The Silbervogel is a gravity racing car without engine, designed for the Xtreme Gravity Series in Irvine, California. The aim of this design was to catch the spirits of tradition, innovation and competition. The flowing language of the main body breathes the air of legendary Mercedes-Benz automobiles. Divided in a transparent lower shell and a silver top part with its sweeping glass band running from the nose to the back, the racing car seems to hover a few inches over the road.
One of Next-Gen PC Design finalists is Siafu PC Design. The idea behind Siafu was to give people with vision loss an intuitive computer experience. It provides a digitally tactile interface that completely revolutionizes the way that blind people interact with a computer. Siafu lays flat like a tablet and allows the user to fully interact with it by way of touch. The surface of Siafu utilizes a conceptual material called magneclay. This material has the ability to morph upward into any shape. This means that Siafu can generate infinitely refreshable braille and then display it in a book format instead of just one line at a time like current braille displays. Siafu also has the ability to display images as a 3-dimensional relief, allowing blind computer users to experience digital images, and graphic layouts for the first time.
This product is to be used by people who have experienced a loss of sight. Siafu allows users to read text by generating full page braille displays.
The onscreen relief feature also allows users to explore the internet and navigate through websites by physically touching, clicking, and dragging the graphic elements, links, and arrows of the web page. Siafu is also capable of converting all onscreen text to braille relief, so that the user can read whatever is on the screen first hand.
Designer : Jonathan Lucas via NextGenDesign
A new innovation in PC Design for the visually impaired called Zen. The concept of Zen is a hardware called the ‘Sandbox PC’ and Zen edition operating system working together to create a computing environment that can be used with eyes closed. ZEN is for ?Z-axis Enabled,? meaning it is a truly interactive 3D computer. The Sandbox PC features Active Surface, an electronic surface that can take different physical shape and can be manipulated by the user. You can read Braille text on it, make out windows, icons, and different textures. You can press into the surface, or scratch it with your fingers. All input output is made with the sense of touch. ZEN software uses a Tactile User Interface (TUI). The visually impaired are a negated market. It is fitting, then, to bring them to light using the negated sense of touch, by introducing a negated dimension of depth.
