This app -called DreamLab because it functions only when your phone is hooked on the charger- uses the calculating abilities of your smartphone when you are sleeping. Of course the resources of your smartphone alone are just a fraction of what is needed to reach the goal of a project. But because of the total number of people that have installed the app, the combined computer power beats that of the most expensive supercomputers that are available.

This opens a whole new window of opportunities and I think we are only beginning to get the slightest idea of the potential.

To name one, the Corona AI project of the Imperial College London is searching for new combinations and adaptions of existing medicins and foods. To get a solid answer this project requires 100.922.068 calculations and that would take a supercomputer several years to finish. There are not many supercomputers in the world and the entire capacity of these is fully used already, so any new projects have to wait their turn. By using DreamLab instead, already 284.904 people participated in the project and the first 100 million calcutions are almost done. In about 5 months.

The app can be downloaded for free in the Google Play Store and in Apple’s App Store. Please consider downloading the app and helping to crush the data of these fantastic projects.

Together, we are able to find cures and solutions to a lot of miserable diseases.

In our sleep…

The post App for Good: Dreamlab by Vodafone appeared first on Design for Good.

The public just kept coming in.

The Suits neatly fit over standard wall power outlets after removal of the outer part (takes only 30 seconds to do so) or are made to exactly fit the award winning Berker R1 series.

The public in Milan, consisting mainly of local and international interior designers, architects and home-owners was extremely appreciative. They immediately recognized the opportunities of the products, turning one of the most ordinary products in the room into a small piece of art.

The Suits come in all kind of varieties of plain and decorated ceramics and beautiful Plexwood® wooden designs.

They are very easy to install in less than a minute, brighten up your room and give the wall that extra touch.
You can order them through the webshop

The post With Suit’d Suits at the Salone del Mobile in Milan appeared first on Design for Good.

Using household items addresses some of the most difficult financial barriers to product development. They are locally available, already priced for affordability, and there is a robust support and repair infrastructure to address cases of damaged components.

Even if a product can effectively address all of these issues in getting to market, there’s no guarantee that customers will use it. Understanding and achieving the widespread behavioral change necessary for product adoption is the greatest challenge designing for the bottom of the pyramid. Utilizing household items takes advantage of the familiarity and knowledge already established to lower these barriers to adoption.

This is one thing that local entrepreneurs are doing by reintroducing zeer pots. A zeer pot is a refrigerator made from two clay planters with a layer of moist sand in between. When the moisture evaporates from the shell of the outer planter, the inner planter is cooled. In developing nations, roughly 630 million tons of food is lost due to lack of proper storage, processing and production infrastructure. For individuals, especially in hot climates, the lack of refrigerators and the resulting spoiled food is an acute problem. People already know how to use planters, and by taking advantage of that knowledge, a simple, easy to use, functional item is being provided that is intuitive for users and provides an important value.

OttoClave, the company that I am currently working with, is typically using pressure cookers to create an autoclave system capable of fully sterilizing medical instruments. By using pressure cookers, which are ubiquitous throughout Southern Asia, we are providing a novel product that health post employees already know how to use. Traditional autoclaves, which have been widely donated to clinics in these areas, are complex machines and do not get used because of the significant investment in training to fully know how to use one. Understanding how pressure cookers function and the safety mechanisms also helps to minimize the risk associated with explosions from improperly used autoclaves.

Another example of this is the Bicycle Maize Sheller of Global Cycle Solutions (GCS). “Familiarity is an important aspect in design,” says Jodie Wu, the founder of GCS. “If the technology is going to be different, there will need to be a high investment in training for people to use it effectively.” By utilizing bicycles, GCS is able to take advantage of the established infrastructure for materials and repairs when something goes wrong, enabling the bicycle maize sheller to continue functioning in remote areas of the developing world.

While developing products appropriate for the bottom of the pyramid is challenging from a design and business perspective, utilizing common, household items as the basis for new products can help to greatly reduce these barriers. Creative applications for products that already exist throughout the developing world can provide pragmatic solutions to daily issues while avoiding some of the steepest barriers to design for the bottom of the pyramid.

The post Household products key to innovation successes in BOP appeared first on Design for Good.

In Europe most packaging waste is recycled into new materials or burned to generate energy. In Thailand glass bottles were cleaned and used as colorful bricks for a very remarkable temple, giving the words ‘glass house ‘a completely new meaning. It is a good example of upcycling, assuming all glass materials were used before they were turned into building blocks.

It made me think of Heineken’s World Bottle (WOBO), conceived by Alfred Heineken in 1963 after he visited Curacao, where there was a lot of glass waste but few good houses. The WOBO was a bottle, shaped like a brick. A great concept that was never put into mass production (‘only’ 100.000 pieces were made).

Glass is such a beautiful material. There are few materials that play with light as glass can, and it can be recycled endlessly…

The post Thai Glass House – clever solutions from Thailand, part 3 appeared first on Design for Good.

Well, here is a movie of the project, in Spanish though, but even when you do not understand Spanish, you will see the pleasure, hope and strength that the project brings to everybody involved. Keep up the good work there!

The post More on Palomino appeared first on Design for Good.

