Swiveling wooden stool is compact, multi-functional, and mildly uncomfortable

While all furniture needs to be stable, chairs and other seating furniture need to meet two requirements. They have to be stable enough to hold the weight of the person sitting on them, but they also have to be comfortable to encourage or even tempt those people to use them. Then again, there are some seats that seem to actually discourage lounging around, adopting a design that’s purely utilitarian and sufficient for a brief rest of a few minutes. However, there are chairs that were designed with comfort in mind but fall slightly short of that goal. This stool, for example, is undoubtedly quite useful, space-efficient, and probably even sustainable, but it might have slightly missed the mark in one of its core use cases.

Designer: Jeongchun Lee

The stool looks simple enough at first glance, with a tall box for a base and two plain boards forming the actual seat as well as a backrest. The latter element puts this design somewhere in between a typical stool and a chair, though the narrow area and absence of arms put it more in the category of a stool. Either way, it’s clearly designed for sitting, but it also does more than that.

The base of the stool has a rack for holding reading materials, either magazines or a few books. This small detail makes the design better suited for places where such an activity is conducive, such as a library, a lobby, or a common area in offices or schools. Of course, you can also place it around your home and it won’t even take up too much space because of its tall and narrow structure.

The Chair 025 design concept, however, has one trick up its sleeve. The seat can rotate 360 degrees, allowing you to actually face any direction you prefer without having to move the chair itself. That said, you might not be able to swing around so easily because your legs will hit the corners of the “stall” or base. Instead, you will just be swiveling back and forth, which could be the goal to induce a little blood circulation even while you’re sitting, although that still runs the risk of injuring your legs if you’re not careful.

The design’s low backrest can also be a point of contention, given it doesn’t exactly provide enough support and could even lead to injury or accidents if you forget that it doesn’t completely go all the way up. For a stool that seems to encourage sitting for long periods of time to read, the potential discomfort is a little counterintuitive. The economy of design and potential for using sustainable materials, however, do make the Chair 025 concept a candidate for cramped spaces and budget-constrained owners.

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This shoe combines a shoehorn with a swivel mechanism to make putting on shoes easier for everyone

Prima is an inclusive shoe design that combines a swivel mechanism with a shoehorn to allow users of varying cognitive and motor levels to put on and wear their shoes with ease.

Sometimes the most innovative solutions come from the simplest of designs. Most of us wear shoes every single day. They’re the last thing we put on as we’re leaving the house and we bring them everywhere we go. While many of us put on and wear shoes without even thinking about it, not everyone shares the same experience.

Designer: Jean-Michel Rochette

While it might seem that shoes are one size fits all, for those with degenerative joint disease or arthritis, putting on shoes first thing in the morning comes with a share of difficulties. To help solve this issue, designer Jean-Michel Rochette developed Prima, a type of shoe designed for older folks and those living with joint pain to put on and wear with ease.

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Putting on your own shoes and tying them takes a lot of cognitive and physical effort. For people living with cognitive disorders and atypical motor tendencies, putting on shoes marks the first uphill battle of the day. Rochette conducted periods of research and prototyping to find Prima’s final form.

Prima is a comfortable, no-lace, slip-on shoe that integrates a swivel mechanism into an embedded shoehorn to allow users to easily put on and wear their shoes. The shoe features elastic bands that connect the front of the shoe with the rear, allowing users to use their free foot to tilt one Prima shoe upwards and slip their other foot into its inside.

Noticing today’s footwear industry’s trend towards mass consumption, Rochette aimed to create a shoe that fits a market current footwear brands don’t serve. Prima combines a swivel mechanism with the build of a shoehorn to turn every shoe into a slip-on.

Describing Prima in his own words, Rochette notes, “The Prima shoe allows its user to quickly put on and take off their feet without having to bend or perform any manipulations thanks to the swivel mechanism located at the back of the shoe. It eliminates physical pain and discomfort caused by different situations such as waiting and needing assistance.”

 

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The Swivel brings elegance and function together to make projectors look cool again!

Close your eyes for a second and think of a projector. Chances are you’ve got the same image in your head as I do. A cuboid-shaped device that’s either black or white in color, suspended from the ceiling, and with a massive lens on one of its faces. It’s safe to say that almost all projectors are designed to look practically the same way. Their purpose isn’t to look good. It’s to sit in the background, while you focus your attention on the image it’s casting. Some would argue that projectors are fine as they are, while others would probably say it’s a category that needs a radical relook. Yash Gupte (better known as his internet moniker Wacko Designs) considers himself to be a part of the second set of people.

The Swivel is Gupte’s answer to the stagnated design language of projectors. It ditches the notion that projectors need to be rectangular, and comes with a unique inverted U-shaped frame, within which sits a circular device. The name Swivel comes from the swiveling action of the main projector unit. Designed to be pointed at any angle (so you could use it as a long-throw or a short-throw projector), the swiveling detail lets you easily adjust the projector to face forwards, downwards, or upwards, with rotational freedom of up to 160°. Circular vents on the back of the projector help with heat-dissipation, while a single knob on the front (in the bottom corner of the frame) lets you toggle through the projector’s functions and tweak its settings. To make this already exciting concept even more fun, the Swivel runs wirelessly (which means you don’t need to worry about HDMI cables and cross-compatibility) and is small/slim enough to fit int backpacks, so you could carry it around to a friend’s house for a movie or game night!

