1HDC - Topic Suggestions

That’s a really awesome idea! I’m going to do a few of those exercises on my own anyway. Cool.

Checking out iabs post in the projects section about his bird house got me thinking about maybe an offshoot of the 1HDC.

It might be cool to do a challenge that involved using scrap material from each individuals workplace (under the assumption that most people here have access to some kind of shop or proto dept.) Maybe have a project and give everybody a month to tackle it using the materials they use everyday. Obviously the end result doesn’t have to be a months worth of work but hopefully this would give people enough time to bang something out, a little research, a few sketches, a finished proto (maybe just a rendering if you don’t have access to have it made).

Using scrap material doesn’t have to be a set in stone rule, maybe just a bonus.
Just a thought.

I’ve just posted these in the associated topics, but how about-

  1. new Xbox

  2. Redesign of the IDEO school chair

  3. Any other recent, relevant new design. Would perhaps be a great idea to have the 1HDC continuously be about whatever new product is released and how we think it could be better. Would also be timely news so likely to get picked up by tech or whatever blogs when the new product is in the news cycle. Would also easily generate a lot of entries as generally speaking people have more of a reaction to something new thinking “hey, I could do that better” or “what if it was like…”, instead of just random topics.

Could perhaps even rename if 1HDC: “What I would have done if handed the pen”

Sorta like a design Monday Night Quarterbacking session.

R

Having just spent the last 6 weeks on a round the world trip and done over 36,500 miles flying, I would love to see someone redesign plane seats to come up with something that’s just better than what’s already there. Because let’s face it, [plane seats suck. Not business or first class seats but coach, or as I like to call it, “cattle class”. You all know the ones I mean; the ones where you can’t actually straighten your legs, where the seatback screen is at nose level if the person in front reclines their seat and where there’s no room to do anything. One of you talented lot must be able to come up with an elegant solution that means that they can still pack em in like they want but the people sitting in them can actually be comfortable!

That one sounds like a lot of fun!

Someone said it here recently that the most interesting design happens with things that are completely simple in funcio, like watches and Chairs. Seems like a good exercise in that kind of thinking

Also, it’s Olympic Torch re-design time…

“Maybe we should really narrow the project by having a product category (ie printers) and a theme (ie printers for zero g). It would be like a vacation to design something for a fantasy world. Plus, it would encourage more creativity than the more results oriented save-the-world design challenges.”

That would be a better idea, creating a design for fantasy world will be great.

Something that isn’t likely to be designed by many. like jimmy jane’s or taphandle’s Simple, not so techy, woody, old western type.

I like the idea of designing something for fantasy - give the option to design something that is purely aesthetic rather than functional. The space idea is great, but what about something themed nearer the Halloween season - survival equipment for the zombie apocalypse?

Zombie apocalypse survival gear would be awesome!

How about one for Feb? Could be… um… snowblowers?

Okay, I’m bored and want to flex some design muscle. Since it’s summer, and there’s a drought around here… how about fire extinguishers? Those are boring looking, should be easy to make some fun stuff.

Or fire-fighting in general ? Lets get this going, i need something to do

I’m 61. My blood pressure was high but is now controlled by two tablets I take every day. I was blessed to be born into a family with propensity toward high cholesterol, so I take two caplets for that every morning. I am hypothyroid, which is controlled by a little bitty tablet that I will have to take every morning for the rest of my life. So, what’s that five tablets so far? Oh yeah, as men get older the tendency is to have lower than normal levels of Vitamin D, so I take an over the counter supplement. And just to be on the safe side (my doctor tells me) I take a baby aspirin every morning to thin my blood and lessen the likelihood of a heart attack… … so, that’s seven things I take every morning, and they all come in a plastic bottle. I go through roughly 80 bottles a year and had been saving them for some reason, perhaps thinking that I would come across some clever use for them. But finally, having a box full of them, I decided to throw them in the “recycle bin”.


I had lunch with my buddy Johann yesterday; he’s my pharmacist and I see him every other week or so when I pick up my prescriptions. I asked Johann how many prescription bottles, of various sizes, he went through a month. He had never really considered it before and it took a few minutes of pondering; his estimate came out to a remarkable number … 4,100 bottles per month. 49,200 prescription bottles per year.

The Rite-Aid pharmacy that Johann manages is only one of 52 local pharmacies within a fifteen mile radius. Do the math, if these other pharmacies have similar usage numbers that is 2,558,400 bottles per years. San Luis Obispo county is a rural area with a population of 270,000. That’s roughly 9.5 bottles per year for everyone in the county. A little overly simplified math reveals 300,000,000 (US population) x 9.5 bottles per person, per year = 2,850,000,000 little brown plastic prescription bottles… just in the US.

There must be a better way to dispense drugs. They can not, by law, be dispensed in used containers (say you wanted to have your prescriptions refilled into the bottles you had) because they are not sterile, they must be “child proof”, and of course they must have a label on them. Sizes vary dependent upon the size of the medication.

So there’s your challenge. Design a new pharmaceutical dispensing system.

That’s definitely a design problem, but I think it’s worthy of a bit more than 1 hour of sketching, no? Seems more like a design contest without such limited constraints.

usually constraints make good design solution more interesting…

How about knee braces?

Our guy wasn’t wearing one and broke his knee too. Design them Skins a new field. Or, design what happens between field and cleat. Go Hawks!

There is so much going on inside a knee. To externalized a support with all of the degrees of motion and freedom is a couple orders of magnitude above all of our pay grade.

Designing out the injury in football would be harmful to why people watch the game. You either gladiator everyone up, or remove all of the protection ala rugby.

How about sketch a new team game? Rollerball comes to mind. The trampoline game in “The Prisoner”. The weird European bike race with the motorcycles with the standing riders and the bikes racing behind. Other games in works of fiction.

Some ideas:

  • Smart drone balls. (pun away) change character and direction according to given factors.
    Smart fields. Laser drafting from above of zones and game lines.
    Interactive with audience.
    Dynamic configuration fields. Same as above lasers or physical movement. Literally moving the goalposts.

I like the sports theme… there are so many ways to look at improvements and products

Saw this on a blog today. It’s an excerpt from a letter by the artist Sol LeWitt to Eva Hesse (no idea who those two are…):

Try to do some BAD work – the worst you can think of and see what happens but mainly relax and let everything go to hell – you are not responsible for the world – you are only responsible for your work – so DO IT. And don’t think that your work has to conform to any preconceived form, idea or flavor. It can be anything you want it to be…

Maybe a bad design 1 hour challenge?