Earlier this year, Toyota and Royal College of Art Students (RCA) have launched a creative partnership to promote innovative design for urban living, using Toyota’s new iQ city car as the inspiration. Students were asked to create an item that reflect the concept of ‘intelligent urban living’.
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.
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We always wanted to have a car like Caterham, but the one and only thing that came to our minds by looking at it was that this car would have been better with roof, 400 horsepower and more luxury. So all the prayers have been answered and the IFR has come up with an all-new Aspid with roof in which two engines will be available and a naturally aspirated 2.0-liter producing 270 hp, or a 400-hp turbocharged version of the same mill. This light weight carbon fiber structure whose power will be sent to the rear wheels via a six-speed manual gearbox and a limited-slip differential to get that 400 horsepower.
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New fireplace collection from Safretti, called Gaya, this wall mounted fireplace can be a focus on your living room, simple yet very bring curiosity around it. The designer, Roderick Vos, known of his intuitive way of working, draw limited sketch, elaborated to actual size, than immediately followed by an initial prototype. Compared to luxury Radius fireplace, Gaya is more suitable for futuristic and modern fireplace.
From : Safrett via MocoLoco
Designed by Alex Bradley, SPC is a smart cooker for people who are living alone and hate to prepare their own meals, they prefer junk food. This compact cooker goal is to encourage people in bedsits and bachelor pads to prepare healthier meals. Combination of a hob, chopping board, utensils and a WiFi-enabled screen (futuristic cooker, huh?) to make users easier to access recipes from the internet. As one of Concept Product Competition Finalists, hopefully this Single Person Cooker prototype can win the competition.
The Intended user is primarily the single person and or commuter, where time is precious and preparing a meal is more of a chore than an experience to be savoured. Families, with busy schedules could benefit, together with wider ranging demographics.
Taking styling cues from current trends the concept aims to deliver a contemporary take on kitchen appliances and remove those initial semantic values associated with kitchen appliances, to give an air of ?what is that??
Looks like we have more choices for our kitchen in the future, modular kitchen by Fevzi Karaman is still a concept, hopefully this compact cooker by Alex Bradley can be mass produced.
Designer : Alex Bradley via Dezeen
Touchscreen problem would be your fingers getting in the way of small screen. That is why Microsoft bring the concept of backside touchscreen which allow user to control the device from behind but still being able to see their fingers. Microsoft has shown off Microsoft LucidTouch prototype at the TechFest fair, an internal event highlighting key tech from the company’s 800 research and development staff.
According to the company, the key to making this usable is what it calls pseudo-transparency: by overlaying an image of the user?s hands onto the screen, the illusion of the mobile device itself being semitransparent is created. This pseudo-transparency allows users to accurately acquire targets while not occluding the screen with their fingers and hand.
According to Microsoft in initial studies, results suggest that many users found touching on the back to be preferable to touching on the front, due to reduced occlusion, higher precision, and the ability to make multi-finger input.
Actually I do have a problem with touchscreen, I really hate about how many of my finger prints are left on the screen. Microsoft LucidTouch might not solve that problem since this is still a touchscreen, but at least it will reduce the finger prints on my screen problem.
Designer : Microsoft
