Tag Archives: WIID

When AR and VR meet the outdoors. This mixed reality headset was designed to be worn everywhere

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Metaverse, meet universe. So much of our AR and VR experience is limited to the indoors. When the landline became a truly wireless (or cordless) device, the first thing that people did was move around with it. No wires means no boundaries, and the smartphone experience is proof. You can use a phone in the subway, on a mountain, even in the middle of a lake. AR/VR headsets? Not so much.

Designed as a graduation project by the students of Hongik University, Calypso is a mixed reality headset that’s designed to be worn and experienced outdoors. While the original intent of the MR headset was to be able to visualize micro aspects of the world like viruses in a much more observable way (making the microscopic world macroscopic), the Calypso’s design treatment is quite impressive, with the way the headset promotes outdoor use without sacrificing functionality or processing power.

Designers: Hyelim Shin & Youngin Cho

So, how does Calypso do that? Well, it works quite like a desktop computer does… by separating the display from the processing unit. The Calypso’s processor sits in a cylindrical gadget that straps to your body, while the display itself fits around your head, with both the devices interfacing wirelessly. Cameras on the headset send information to the ‘computer’, and the computer in return sends data back that gets displayed on the headset’s tinted MR glasses.

This separation is truly a thing of marvel, as it allows the headset to be a slick, non-clunky device (unlike current AR/VR gear that actually look like massive cinder blocks strapped to your face). Pretty much just the way a cloud server works, all the processing happens ‘outside’ the headset. If I had to draw a parallel, Google’s Stadia would be the perfect analogy. Instead of owning a powerful gaming computer that runs processor-heavy games, Stadia lets you outsource the processing online, so you’re just effectively streaming the game while playing it. Calypso works similarly, with the headset and the body-worn processor interfacing wirelessly.

This really removes all constraints for the headset’s design. There’s no need for a large CPU/GPU, a massive battery, inbuilt memory, or advanced cooling systems. The headset is now a rather sleek looking wearable that clips together magnetically near the bridge of the nose.  Wear the headset when you want to, unplug it and have it resting around your neck when you don’t… it’s entirely up to you.

Cameras on the Calypso give it its augmented reality abilities and spatial awareness. The Calypso comes with two cameras/sensors beside each lens, creating an array of four sensors near the nose, as well as two cameras on either side, above the cheeks. Astute observers will also notice the bone-conducting headphones on the temple-stems, allowing you to immerse yourself in audiovisual content.

The Calypso’s ‘meat’ lies in its body-worn processing center. This cylinder contains everything the Calypso needs to be a high-performance device. It houses a motherboard, CPU and GPU, storage, battery, cooling system, and speakers on each side that work in unison with the headset, sending and receiving information in real-time.

Is something like Calypso possible in real life? Well, the most immediate concern is sheer latency, given the amount of data input/output happening between the two devices. Something makes me think that 5G could, to some degree, solve those problems, although a simple cable also works, personally. Sure, it destroys the futuristic illusion of having two wireless devices, but then again, is a cable really that bad after all??

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This Dyson Award-winning injection-accessory may look terrifying, but it helps reduce your pain response while taking a jab

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Pinsoft James Dyson Award Winning Attachment for Needle Phobia

While its appearance could easily be mistaken for a fancy meat tenderizer, the James Dyson National Award-winning Pinsoft is an injection attachment that helps people deal with Trypanophobia or a fear of needles.

Its terrifying appearance aside, the Pinsoft sits ‘around’ an injection, and its multiple round-tipped prongs helps stimulate and ‘confuse’ your skin as the needle makes its way through. The gentle stimulation caused by the prongs distracts your brain, since it can’t immediately tell the difference between the prongs touching your skin and the needle piercing your skin. By the time you realize what’s happened, you’re done with your shot!

Pinsoft James Dyson Award Winning Attachment for Needle Phobia

Pinsoft stimulates the area near the puncture. A set of blunt round-tip prongs retract back into the Pinsoft as you push down on the skin to administer the injection. “As the needle is inserted, they put pressure on the proximal area and there is a feeling of relief from the prick”, say designers Sofia, Laura, and Juan, who secured the James Dyson National Award in Spain. Pinsoft now progresses to the international leg of the award program, with the results being announced on October 13th.

