Tag Archives: Design

WoodCut Maps and the Dymaxion Projection

I recently stumbled across this old article about the Dymaxion world map projection invented by Buckminster Fuller (and therefore also known as the Fuller Projection Map). It is supposedly the “first two-dimensional map of the entire surface of Earth that reveals our planet as one, without inaccurately distorting or splitting up the land”. You can buy a poster of it here.

A team made up of artist Nicole Santucci and San Francisco-based firm Wood Cut Maps won the Dymax Redux prize to best show off this unique map projection on the 70th anniversary of its invention.

Source: Dezeen

Their entry, Dymaxion Woodocean World, can be shown in the photos above and below. It shows the density of woodland throughout the world by using different colours of wood.

Source: Dezeen

I was intrigued by the concept, and realised that Woodcut Maps offer custom maps for sale!

You can pick a spot on the map, have the site automatically create a rendered image suitable for manufacture, then have a woodcut map made of your selected spot. See my creation below based on the marvellous city that is London.

Source: woodcutmaps.com

Insight from IDEO: How to Prototype a Business

There’s a great post on IDEO‘s website on a topic that is fascinating to me: How to Prototype A New Business (from their Creative Confidence series).

The post is based around an interview (audio below) with Joe Gerber, the MD of IDEO CoLab, which is “a collaborative R&D Lab exploring emerging technologies and its future impact”.

Among some of the useful points, there is a nice lens that can be used to assess new businesses: Viability, Feasibility, and Desirability.

Source: IDEO

Prototyping is a key part of the Design Thinking process and this podcast shows how important it is in Business Design. This is because the hardest thing to predict is the desirability, so you have to test this empirically.

In the podcast, Joe goes into great detail about how you can do this by trying to sell the concept as if it were already a product to see if there is genuine customer appetite (he refers to setting up a “lemonade stand”).

There are some amazing resources linked on there such as Tom Hulme’s Business Model Canvas and a list of Prototyping Tools that can be used (both physical and digital).

Google to acquire Dyson?

Back in 2014/2015, I wondered whether it would make sense for Google to acquire Dyson.

Growth of Alphabet/Google hardware presence

In order to keep their advantage in the search and data sphere, Google (now Alphabet) ramped up their presence in lots of emerging hardware spaces via acquisitions such as Motorola, Boston Dynamics and Nest Labs. Also, Google has developed their own technology innovations at Google X (now simply X), such as the world-leading autonomous vehicle company, Waymo.

In order to fully commercialise such acquisitions and innovations, Google needed to have access to an abundance of world-class hardware product development and marketing experience.

Google made a step towards this in 2014 when they acqui-hired a design firm based in California called Gecko Design. However, I believed Gecko Design was not big enough to fill this void alone.

This left me wondering whether Dyson would be a good fit to help satisfy this need for design engineering firepower.

Dyson’s common interests with Google

Dyson was rumoured to be working on an electric car after it acquired battery company Sakti3 (which has now been publicly confirmed) and also invested £5m with my alma mater, Imperial College, to develop next-generation robots, resulting in the Dyson Robotics Lab.

Given Alphabet’s world-leading autonomous vehicle project, Waymo, and it’s previous interest in robots, I thought that an acquisition of Dyson would give Alphabet/Google a huge advantage with its massive team of 4,800 design engineers.

Dyson and Alphabet have other visions of the future in common. One notable example is Halo (see right), Dyson’s previous prototype of a Google Glass-type device that they built 10 years before Google launched it!

Would Sir James Dyson sell?

As of 2018, a tie-up between the two companies has not yet emerged. In many ways it is unsurprising, as Sir James and his family appear to own 100% of Dyson, so why give up control? (On that topic, there is a great interview with Sir James on NPR’s How I Built This podcast about how he grew his business which explains that surprising fact).

Also, Sir James is a vocal advocate of keeping engineers in Britain and growing British talent to boost industry and our economy.

His leadership on this issue includes launching his own university with a £15m investment, called the Dyson Institute of Engineering and Technology, and his £12m donation to Imperial College to launch the Dyson School of Design Engineering (as well as the previously mentioned Dyson Robotics Lab).

In short, I’m not going to hold my breath for this one. However, it will be fascinating to see how Google and Dyson both fare in the autonomous and electric vehicle markets. Perhaps future collaboration or a joint venture could be on the cards?

MirrorMirror: booth-based 3D scanner for online shopping

During the final year (2007-08) of my Physics degree at Imperial College, we studied a module called Research Interfaces (RI). This was a team-based module that focussed on transforming scientific research into commercial business propositions.

