Reporting from Day 1 of the Doors7 Congress in Amsterdam NL.
I am definitely in the right place at the right time. Some great presenters and the theme and content is right on target.
Speakers today included Janine Benyus, author of Biomimicry delivering a fascinating lecture on creating design strategies by learning from similar solutions in nature. Key takeaway: rather than design like machines...design like a living system.
Luis Fernandez Galiano, from Madrid School of Architecture gave a passionate presentation about the pleasures and frustrations of design in a complex world.
David Rokeby and Michael Awad are artists doing some fascinating modeling of patterns in space and time using by using algorithms and filters to modfy video of human movement in public spaces...remember the theme is FLOW.
Lars Erik Holmquist, leader of the Future Applications Lab at the Victoria Institute in Sweden gave an interesting introduction (which I agree 100%" with the key point): "design real stuff, build prototypes, and test it with real people", which was obviously targeted at designers that deal too much in blue-sky and pray to the gods to deliver the technology too make it work (expressed in his cargo-cult metaphor).
The technology exists today to make some very useful things work IMHO!!!......
Lars is the chair of Ubicomp...and he prefers to use the term "ubiquitous computing"...for obvious reasons. Either/Or IMO. How about Ambient Computing?
Elena Mavromatti and Achilles Kamesas are doing some fabulous things as part of the Disappearing Computer initiative and leading the project called e-Gadgets as in "Extrovert Gadgets". Their demonstration was controlling the playback of a wireless MP3 Jukebox with a wireless remote in the form of a light cube...you would change "channels" by rotating the cube different directions.
Marko Ahtisaari (link to his blog) is the Director of Insight and Foresight at Nokia...and is chartered to developing new lines of business at Nokia. He is investigating patterns of existing behaviour that could be extended and enhanced with their technology.
Mindblower of the day was Axel Thallemer...who is the founder of Festo corporate design, who has incorporated biology into industrial design with incredible innovations in Architecture, Transportation, and Consumer products. Although in German text, his book contains illustrations of the many innovations created by Axel and his team.
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Axel Thallemer, founder and leader of Festo Corporate Design and Robb Bush of Ambient Informatics. |
-Robb Bush
14.11.2002 Amsterdam
2:22:29 PM 
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