A lot can be done with the simple mechanics of a bike! Interactive cinemas, bread making machines, and ’spin art’ can all be powered by users. The most impressive concept I’ve come across recently is the winner of the Innovate or Die (a new contest for earth-cooling pedal powered inventions), The Aquaduct, a simple solution [...]

In the spirit of ‘Design for the other 90%‘, a 28-year old Shawn Frayne has been developing small scale wind power for LED lamps and radios in the homes of the poor. Right now wind turbines are expensive and big, and they don’t scale down well as there is too much friction in the gearbox [...]

Every firm wants to be the Apple of its industry, but despite an Apple flavoured design-emphasis being in vogue, very few companies are really applying it to everything a consumer sees and feels. Yves Béhar, in Fast Company this month, says that only 1% of companies are engaging full-throttle with design, and warns the rest [...]

I confess, I’m getting super excited about this product. Five years since the concept was first floated, its makers, One Laptop Per Child, are into a fourth generation of prototypes, renamed the ‘XO’, and gearing up for mass production.
Here are my favourite features:
(a) Access to knowledge. I believe that every single problem you can think [...]

The majority of the world’s designers focus all their efforts on developing products and services exclusively for the richest 10% of the world’s customers. Nothing less than a revolution in design is needed to reach the other 90%.”
—Dr. Paul Polak, International Development Enterprises
If I were in New York, I’d love to stop by the Cooper-Hewitt [...]

Stanford’s Institute of Design, or D-school, has been established to teach design-thinking and strategy to business, engineering and design students. In fact, every top MBA school (or B-school), from Wharton, and Haas, to INSEAD, is partnering with a design school, art school, or a consulting firm like IDEO, to stretch its students beyond traditional [...]

Here’s a question: Where did the mountain bike come front? Traditional thinking might suggest that it emerged either from the R&D department of a large bike manufacturer, or from the shed of a lone, slightly eccentric, entrepreneur… but neither of these is correct. It was put together, literally, by a community of Californian [...]