This was a highlight of the degree for me: I loved the collaborative nature of it and the entrepreneurial challenge was much more aligned with how I wanted to live my future life.

Our product design: MirrorMirror

Our team designed a product with the working name of MirrorMirror. It was a booth containing a network of cameras with a central computer that would stitch together the images to create a 3D scan model of the user’s body.

This would then be used to generate an avatar that would help them choose clothes that fit and suit them perfectly when shopping online.

Additionally, they could see their body on a screen in real time with different clothing options projected over the image as if they were wearing it (so-called “Augmented Reality”). This reminded us of the magic mirror from the Disney film, Snow White (hence the name MirrorMirror).

There could also be other uses like tracking weight loss for dieters and muscle gain for bodybuilders (if a new scan was made regularly to show the incremental changes) or the visualisation of the results of cosmetic surgery.

Technical Design

We produced several outputs for the class including this Technical Design Review.

In that document, we estimated the cost to build the prototype of £1.45m, a total future manufacturing cost per booth of £13,900, and a price point of £50,000.

This is exceptionally high and I believe it is a result of the fact that we were not actually required by the course to do any prototyping work. If we had, I think we would have focused on looking for a cheaper way to execute the plan.

Our original design required a screen behind a half-silvered mirror. I think in 2018 this would not be required as screens are not of incredible quality and image processing technology has come on exponentially in the last decade.

User experience

We believed that there are many high-end lucrative markets (such as wedding dresses, evening wear and saris) where a quicker and less stressful garment trial process would greatly add to the shopping experience.

Our team also saw the potential for future uses such as generating an accurate avatar of the person that can be used as a little virtual model for the clothes that are being selected. Imagine being email a picture of yourself wearing the latest items from your favourite designer and a link to buy exactly the right size for you?

We envisioned that booths could be installed in shopping centres, allowing customers to create a 3D image of themselves which they could then use to shop online. Additional lucrative applications could also include high-fashion hairdressing.

Our plan of the user journey is mapped in the image below:

User Journey for MirrorMirror

Business Case and Financial Model

You can see the basic financial model we generated here: MirrorMirror Costing.

When I say we, it was actually me that had the responsibility for putting it together and I could have circulated the draft to my team-mates before the deadline so we could have had more eyes on it before submission. We got our lowest grade by far for this part of the module, so I did feel a bit guilty! However, it was apparently the same for all the other teams, so my guilt was slightly assuaged.

After 10 years working in and around startups and scaleups, here are what I see as the big errors and omissions:

  • No time series for the values (everything is static)
  • Lag time between initial burn and revenue
    • A proper cash-flow model would have helped clarify this
  • Significant errors on the business model (i.e. how we could get paid)
    • For example, would we really want to make money on the hardware, or would we prefer to make money on the service provided by the software (i.e. charge money for every image processed – a digital version of the Nespresso model)
  • No R&D tax credits, Government grants, or other potential subsidies included
  • No marketing and sales budget included at all!

It is quite satisfying to look at old work such as this and compare it with what I have learned since then!

Final Pitch

At the end of the 3-month module, we had to deliver a pitch to a packed auditorium and a simulated panel of investors (made up by the professors from the Business and Physics department that ran the course).

You can see our final pitch document here.

This was a really enjoyable part of the course. I delivered it with 2 other teammates and we got everyone in the team up on stage for the Q&A at the end.

Outcome

We actually won the Elevator Pitch Prize at the end of the module which was a very personally satisfying way to end the project. We all received a good first for the course (>85%) which was very satisfying for all of us.

We entered into the wider university’s Business Challenge entrepreneurship competition, but we didn’t get past the initial screening phase. As a result, we all agreed to disband the project outside of the RI module and did not take it any further.

What didn’t we do?

It is quite telling that we didn’t build a prototype!!!

The reason that we didn’t build anything is that we didn’t have anyone that is super-focused on the tech side i.e. that could be a CTO. I also believe it is because we all saw this as a purely academic exercise and not as a true opportunity to start an entrepreneurial endeavour and make a return with it.

This tinkering on a prototype would have actually helped us see the true costs, challenges around manufacturing, and gaps in the business model. In fact, IDEO’s Design Thinking methodology (diagram below) expressly integrates prototyping as part of the design process. This project was perfect evidence of why that is the case.

I wonder if the Blackett lab requires the students on the RI course to build a prototype as part of the course nowadays?

