These switches use OCD to save electricity!

Posted on 19/12/2017 by Sarang Sheth

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Cleverly using a human condition to correct behavior patterns, the OCD Switch creates a slight visual imbalance, enough to trigger your senses, and gets you to switch your lights, fans, and other electronic items off. Turning the switchboard into a background, and the switch itself into the foreground element, the OCD Switches by Pakaporn Teadtulkitikul make good use of 3D shapes and color blocks to create a balanced pattern that becomes imbalanced when you switch on your appliances.

In the ‘off’ position, the switches look just fine. However, after being switched on, the visual imbalance bothers us humans, since we have a tendency to favor symmetry and order… forcing them to turn the switch off the instant they’re done, just so that the mind can rest assured knowing that the order has been restored. The OCD Switches, although experimental, shine light on how we can use human psychology to encourage a particular type of human behavior (like putting a basketball hoop over a waste-paper bin)… and also in this case, save energy!

The OCD Switch is a winner of the Red Dot Design Concept Award for the year 2017.

Designer: Pakaporn Teadtulkitikul

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Orchestra in your pocket!

Posted on 18/12/2017 by Sarang Sheth

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It’s no surprise that musical instruments, like all consumer electronics, is trying to become smaller, and more advanced with time. The Zont follows the lines of Teenage Engineering’s Pocket Operator or Korg’s Mini Kaoss Pad, while a rather nifty Cartridge-based music creation and storage system finds its roots in the Gameboy. Designed to be powerful like the former, and playful like the latter, the Zont is essentially a fully functional synthesizer that allows you to generate, cue, and loop leads, basslines, drums, etc to create complex tracks and soundscapes in MIDI. It comes in a nice svelte black, paired with a complementary black and white display. To add the element of a tactile experience, it comes with a rather hands-on Olivetti Divisumma 18 inspired keyboard and even modulator knobs that allow you to precisely tweak settings to hit that audio sweet spot!

The cartridges that sit on top come in four bright colors and act as storage units, allowing you to create and share archives of your musical experiments, while even allowing you to share your work with peers and collaborate by simply swapping these cartridges. If you’re however looking for more power, the Zont even comes with a dock that allows you to connect the synth to your computer so you can use it alongside the Digital Audio Workstation you have set up on your machine. Built for the tinkerer/explorer to the seasoned musician, the Zont fits right into your pocket, allowing you to create art whenever inspiration strikes!

The Zont Synthesizer is a winner of the Red Dot Design Concept Award for the year 2017.

Designer: Pavel Golovkin

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This bowl is literally ‘hip’

Posted on 15/12/2017 by Sarang Sheth

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The Waist Bowl is a simple reimagination of the bowl we use for soups to cereals. If you’ve ever tried carrying a bowl, you know it’s rather large for one hand and often requires two hands to carry. Not to mention, if the contents of the bowl are hot, you need to transfer them to a tray or hold them gingerly by the rim, which is the most unstable part to hold it, but is also the coolest. The bowl’s hemispherical shape also makes it rather difficult to invert when kept upside down. While these problems are small, they’re problems nonetheless and often go ignored, because we’ve learnt to normalize them.

Waist Bowl’s solution is simple, elegant, and makes you question the design of the bowl you’ve been using all your life. It comes with a hip or a waist that allows you to simply grip the bowl with a single hand, while also letting you flip bowls over rather easily. A simple solution for a simple product who’s faults we’ve never questioned! Plus, the waist gives the bowl quite a pleasant character, don’t you think?

The Waist Bowl is a winner of the Red Dot Design Concept Award for the year 2017.

Designer: Jonathan Saphiro Salim

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The cooker that never wastes rice!

Posted on 15/12/2017 by Sarang Sheth

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Asia’s most consumed grain is also asia’s most wasted. Rice is a staple in most parts of asia, but is never fully consumed. What do you do with a cupful of rice left over from a meal? There’s nothing you CAN do with it… it’s too little to store in the fridge, so it gets thrown away.

