Sorry, this entry is only available in Deutsch.

On 15th of October 2011 the Decoded Conference 2011 took place. The decoded conference stands for the crossover of design and code. It combines creative and technological aspects of our everyday life and brings them all together to a great event in the heart of Munich. International speakers from the field of generative design, computational [...]

When developing user-friendly interfaces for the household appliances of Bosch and Siemens Home Appliances GmbH, we are not only concerned with their visual output. Acoustic hints, warnings, or alarm signals improve human-machine interaction and increase brand recognition.

How can you make maximum use of a range of intelligent driver assistance, information and entertainment systems, without taking your eyes off the road? On behalf of car-maker Daimler AG, Intuity is developing a range of user interface systems that are particularly easy and intuitive to use.

Intuity has devised a website interface for the EIX Economic Indicators eXchange. Its aim is to use the ‘wisdom of the crowds’ to deliver better predictions about the economy. During this stimulating project we cooperated with a team led by Dr. Christof Weinhardt at the Institute of Technology (KIT) in Karlsruhe, Germany, and the Institute of Information Systems and Management. The German Handelsblatt newspaper and the Institute of German Economics in Cologne (IW) also took part in this research project.

Last week we had the pleasure of seeing one of our current projects in the field of future mobility services going live. I am going to take the chance and explain the project a bit more in detail here. car2gether is a new ride-sharing service making a debut in the German city of Ulm. The [...]

Due to lots of interesting stuff to do and heavy multitasking I haven’t had the time recently to sit down and write. But thankx to an application called OmmWriter I managed to escape the evil world of multitasking and to write this little article here exactly about this topic. These are my thoughts on multitaksing, [...]

I am happy to publish the second episode of “Making things talk”. Our interns Fabian and Jonas beared the challenge and responded to Matthias prototype MAKING THINGS TALK 01 – CONTROLLING LIGHTS WITH YOUR MOBILE VIA XMPP. This time we took care about the energy consumption. But I want to be brief –here comes their lab [...]

As Markus mentioned in a previous post we’re currently having a deeper look at the Internet of Things (enter your favorire buzzword here) phenomenon. Meanwhile we prefer using the term new ecology of things (shaped by the Media Design Program @ Art Center College of Design) when talking about this subject. Because ecology is not [...]

The WAINOVA mission is to contribute to the world’s economic and social development by promoting innovation, technology transfer and the establishment of technology- and innovation-based companies. For that aim, they just launched the WAINOVA Atlas of Innovation. WAINOVA members, their respective memberships and the public could see the results of a years work compiling information [...]

Two weeks ago I spend a couple of days in Berlin. Originally dedicated to visit Hasso Plattner Ventures 5th Forum, I followed the kind invitation of my friend Louis to participate in a test workshop for their latest and hottest consulting tool. The tool is focussing on innovating change management. I don’t want to blab [...]

Photo by Guili-O Recently I stumbled across some thoughts and inspirations around the subjects of copyright, free culture and the future of media. I would like to share them because I think all of these are important subjects and that a lot more discussion is needed here. Chris Anderson: ‘Free – The future of a [...]

iPhone RFID: object-based media from timo on Vimeo. “This is a prototype of an iPhone media player that uses physical objects to control media playback. It is based on Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) that triggers various iPhone interactions when in the range of a wireless tag embedded inside a physical object.” via Touch Project (nearfield.org)

Photo by roambi.com “We declare all your important information free from the constraints of tables and cells. Use RoamBi to transform your existing data from a variety of sources into state-of-the-art, interactive visualizations for the iPhone.” – RoamBi.com Check out and play with the interactive demo on start page. It’s fun! What’s so great about [...]

The guys that created Bumtop, a new 3D-Desktop metaphor, that finally brings some fun and innovation to the world of Operating Systems, recently created a big hype with an early stage prototype video on youtube. Now it’s time for the team to get down to business. Version 1.0 of Bumptop is now available for Windows. [...]

Apple has sneak previewed the next version of the iPhone OS yesterday. Besides the “huge innovation” of finally bringing Copy and Paste (btw “Shake to undo” is great) to the Phone, Apple has introduced some improvements that will enable third party developers to bring new innovation to the device. So what’s new and shiny in [...]

Over at core77 there’s an interesting Greener Gadgets Competition going on. You’ll find some innovative ideas there for example a power meter that twitters, monster stickers that glow on gadgets in standby, greener station lights, … Just have a look.

Microsofts vision of how dynamic data visualization will be an essential part of future everyday life. Quite a few interesting concepts put together in a very well executed scenario. How will emerging technology improve our productivity in the years ahead? What opportunities will arise from evolving trends and global change? Microsoft has collaborated with customers, [...]

Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard Hilarious. Found on “America’s finest news source“.

The Google timeline view “Viewzi brings all your favorite stuff together in one place in a new and highly visual way” I recently stumbled across this search service and I think it’s worth a deeper look. Browsing through its interface is a constant source of inspiration. Let’s have a look at what makes the service [...]

Image by Research In Motion I recently had the chance to get my fingers on the new BlackBerry Storm. Which is kind of the RIM answer on the iPhone. By the way that’s one of the most underestimated features of the Apple Phone: It’s finally pushing user interface innovation in the mobile market. Hey it’s [...]

  NeuroLED ist ein modulares LED Lichtbausteinsystem von CosiNOVA. Es kann zu  individuellen Beleuchtungs-Flächen zusammengeführt werden. Das System kann über JAVA beliebig angesteuert werden. Parameter die angesteuert werden können sind beispielsweise: Farbe, Helligkeit und Frequenz. Das System selbst kann als interaktive Bedien- und Funktionsoberfläche genutzt werden um die programmierten Eigenschaften der einzelnen Module wiederzugeben. Die [...]