Design Thinking Source: IDEO Mydhili Bayyapunedi @myd | @Young_Current

WaterAlert: Plant Moisture Sensor

Back when I was 15 years old, I won a Design Technology – Systems & Control prize at my school for my work on the design process around this little product I came up with called Water Alert (see photo, left).

It was a moisture detection probe that was designed to be inserted into the soil of a pot plant and provide feedback to the gardener about when it needed to be watered.

The end result that I manufactured wasn’t high quality as you can see (!), but I remember really enjoying the design process and that enthusiasm, combined with my corresponding diligence preparing the documentation, won me the prize.

Nowadays, you can buy something virtually identical as a toy kit for kids to build themselves. It’s called the Thirsty Plant Kit (see photo, right).

This got me thinking about how I could win a school prize >15 years ago with something so simple as the design for a toy with a circuit that only has 2 transistors.

What sort of amazing school projects can kids build in the age of 3D printing, Arduino, littleBits, Raspberry Pi, and the multitude of online resources and guides?

Roman Roads as a Tube map

I’m a big fan of maps and I’m currently enjoying a spell of learning about Roman history (The History of Rome podcast by Mike Duncan is a particular treat).

You can imagine my excitement when I saw these maps of road networks in the Roman world made in the style of the London Underground or “Tube” map.

Produced by Sasha Trubetskoy in the USA, this one of the Roman road network in the UK is an absolute beaut:

https://sashat.me/2017/07/23/roman-roads-of-britain/

He has also produced this one of the major road network across the Roman world:

https://sashat.me/2017/06/03/roman-roads/

Finally, here is his map of the Roman road network in Roman Italy:

https://sashat.me/2018/05/27/roman-roads-of-italy/

Great fun for the map nerds among us!

Radio Garden: cool map app showing global radio

Today I found an amazing little app courtesy of Mike Sutton. The app is called  Radio Garden.

Radio Garden shows a 3D model of the globe with green dots representing all the radio stations in that place, which you can then click to pick a station to listen to.

It is a project from Studio Puckey, an “experimental interactive design practice” based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Radio Garden main interface (source: Studio Puckey)

Why is it cool?

Radio Garden is the confluence of three of my main interests: maps, music, and travel.

I love that you can instantly learn about a place that interests you by scrolling to the location and listening to the different radio stations there. It is literally a meeting point for all of the world’s voices.

For example, today I have listened to: a Malian dance station, Gambian pop, and a Scots Gaelic talk show from Stornoway in the Hebrides. How amazing is that?

Future of the app

My biggest concern is whether Studio Puckey can they monetise it in order to keep it alive for the future.

Could they get referral revenues for driving traffic to sites? Offer merchandise or ticket sales via the app? Perhaps just some simple adverts that are shown in a way that doesn’t adversely affect the user experience?

Whatever the route forward, I hope they figure out a way to make it financially sustainable to operate in the long term.

Tom Hulme’s Business Model Canvas

I’ve stumbled upon an intriguing version of the Business Model Canvas, courtesy of Tom Hulme (link here).

Below is a 15-minute video as he explains it visually:

HackFwd: Visualize Your Business Model in 15 Minutes Flat from IDEO on Vimeo.

You can download a clean version here:

Tom Hulme’s Business Model Framework (clean)

YouTube’s bad UX design for music streaming

Problem

YouTube is one of the leading music streaming platforms on the web, with around 25% market share according to some sources. As a sharing platform, it’s inherently got access to a huge variety of content.

However, one thing that always bugs me about using YouTube to stream music is the inability to manage a spontaneous playlist from within one window.

In order to queue up the exact songs I want, I’m forced to open them as tabs and manually close each video and open the next when I want to hear a song. This creates a big drain on the resources of whatever device you are using.

Solution

While the obvious solution is simply to switch to Spotify, in some situations (such as not wanting to log in to Spotify on a public computer), using YouTube would be preferable.

Below I’ve listed three little tweaks that would give me exactly what I want.

FYI I’m not a developer so I have no idea of the technical feasibility of these suggestions within the current framework. If they haven’t been implemented, it’s possibly just

My proposed updates to YouTube UX

1. Sidebar search tool

A sidebar search tool would be ideal to search for your next song within the right-hand column while the video is still playing.

Results would be shown in the box immediately below and then added to the playlist by drag and drop or clicking an “Add to Queue” button.

2. Order change

There would be the ability to change the song order in the playlist with either drag and drop or arrows.

3. Remove song

It would be useful to have a button to remove a video from the Play Queue, perhaps one as simple as a small X in the top right corner of each video thumbnail.