Ronald Tan’s idea is that even a small portion of leftover rice is food nevertheless, and should not be treated as waste. The Mirai Rice Cooker is designed to not just flawlessly cook your rice (with multiple settings on its control panel), but it also allows you to transform your leftover rice into crispy rice cakes for a post-meal snack! The base of the cooker comes molded with a pattern that allows you to place your leftover rice into triangular pieces. The Mirai then cooks the rice into flat crispy cakes that can be easily scooped off with the spatula that comes built into the Mirai. The inner surface of the cooker comes with a teflon coating to ensure your rice grains never get stuck to the Mirai, making it not just easier to cook with, but also keep clean!

The Mirai Rice Cooker is a Red Dot Design Concept Award winner for the year 2017.

Designer: Ronald Tan

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Hey Elon, here’s an idea for your Semi-trucks!

Posted on 13/12/2017 by Sarang Sheth

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Most trucks aren’t as aerodynamic as the Tesla Semi which has a drag coefficient that’s lesser than Bugatti’s flagship Chiron. But most trucks aren’t designed to be fuel efficient. They’re made for getting cargo from A to B, and usually when you design for optimal space, you pay more attention to space optimization, rather than aerodynamics. However, Henning Marxen has a rather simple solution to help reduce aerodynamic drag in any truck. The answer? An inflatable PVC tail that helps guide air flow in a manner that helps reduce drag, and therefore increase fuel economy.

The Trucktail unlike other permanent solutions for reducing aerodynamic drag is a temporary one. Made from PVC fabric, it can be simply attached and inflated to take shape. It stays tethered to the back of the truck at all times, making sure it never comes undone under high speeds. Once done, the tail can be simply deflated, folded, and stored anywhere on board the semi.

It’s not like Tesla’s Semi needs to be more aerodynamic than it already is, but the Trucktail is sure to help other trucks be much more fuel efficient than they already are… besides, it won’t harm anyone to see this attached to a Tesla Semi. Unless that anyone is Bugatti’s pride!

The Trucktail received an honorable mention at the Red Dot Design Concept Awards for the year 2017.

Designer: Henning Marxen

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The multi-sensory coffee machine!

Posted on 12/12/2017 by Sarang Sheth

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Any coffee enthusiast will agree that 50% of coffee’s uplifting experience is in being able to smell its aroma wafting in the air. The aroma forms a major part of a coffee drinker’s experience, allowing both taste and smell senses actively participate in the consumption process, creating a wholesome caffeinated experience.

Scenty Presso is a coffee maker that knows how important the aroma of coffee is to the entire experience, and therefore is the only coffee machine actively dedicated to giving you not only a great brew but also filling your surroundings with the fresh bittersweet scent of coffee. The coffee machine works on a principle that’s a cross between a french press and a drip-over brewer. You place your coffee grounds in one receptacle and pour your water in, allowing the coffee to brew. Once done, you place the glass container on the top to create an hourglass shaped contraption and flip the Scenty Presso over. The brew drains out into the transparent receptacle now at the base, leaving the grounds on top.

Now most normal coffee machines would require you to empty the coffee ground remains into the trash, but not the Scenty Presso! The Scenty Presso uses the coffee grounds and their strong aroma to fill your room with the smell of caffeine! At the press of a button (with 3 degrees of intensity), the Scenty Presso lets the coffee grounds mix with air that gets pushed out of the top of the device, diffusing the nutty, delightful coffee fragrance into the air, while also turning what would previously be discarded as trash into something that absolutely uplifts one’s coffee experience… therefore giving your tongue as well as nose something to crave for!

The Scenty Presso is a winner of the Red Dot Design Concept Award for the year 2017.

Designers: Byun Seulki, Gwak Younyoung, Hwang Jinhyeong, Kim Taewoo & Kim Taeyeon.

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