, music, or games. By doing so, bigger speakers would unlock and slide out, the screen may even become higher-res. The idea is to encourage the device’s evolution by exposing it to as many experiences as possible.

Designer : Shao Wei Huang

Anton says :
“With increasing demand on an already over-stretched transport infrastructure it makes sense to shift the way that we move, by taking up less space per individual while in transit. The energy required to move the individual is also greatly reduced by reducing the size and weight of the vehicle.

The device also removes direct emissions away from the city and with the addition of environmentally sustainable power generation off-site, the device has the potential to have no net emissions.”

Designer : Anton Grimes

Designer : SimpleHuman