Designer: Yash Gupte (Wacko Designs)

The LG Wing presents a ‘radically sensible’ evolutionary step in the future of smartphones…

I didn’t think I’d get excited for smartphones in a while and I surely didn’t think Motorola and LG would be the companies responsible for that feeling. Earlier this week, LG “leaked” a video of their upcoming smartphone in action. Codenamed the Wing (as opposed to Samsung’s Galaxy Fold), this smartphone reinvented the candybar mobile format with a swiveling screen layout. Designed to behave a lot like the LG VX9400 smartphone that Tony Stark used in the 2008 Iron Man, the Wing featured a front screen that rotated 90° and slid up to reveal a second screen underneath. While LG’s leaked video wasn’t much of an aesthetic reveal, it definitely did a lot to show what the company had in store for the future of phones – a future that promised multitasking without horrible hinges, delicate folding screens, and awkwardly thick phones.

The Form Factor

The Wing’s form is undeniably unique when opened, but what’s great about it is that it’s still a regular smartphone when closed. It doesn’t come with a thick body or an unusual gap (like the Galaxy Fold). When closed, you’ve got all the benefits of a regular smartphone, but open it up and the swiveling format really reveals a new side of smartphone computing to you. With two screens (or one and a half screens, if you compare the surface area), the Wing feels refreshing, and in a good way. Here’s why.

Two regular screens are better than one big one

Here’s a statement worth thinking about. A bigger screen doesn’t enable multitasking… more screens do. No matter how large your laptop or tablet’s screen is, chances are you don’t really multitask on it – you just do the same stuff, but on a bigger screen. This fundamental realization is something that sets the Wing and Microsoft’s Surface Duo apart from most folding smartphones. Physically separating screens really makes it easier for your mind to separate tasks, and that’s something that works to the benefit of the Wing. Moreover, its split-screen layout makes the UI of apps really interesting. You could be watching YouTube on the larger screen and browsing related videos on the smaller one. You could even be using Whatsapp or Gmail in landscape while typing in portrait on the smaller screen. The split-screen helps split elements of an app’s experience, allowing you to separate information in a sensible way. Think about having Spotify running on the larger screen and the playback buttons on the smaller one, or Netflix on the landscape screen and the subtitles on the lower screen, not interrupting the visuals you see. Even if you consider something as basic as the camera app, the Wing’s dual displays really help make clicking selfies and taking videos easier, just by being able to space out elements effectively, and separate the visuals from the controls for a cleaner, easier-to-use interface. A split screen helps really effectively split up information, and if done well, can result in a much more sensible user experience.

The Pivot vs the Folding Hinge

The swiveling pivot detail gives the LG Wing a major durability edge over folding smartphones. The hinge is often considered the Achilles heel of the folding smartphone, and is often the first component to fail. By abandoning the hinge detail, the LG Wing coolly circumvents the inherent problems that hinges have. The swivel mechanism sits INSIDE the smartphone rather than outside it, protecting it from any accidents, and here’s the best part… the absence of hinges allows the Wing to be much thinner than traditional folding phones.

The Bezel-less display

This has to be by far the most exciting part about the Wing. The swiveling screen can afford to have a truly bezel-less design, simply by shifting the front-facing camera to the panel behind it. Apart from being an aesthetic upgrade (because bezel-less displays look incredible), it makes the Wing safer too, by allowing you to physically block the front-facing camera when you don’t need it.

No folding display, no problems

As glamorous as folding displays look, they have two massive, fundamental problems. Larger displays need bigger batteries, and more importantly, if you fold anything, it’s bound to crease. The LG Wing’s refreshing format avoids those two problems almost completely… with regularly sized displays that don’t strain the battery as hard, and the absence of a display-crease because there’s really no folding involved.

At the end of the day, even though all we got was a mere microdose of what’s cooking at LG’s headquarters, it was enough to prove a few things… that there’s still room for innovation and improvement in smartphone designs, that folding screens may not be the way moving forward, and that the swivel-format is more than just a fancy gimmick… it’s actually sensible, and has the potential of completely revolutionizing the way we interact and multitask with phones, apps, and interfaces.

Designer: Sarang Sheth

Under the Cabinet Swiveling Knife Block

undercabinet knife block Under the Cabinet Swiveling Knife Block
Get that bulky knife block off your counter top! The Wusthof 8001 Under-Cabinet-Swinger Knife Storage Block Under the Cabinet Swiveling Knife Block is a beautiful oak knife block that keeps your cutlery off the counter. It easily mounts under your kitchen cabinet with just 3 screws and a drill. The block swivels 360 degrees to keep the knife handles out of sight when not in use.
undercabinet knife block empty Under the Cabinet Swiveling Knife Block
The block has slots for 8 knives with up to 10 inch blades and another slot for your sharpener. The knives are held in with magnetic strips. Measures 10.25″ by 7.25″ by 3.5″. Not only will your kitchen counters have more useful space, they’ll also look a lot neater. Or as we say here in Gadgetville, USA- more room for other kitchen gadgets.

buy now Under the Cabinet Swiveling Knife Block

Under the Cabinet Swiveling Knife Block

Pure unleashes Contour 100i iDevice speaker with swiveling dock

Pure intros Contour 100i speaker dock with

It was this past CES when we got a quick look at Pure's curvy Contour 200i AirPlay system, and now the company is getting a bit more basic -- and wallet-friendly -- with its 100i. It may not be wireless, but this little rig pumps out a maximum of 20 watts through its speakers and features an FM radio, an auxiliary port, a headphone jack and a remote. Although it's exceedingly par the course as far as speaker docks go, the 100i does feature a swiveling dock that stows away when you're not mounting your iDevice. Additionally, Pure's made its internet radio-enabling Lounge app free for a limited timed from the iTunes and Google Play store, noting plans to launch a subscription service later this year. The unit is only compatible with iThings, but it can be had now at Brookstone for $169 bucks if your interest is piqued. You'll find more info in the press release after the break.

Continue reading Pure unleashes Contour 100i iDevice speaker with swiveling dock

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Pure unleashes Contour 100i iDevice speaker with swiveling dock originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 11 Jul 2012 08:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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