Designers: Sofía Aparicio Ródenas, Laura Martinavarro & Juan Carlos Espert

Pinsoft James Dyson Award Winning Attachment for Needle Phobia

Pinsoft James Dyson Award Winning Attachment for Needle Phobia

The post This Dyson Award-winning injection-accessory may look terrifying, but it helps reduce your pain response while taking a jab first appeared on Yanko Design.

This massive luxurious superyacht concept comes with three hulls instead of one

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It sort of looks like the Y-Wing Fighter from Star Wars, although designer Yeojin Jung says the superyacht’s split hull design is directly influenced by cantilevered architecture.

There are over 5,000 superyachts currently on this planet, however, none of them look as impactful as the Estrella. Designed by South Kore-based Yeojin Jung, Estrella hopes to break the mold of ‘boring’ practical superyacht design with something that’s a cross between feasible and outlandishly luxurious. Envisioned to look like the jewel of the seas, Estrella comes made for UHNWIs (or Ultra High Net Worth Individuals, as my sorry self just learnt), and sports a split-hull design that divides the yacht into the main component, and two floater components on either side, reminiscent of a seaplane.

The superyacht’s tri-swath design doesn’t make it more stable… if anything, separating the yacht over three interconnected hulls poses stability challenges. Jung, however, states that the yacht comes with separate stabilizers on the ship as well as on the individual side-hulls to counter any stability issues. This allows Estrella to make its aesthetic flex, with a yacht design that looks as beautiful from the front as well as from the top (where the superyacht’s Y-shape is more prominent). The split hull design also allows the yacht’s passengers and occupants to admire their view from multiple vantage points, getting a better experience of the sea, the marine life within it, and obviously the sky too!

The Estrella Superyacht is a winner of the A’ Design Award for the year 2021.

Designer: Yeojin (Chloe) Jung

This flexible vase expands in size (like an accordion) as your plant grows bigger

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Only 3% of plants survive being repotted when they grow too big for their old, smaller planter. I’m making that statistic up, it’s absolute nonsense… but here’s something that’s absolutely, undeniably true – Repotting plants as they grow bigger is a headache. You need to be incredibly gentle to avoid damaging the root system, and once you introduce a plant into a new, bigger pot, you need to hope and pray that the plant adapts to that shift. Repotting plants is a painstaking (and frankly messy task), although Lidia Gómez has a pretty clever solution.

The FlexVase by Gómez is an expandable vase made from hard-silicone. It uses an accordion-shaped profile to expand vertically in size, allowing you to simply stretch the planter as the plant inside it grows. As the planter expands in size, it creates more space for the roots to grow, as well as breaks the soil up, aerating it so the roots get more oxygen.

The FlexVase sports a set of folds that run along its width from top to bottom (looking sort of like pottery lines but much more uniform). Tug on the upper lip of the FlexVase and the folds open one by one. This allows you to increase the vase’s height in increments, making it taller as the plant grows. A similar design detail even exists in the Que Bottle, which uses a silicone construction and a spiral-shaped accordion detail to expand and collapse, making it easier to carry around while in its compact size.

While the vase’s innovative detail is functional in nature, it does lend a unique form to it too. When closed, the FlexVase looks like a normal vase, but expand it and it takes on this interesting wavy, fluted appearance… something that looks even more eye-catching when combined with the vase’s wonderful color palette!

Designer: Lidia Gómez

Nintendo Gaming Smartphone concept images make the rounds with a very interesting camera detail!

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Let’s put my fanboy logic aside and debate this purely on strategic grounds. Smartphones occupy 40% of the gaming industry by size, and 50% by revenue… which is why a Nintendo Gaming Smartphone sounds like a pretty incredible idea. It takes the Switch lite’s portable form factor and adds smartphone capabilities to it too. Nintendo can now expand its product line while still keeping people locked within its gaming ecosystem. Now that we’ve got that elevator pitch out of the way, let’s take some time to drool over Sophia Yen’s Nintendo gaming phone concept.