This grandmother obviously got tired of walking around with a crying baby trying to make it shut up. With little effort of the adult the baby now enjoys the thrills of an oversized swing. We can just hope the centrifugal forces will keep the baby safely in place.

And please…: DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME!

Dutch designers Ontwerpduo created a more comfortable and safe solution with their Rockid cradle / chair.

The post Thai Cradle Rocking – clever solutions from Thailand, part 2 appeared first on Design for Good.

Well… it is a true time-saver, inspired by elephants I guess.

The post Thai Car Wash – clever solutions from Thailand, part 1 appeared first on Design for Good.

Welll, will it? This video of TopicSimple explains the downsides and risks of crowdsourcing ideas and designs in a very simple and clear way.

I think there are two very important messages that can be learned:

Message to a potential client: Designers deliver the very best work when worked WITH, so create a relationship and a working process that involves you as a client, but also someone representing the end-user and in case of product design someone representing the production facilities. in other words: co-create to get the ultimate!

Message to designers: Never give away the Intellectual Property rights to your work before you get paid. So, if you do any work for free, you still own it after the other party decided not to do anything with it.

The post Why crowdsourcing can be a bad idea… appeared first on Design for Good.

About innovation and product design

We live in a magnicifent era: The Digital Industrial Revolution:

Dezeen ” Blog Archive ” Technology and Design: the digital industrial revolution

Digital manufacturing and open-source design are revolutionising the way designers make their products, reports Dezeen editor-in-chief Marcus Fairs in this latest article from our series on technology and design supported by computing brand Intel. Designers weren’t the stars of the Milan furniture fair this year, and nor was the furniture.

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Slow manufacturing, the new trend?:

Nilufar by Nendo – Designitecture

Yet another product presented at the 2012 Milan Design Week, Nilufar by Nendo is a collection of lacquered-paper objects that are pasted by a 3D printer. Designer: NendoImages: © NendoMaterial: sheets of paper and lacquerCheck also: 1% Products and Kandenchi The Nilufar set of tiny boxes come in several dimensions so that each one of the objects can hold different items inside.

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No screws, no glue, but great furniture:

Dezeen ” Blog Archive ” Stack by Konstantin Achkov

Product designer Konstantin Achkov has created a range of flat-pack furniture that slots together like a puzzle. Called Stack, the pieces are assembled without glue, screws or other fixings. The collection so far includes a round table, bar stool, chair and armchair. Each one is made of 18mm-thick beech plywood, cut with a computer-controlled router.

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Very useful, especially for a small home and welcome guests:

Dezeen ” Blog Archive ” As If From Nowhere by Orla Reynolds

Brightly coloured tables and chairs are hidden in plain sight between the shelves of this bookcase by graduate designer Orla Reynolds. The white bookcase comprises independent units of two or four squares, each holding a chair or table in its sides.

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In Dutch, but great news from Amsterdam:

Amsterdammers wereldleider met vierde generatie biobrandstof | Duurzaam Bedrijfsleven

Amsterdammers smeden nieuwe generatie biobrandstof Ontelbare bacteriën kleuren meterslange buizen groen. De kleine beestjes van het Amsterdamse Photanol beloven een ware innovatie op het gebied van biobrandstoffen en -plastics. Biobrandstof. Bij het horen van de term verschijnt er een frons op het voorhoofd van Klaas Hellingwerf, professor in microbiologie en tevens een van de grondleggers van het project.

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No way! Solar cells that perform best… underwater!:

Solar Cells Charge Robots Underwater : Discovery News

The ocean is a vast and mysterious place full of untapped energy potential. Huge machines have been built already to harness the power of waves and tides and groups are investigating the possibility of floating wind turbines. The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory is exploring another source: underwater sunlight.

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Fantastic new tool for Industrial Designers: Mixed Reality:

Canon Announces Mixed Reality System for Industrial Design Teams – Core77

Posted by hipstomp | 20 Jun 2012 |Comments (0) Earlier this week, Canon announced they’ve created a visualizing tool targeted specifically towards industrial designers: the Canon Mixed Reality System. It consists of a series of headsets worn by the design team, all linked to a processing unit.

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About sustainability and people

Now here is a positive thing of melting ice caps, I think… :

Arctic Phytoplankton Boom: Every Seagoing Creature Will be Affected

Centuries-old feeding patterns of migrating animals could be in jeopardy, say NASA scientists

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Who said the Chinese only care for money? 57% of Chinese Prioritize Environment Over Economy:

Majority of Chinese Prioritize Environment Over Economy

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Fifty-seven percent of Chinese adults surveyed in 2011 — before the country’s economic slowdown grabbed headlines — prioritized protecting the environment, even at the risk of curbing economic growth. About one in five believed economic growth is more important.

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More inspiration:

Iran creates the largest sand carpet on the shores of Persian Gulf

Iran creates the largest sand carpet on the shores of Persian Gulf

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For more, follow me on twitter @Joptimmers  https://twitter.com/joptimmers

The post Jop’s week in Tweets 4 appeared first on Design for Good.

 
Sustainable Innovation
There were some brilliant posts out there, this one is incredible, make sure you see the entire video:

Sun turning sand into 3d model...

follow me on Twitter at @joptimmers

The post Jop’s Week in Tweets 3 appeared first on Design for Good.