“Microsoft hat in seinen Forschungslabors mit SecondLight ein Rückprojektionsgerät entwickelt, das Microsofts Surface ergänzt und Bilder durch das Surface-Display hindurch und auch darüber hinaus projiziert. Dies ermöglicht interessante Effekte und einen Blick unter die Oberfläche.”  Via Golem

Photo by RcktManIL Daimler is starting an interesting car sharing project in Ulm, Germany. “Carmaker Daimler is set to start testing a new kind of car sharing service in the city of Ulm that the company says it hopes to export to the U.S. Daimler is calling the new service car2go, and it represents not [...]

Photo by bittbox Just found out that Paul Coelho seems to be a blogger. On his blog he’s havin’ a conversation about the subject that he’s chosen to speak at the opening of the Frankfurt Book Fair: Will books survive? I think he’s raising some interesting points that might scare a lot of people there. [...]

Image by Plastic Logic Since the kindle hype ebbed away recently it’s time to watch what other companies are doing to create the first ePaper iPod. I still think that the overall amazon service package (wireless reading device + internet access) is a perfect fit. But the problem seems to be the price plus the [...]

Interessant ist in dieser Woche ein Beitrag der Wirtschaftswoche über die Firma Suncoal. Die Gründer haben ein altes, fast vergessenes Verfahren zur Herstellung von Kohle aus Biomasse wiederbelebt. Das interessante daran – es geht um “Bioabfälle” nicht um Kulturpflanzen die extra dafür angebaut werden müssen. Ich wünsche den Gründern viel Erfolg bei ihrer Mission. Vielleicht [...]

Snow Patrol the first band to release an iPhone Application Is this the future of the App Store? Don’t think so … Openclip: Grassroot UI Innovation Cut and Paste for the iPhone What developers think about the app store I guess Apple should take these guys seriously New Safari makes flicking in webapps easy as [...]

LINC is a typical touch screen smart phone with all the connectivity and features you come to expect. Its got a cell phone, a media player, a web browser, GPS, downloadable content, Bluetooth, wifi, the latest 3G network. But here’s the catch. LINC is leased to the user as a service, not a product. The [...]

In a series of conceptual video scenarios, Jesse James Garrett from Adaptive path is describing their vision of future web-browsing, called Aurora. Aurora is a concept video presenting one possible future user experience for the Web, created by Adaptive Path as part of the Mozilla Labs concept browser series. Aurora explores new ways people could [...]

Volkswagen has set up this Microsite envisioning their concepts of the mobile future. Embedded into a quite marketable story mentioning future car2car communication, customisation and zero-emissions, the car manufacturer’s current technical developments are being presented through video interviews and links. Via

Image by projectbetterplace.com Last friday it was lab time again. This week we talked about projectbetterplace.com. A project mainly driven by Shai Agassi, former member of the executive board at SAP. It’s a very interesting project to observe as lot of interface and corporate interaction design will be involved there. What is projectbetterplace? Shai Agassi’s [...]

zoomii.com visulaisiert die Amazonoberfläche. Virtuell durch die Bücher zoomen, die jetzt auch im Internet wieder in den Regalen stehen. Ein weiterer Vorteil, die Größe des Buches kann – durch die Relation zu anderen – erahnt werden. Leider ist das ganze noch nicht so – ich zitiere an dieser Stelle Matthias – “smooth” bedienbar wie “piclens” [...]

Roboter haben den modernen Lebens- und Arbeitsalltag des Menschen erobert. Sie montieren Autos, spielen Fußball oder helfen im Haushalt. Fast scheint es, dass der Traum vom allzeit willigen Helfer, den Literatur und Science-Fiction seit Jahrhunderten ausgemalt haben, Realität geworden ist. Die facettenreiche Geschichte des Roboters zwischen Wunsch und Wirklichkeit, Kunst und Wissenschaft zeigt die neue [...]

While developping for the iPhone recently and having to decide between Flash Lite and mobile Safari as an Application Platform some thoughts came to my mind that I wanted to share: Why is there no Flash on the iPhone? Is that a bad thing? Will it be available soon? Let’s try to find out… Thanks [...]

Bildquelle: cardesignnews BMW Group Design has just revealed a revolutionary new concept car which utilizes a flexible textile cover to form its outer skin. Called the ‘GINA’ Light Visionary Model – an acronym derived from the principle of Geometry and Functions In “N” (Infinite) Adaptions – the concept offers dramatically different solutions that affect the [...]

Netnography (“net” +”ethnography”) is a mixture between several social scientific approaches that are adapted to the Internet. Netnography was “invented” by Robert Kozinets and can help to get insights about customers and their needs (more about netnography). On June 12th one of the first conferences took place that was dedicated entirely to this topic (http://www.netnographyinsights.com). [...]

Displays created by location-based software such as GPS mapping applications are often not straightforward to use in the context of driving. Information is crowded and overloaded on the display. Critical information is designed and presented in a way that slows down the rate of uptake, interfering with the process of learning and remembering the route, [...]

Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Burton Inc. are working on projecton of 3D images by using the laser plasma technology. The laser was developed by Hamamatsu Photonics K.K., which unleash 100-billion-watt pulses of light – every 10-trillionths of a second (100 femtoseconds). This technology enabels a smoothness image projection and [...]

FLARE is a modular system to create a dynamic hull for facades or any building or wall surface. Acting like a living skin, it allows a building to express, communicate and interact with its environment. FLARE turns the building facade into a penetrable kinetic membrane, breaking with all conventions of the building surface as a [...]