Titled the Nintendo Delight, this smartphone concept builds on the success of Nintendo’s Switch, making it even more portable and adding a few extra features to it. The Nintendo Delight replaces the need to carry your phone along with your gaming console. By combining the two together, it becomes your go-to device for gaming, browsing, social media, and everything in between. Designer Sophia Yen makes a pretty astute observation when she points out that the Switch is already an Android device (YouTuber Linus Tech Tips even demonstrates how to run Netflix on a Switch), and the Nintendo Delight simply builds on it, adding network capabilities and a camera to the mix.

The Nintendo Delight is smartphone gaming at its very best. Designed by Nintendo, the Android device would already have access to Nintendo’s current Switch gaming library, but would even be able to support Android gaming, Stadia, and other game-streaming services, bringing the entire world of gaming right into your handheld device. Oh, and you can even use it as a phone – making calls, browsing the web, chatting with friends, and clicking pictures with that rather insane-looking 4-lens camera setup!

The camera setup is perhaps the Nintendo Delight’s most brilliantly creative design detail. Its diamond-shaped layout exactly mirrors the XYAB button layout seen on the Switch, so while it is, in fact, a camera module… it’s also a rather clever branding exercise that goes wonderfully with the phone’s black, red, and blue color scheme.

The gaming smartphone comes with a traditional touchscreen interface to play games, but even sports a shoulder button on the top left to give you more control as you play. There’s even a battery-level indicator on the back so you can see how much juice your device has while your phone’s charging. Quite like the Switch Lite, the smartphone doesn’t come with pop-put modules and controllers, although it’s much slimmer and lighter than the Switch Lite.

This obviously is a fan-made concept, although it does make a very compelling argument that smartphone gaming is a seriously expanding category, no matter what gaming purists say. Just like the Sony PlayStation 5G concept we featured last month, the Nintendo Delight creates the perfect hybrid device for serious console gamers as well as casual smartphone gamers. It could easily replace devices like the Switch Lite, while firmly placing Nintendo smack-dab in the middle of a smartphone market that’s desperately trying to reinvent itself. Besides, I’d pick this over that extremely glitchy and buggy version of Stadia Google is trying to ship.

Designer: Sophia Yen

This DIY watch-making kit’s latest design lets you build new mechanical timepieces with your own hands

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In all fairness, what the Swiss watchmakers do is incredibly difficult, but the Rotate Watches give you a small taste of what it is like to assemble your own timepiece together. The all-in-one watchmaking kit comes with everything you need, from the watch parts to even the tools you’d require to assemble, maintain, and repair the watch. For obvious reasons, the mechanical movement comes pre-assembled, given how critical that part is and how intricately it’s built… but you do get to put the rest together, sandwiching the movement between the two metal halves, laying in the sapphire glass display, and finally fixing the straps to your watch. You even get to fit the watch hands onto its face, giving you quite the thrill of playing a real horologist!

Founded by a group of artisans and tinkerers dedicated to keeping analog alive (and a woman-owned, minority-owned business based in Los Angeles, California), Rotate Watches package the experience of building your own timepiece. The watches come in a variety of styles with leather as well as metal jubilee straps, and each watch also has its own difficulty rating, from moderate to complex! The kit contains everything you’d possibly need, from the watch parts to tools like pliers, pry-bars, tweezers, screwdrivers, glue, and even nitrile gloves to help you assemble your masterpiece without creating a mess. Your purchase also gives you access to a complete watchmaking guide on Rotate Watches’ website, technical support from Rotate’s team, and a lifetime warranty on your timepiece. Each unit is quality-checked before shipping from Rotate’s Los Angeles facility, and you can even ask them to engrave 2-3 characters (preferably your initials) on the watch upon purchase!

Designers: Jennifer Zhang and Rebecca Lee of Rotate Watches

We were awed by Rotate’s DIY kit when they first launched as a Kickstarter campaign. Following a very successful crowdfunding effort, the company’s now established its practice in LA, selling a variety of watch styles. Showcased here, is the Galileo, with its golden body and radial-brushed blue watch-face.

For obvious reasons, the mechanical movement comes pre-assembled. Given how complex some of these movements can be, often ending up with hundreds of small parts that have their own specific purpose and require expert knowledge, the movement comes pre-built. As co-creator, you get to put the rest of the watch together, understanding its materials, assemblies, and details along the way. It also helps you build an appreciation for analog watches that smartwatches can never match!

The kit contains everything you need, from watch parts to even the tools and equipment you’d require to put your haute horologerie together. At the end of the assembly process, Rotate hopes that you inherit an interest and affection for watches, and you even form an emotional bond with your timepiece that goes beyond just picking a wristwatch from a display case and wearing it. With Rotate’s watches, you end up involving yourself in the watch’s creation, forming a strong bond with your masterpiece along the way.

The watches are available in 5 styles [from Left to Right] – Eiffel, Wright, Edison, Galileo, and Newton, each with their own unique design, assembly, and difficulty level.

This instant noodle’s water-soluble packaging becomes its sauce!

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The very concept of packaging instant noodles in plastic is baffling to me. The noodles take barely 5 minutes to cook, and another 5 minutes to eat… but the plastic packaging takes nearly a century to biodegrade. Sounds really odd, doesn’t it? Well, for Holly Grounds, a product design graduate from Ravensbourne University London, it seemed like a problem that definitely deserved fixing. Grounds’ clever little solution eliminates plastic and replaces it with something much more sensible… an edible, water-soluble gelatinous skin that actually turns into the noodle broth when dipped in water.

The Dissolvable Noodle Packaging finds a unique, no-waste packaging solution for instant-ramen. Instead of wrapping the noodles in layers of plastic (with an extra plastic sachet filled with the tastemaker powder), Holly decided to develop an edible, spice-infused biofilm to package the noodles in. When you want to cook yourself some ramen, just insert the pre-packaged noodle-cake into hot water and the biofilm dissolves in the water, turning it into a flavored broth! “The packaging becomes the sauce”, says Holly, who managed to design and develop her solution right in her own kitchen! The biofilm uses simple, edible ingredients like potato starch, glycerin, and water. “The ingredients are blended and heated until the mixture is at the right thickness. At this point, I add the spices and flavorings before pouring it into a mold to set for 24 hours”, Holly mentions.

Designer: Holly Grounds

Here’s a look at the biofilm that’s been pre-seasoned with spices and garnishes. In its pliable state, the film can easily be wrapped around a cake of noodles, allowing it to set and harden as the film dries out.

It’s worth noting that this solution translates perfectly onto packaging for other products like rice or even pasta! The biofilm can easily be seasoned with spices and powders, sort of turning the packaging into the product’s flavoring. In a way, it also replaces the need to use labels and graphics on product packaging. With Holly’s Dissolvable Noodle Packaging, you can quite literally see the ingredients like sesame seeds, chili flakes, and seaweed strips in the packaging, allowing you to visually judge and differentiate between different flavors!

Stool with an accordion-shaped seat plays a musical note when you sit on it!

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The Xia Stool, or as I call it, the Philharmonic Whoopie Cushion Chair, is a fun little seat that uses an accordion-shaped cushion to turn the act of sitting down into something rather surprising and entertaining. Seat yourself down on the Xia Stool and it instantly emits a note, concertina in an allusion to traditional Portuguese music.

Designed by Soraia Gomes Teixeira, a Portuguese designer from Oporto, the Xia Stool aims at revitalizing the common seating object through the power of sound. The accordion-shaped cushion provides an ample visual warning to the user, priming them to expect a sound as they sit, so they’re never caught unawares. Even though the accordion-shaped cushion acts as a visual indication, it’s still incredibly fun and entertaining to actually have the seat meet your expectations, letting out a friendly honk as you sit down! Soraia mentions, “[The] Xia Stool is a fun object that makes people smile and unleashes their imagination.”

The Xia Stool is made from wood, Burel fabric, and 100% Pure Sheep Wool. Each stool emits a high-pitched ‘A’ note, although it would be fun if different stools played different notes, creating chords as multiple people sit down together!

Designer: Soraia Gomes Teixeira

10 Women designers with product designs sure to inspire you this International Women’s Day!

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#ChooseToChallenge – this is the theme for this year’s celebration of International Women’s Day and I must say this topic boldly echoes the feeling 2021 brings to us – of hope, resilience, and the spirit of challenging for all that is ours! We at Yanko Design have always fought for gender equality in the industrial design industry and to help shine a spotlight on female designers better, we have a dedicated category, titled Womxn Designer, that showcases revolutionary designs by female designers that will surely inspire you. So, the next time someone wishes you a happy women’s day, take a deep breath and let that compliment seep in as a thank you for all the obligations placed on you for being a woman as accept it as a token of the world’s appreciation, after all, it is the women who keep the world going. From all of us at Yanko Design, Happy Women’s Day!

The Elytra table by Radhika Dhumal expands in size by ‘spreading its wings’! The table comes inspired by beetles and the way their wings nest perfectly around their body. The table itself comes with perfectly natural bug-like proportions that fit in well as garden decor and uses two ‘wings’ to expand in the surface, much like the beetle. Elytra’s design is dominated by rounded forms that give it a friendly, pet-like demeanor and feature four legs that are positioned in a way that gives the Elytra its unique, animalistic stance.

DUNSTA was designed by Alexandra Fransson to bring the age-old tradition of storing fresh produce in a natural way while being aligned with your modern lifestyle. It uses evaporative cooling to create an environment similar to that of the root cellar, but for an urban living arrangement – so your fruits and vegetables will stay crispy and fresh longer without needing electricity!

Patchwork is Giulia and Ruggero’s proposed creative design solution for depersonalized home spaces such as reception centers for unhoused individuals. Patchwork is comprised of different, interchangeable panels that fold and expand like a traditional room divider. Patchwork panels provide plenty of different uses for each individual and function as a typical divider, work station, headboard, or some combination from the above. Patchwork incorporates a built-in closet space where users can hang their clothes and, thanks to a concealed padlock accessory, can also stow away personal possessions for secure storage. Patchwork also comes with supplemental shelving units, individual mirrors, and handy hooks so that the additional panels can be outfitted according to each user’s unique needs.

The Blue Box – a tiny at-home device that could detect breast cancer with 95% accuracy by just scanning a urine sample. “A household owning The Blue Box can have all its female members tested at their desired frequency and convenience. After creating a profile at The Blue App, the user just needs to collect some urine in a plastic container and subsequently place it inside The Blue Box”, says Judit Giró Benet, a biomedical engineering student who then went on to found her own company to help develop this technology. The Blue Box uses a proprietary set of cloud-based AI-based algorithms that react to specific urine metabolites, delivering results that are up to 95% accurate!

Using a non-ergonomic mouse, Somya Chowdhary mapped out all the pain points felt on the hand. The process then involved clay modeling to understand how MAUS’ shape and angle would feel with wrist movements and grip. Prototypes were then 3D printed with the final form that ensured the hand stays in a position of rest even when using the mouse. An interesting functionality to cure repetitive strain syndrome was making all controls gesture-based. MAUS also features a digital display – something we haven’t seen in any mice! The body also features Alacantara fabric for a soft touch and comfortable light grip. It has a soft felt base as well as a rubber grip for smooth motions.

Inspired by a recent viewing of a solar eclipse, Adi Goodrich designed Eclipse Booths to offer a photo-visual experience for Instagram users to immerse their grids in the cosmos. Describing the booths in her own words, Goodrich says, “Lit from behind, the round portion of the booth emits a soft, indirect light. The mirrors on the ceiling extend the graphic steps throughout the booth’s interior to allude to… steps leading into eternity.” While one of the booths embodies the night sky with a darker color palette of twilight purple and midnight blue, a cooler, icy light emanates from behind the round plate – mimicking the Moon moving into the Earth’s shadow.

Australian designer Amelia Henderson-Pitman looked within her own country and found that there are more than 1700 species of native bee in Australia, yet only 11 species living in hives and producing honey. Keeping this in mind, she designed Pollen – a modular system that provides a range of nesting materials to support the native bee populations. Pollen can be installed in any location and has also been optimized for small spaces to keep it city-friendly. The idea was to have a modular system that could be integrated anywhere from inner-city gardens to exterior building structures. Pollen is basically The Good Place neighborhood for bees. Each nest module contains a variety of materials like recycled hardwood, sustainable bamboo, or handmade mud brick. They also have a series of holes that vary in diameter to provide nesting locations for bees. The shell of the modules is an injection tube crafted from recycled HDPE and has been designed to be easily assembled as well as mounted without fixtures. I love that the internal modules (molded from recycled PET) are transparent because it offers us a closer look at how the bees are adapting. The transparency of the design shows us that seeing is bee-lieving!

Designed by Jihyun Han, Gosewalk consists of two toy pieces, a multi-surfaced mat that resembles the different terrain found outdoors, and a silicone puzzle that stows away dog treats for your pup to sniff and find. The multi-surfaced mat brings the outdoors to your dog with different fabrics resembling different terrains. Twisted and shaggy polyester mimics the look and feel of grass, while tan corduroy and water-repellant canvas brings the colors of sand and soil to your dog’s snout. Pockets and flaps line the mat’s fabrics and provide perfect hiding places for treats and mixtures of herbs and scents to entertain your pup. The silicone puzzle, which seems to be a smaller, more portable companion piece to the bulkier mat, resembles the look of grass through its tender, spring green silicone nubs that grid the toy.

Revolutionizing how Type 1 Diabetics monitor their blood glucose levels, the Sense Glucose Earring by Tyra Kozlow is an innovative non-invasive wearable that incorporates reads blood-sugar levels in the ear-lobe using safe, high-frequency radio waves. The earring requires just a single lobe piercing (as opposed to the daily pin-prick tests that diabetes patients have to take) and sits on the ear at all times. When you need to read your blood-sugar levels, the earring uses sensors and algorithms to collect data, which is then sent to your smartphone. This massively reduces medical waste, while offering a pain-free solution for checking your sugar levels. At the same time, it turns a medical apparatus into a fashion wearable.

Aditi Kedia’s Prairie Planter reinterprets these containers as landscape-elements in their own right. Designed to look almost like an abstraction of a prairie-grassland landscape, the modular planters stack over one another, resembling mounds of red soil. When paired with succulents or cacti, the Prairie Planters come to life, looking a lot like a savannah landscape! “By adjusting each unit in different orientations, one can play with the shape and placement. The design takes inspiration from how things in nature grow on uneven, unexpected surfaces”, says Aditi, who designed the planters as a part of an Instagram-based design challenge.

Yanko Design’s latest showcase of women designers and their most innovative designs

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On the 12th of December last year, we shared statistics from the Design Council Survey in 2018 that outlined an interesting fact. Even though design universities and colleges see a healthy amount of diversity, with a 60:40 female to male ratio, the industry was a completely different story, with 95% of industrial designers being male. This led us to ask ourselves a couple of questions as a design publication, about how we could be a part of the solution, rather than the problem. YD has always been a platform that equalizes, looking at work from established studios as well as student designers through the same lens. It’s that very experience-diversity that runs through Yanko Design’s DNA… and we’re proud to announce that we’re working towards ensuring the designs we feature are gender-diverse too.

Today, on International Womens’ Day, YD is proud to announce a new Category for Womxn Designers. Among all the designs we feature, from industrial products to technology, and from architecture to transportation design, the Womxn Designer category will act as an ever-expanding archive for innovative work from the women of our design community. The outcomes of this will be two-fold. Not only will it be one of the only places on the internet to find great designs from women designers (for inspiration as well as for recruiters), but we hope it’ll also encourage women to enter the design industry with more confidence, helping bridge the wide gap between the diversity we see in design colleges, versus the design industry. Happy Womens’ Day, everyone! Design is a tool for problem-solving and social empowerment… so let’s start by building a community and industry of diverse voices and backgrounds!

Click Here to see Iinnovative Designs from Women Designers

Layout Image – Voyager Mixed Reality Glasses by Seunghye Han, Sieun Roh & Soomin Son