By An Xiao Mina - Jan 17, 2014

Palette Offers a Modular, Lego-like Device for All of Your Input Hardware Needs

Palette buttons can be re-arranged and customized by the user.As any artist, designer or technologist will tell you, we rely on a wide variety of software in our day to day lives, from the Adobe Creative Suite to some sort of office bundle, as well as music and movie editing...

By An Xiao Mina - Dec 16, 2013

A New Prize for Design and Social Impact

The Leveraged Freedom Chair, a wheelchair optimized for rural terrain. All images courtesy Icsid.As the field of design for social impact grows, so does the discourse around it. Here at Core77, we recognize Social Impact as its own category in our own Design awards [Ed. Note: Which are now open...

By An Xiao Mina - Dec 13, 2013

A Museum of Mobile UX Practices

"Good artists borrow. Great artists steal."These words have been attributed multiple times to Pablo Piccaso, though the source itself is dubious. But as with every myth, there's a kernel of truth: we learn best by learning from the best. That's the theory behind the age-old practice of going to museums...

By An Xiao Mina - Dec 03, 2013

From Shenzhen to San Francisco: HAXLR8R's Third Demo Day

Calvin Chu pitches Palette at the HAXLR8R Demo Day in San Francisco. All event images by the author for Core77.If you were to take apart the hardware on your computer, you'd see a microcosm of the world. A simple look at a laptop computer on SourceMap, the popular software for...

By An Xiao Mina - Nov 25, 2013

A Case for Coding

Hacking away at San Francisco's Freespace, a pop-up space for artists, designers, developers and other creatives.I've been spending a lot of time at hackathons lately. It's not a surprise; here in the Bay Area, hackathons and coding sessions are a way of life, a social scene as common as a...

By An Xiao Mina - Nov 18, 2013

A Car for Distracted Driving

Driving, as we all know, requires complete and total attention. When operating a complex machine shuttling along at 60 miles per hour, it's not only necessary for the driver to be totally and fully alert, but it's also necessary for public safety. According to one articled posted on...

By An Xiao Mina - Nov 14, 2013

Evernote's Digital/Analog Bridge and the Death of Skeuomorphism

Image via evernote.com. At first glance, it seems natural: when designing notepad software, why not design it to look like a notepad? A voice recorder app should look like a microphone, right? Skeuomorphism—which we've, er, skewered before—has influenced so much of software design. And yet I think many of us...

By An Xiao Mina - Nov 12, 2013

Collaborative Simplicity: A Tour of Square's New Office and Products

Photos courtesy of SquarePhotos courtesy of SquareThe first time it happened, I took time to notice the experience. A food truck vendor handed me his phone, which had a little white square sticking out of the headphone jack. "What is this?" I asked, wondering which one of us was the...

By An Xiao Mina - Nov 11, 2013

A Self-Stabilizing Spoon for Hand Tremors

One of the most devastating experiences of diseases that affect motor abilities is the lack of control over one's body. As designers, from graphic to industrial, we rely on our bodies everyday for fine movements like typing a keyboard and gestural motions like moving a mouse or tapping and swiping....

By An Xiao Mina - Nov 11, 2013

Designing for the Apocalypse: 'News From Nowhere' at SAIC's Sullivan Galleries Critically Examines the Near Future

The premise of Desert Island Discs, one of the BBC's most popular radio programs, is a simple one: if you were sent away to live on a desert island, what would you bring with you? Guests are allowed to take a selection of music (which plays during the program),

By An Xiao Mina - Nov 07, 2013

Fire Up this Portable USB Charger for Your Off-the-Grid Power Needs

At this point, any observant tech ethnographer knows that no one leaves their home without at least three things: wallet, key and cell phone. But lately, with the kind of short term battery life that smart phones have, I've noticed that more people are now adding another essential: some...

By An Xiao Mina - Oct 08, 2013

Crowdfunding a Billboard for a Social Message

While the Internet has given us a great deal of control over our media environments, that control exists largely in digital space. We can place stickers on our computers, change our desktop backgrounds and manipulate our Facebook profiles and web sites, but it's still challenging for the average citizen to...

By An Xiao Mina - Oct 02, 2013

A Crowdfunding Site for Cities

By An Xiao Mina - Oct 01, 2013

A Peripheral Light to Guide Your Bicycle Ride

One great thing about smartphones is that they present a readily-accessible map and GPS for directions. As long as you have access to a network, it's much harder to get lost while wandering around a new city or an unfamiliar part of your town. But that's also a downside: Smartphones...

By An Xiao Mina - Sep 25, 2013

Can a GIF-Like Web Site Teach Typography?

Arial or Helvetica?Typography is one of those underappreciated art forms outside of the design world. While a movie like Helvetica brought attention to the craft of type, and the regular selection of fonts on Word processors has made everyone aware of the subtle differences of type styles, few can articulate...

By An Xiao Mina - Sep 24, 2013

A Time-Lapse Video of the New SF Bay Bridge

Eight years later and the Bay Bridge is finally up. As the much-neglected stepsibling of the more famous Golden Gate, it's lain dormant for years until it reopened earlier this month, ahead of schedule. It took $6.4 billion and 15 years, but, as Bloomberg pointed out in a brief design...

By An Xiao Mina - Sep 23, 2013

How Monitoring Can Affect User Experience

Image CC BY-SA Michael CochlanOne of the simplest but most impactful design decisions inside the Prius is the miles per gallon meter. Any Prius owner can readily fill you in on their average miles per gallon, and if they're really paying attention, they know their MPG in different parts of...

By An Xiao Mina - Sep 19, 2013

Electric Bikes: Is It Really Time?

An electric bicycle parked in Shanghai. Image CC BY-SA Lars Plougmann.Here at Core77, we've featured a number of electric bicycles. In our 2012 Year in Review, we noted that vehicles are increasingly going electric, from motorcycles to cars to bicycles. And earlier this year we took a look at the...

By An Xiao Mina - Sep 17, 2013

A Self-Contained Making Space

The Microfactory is designed for small spaces and can even work on a desk. All images courtesy Mebotic.Enter a making/hacking space in most parts of the world, and you're likely to find a wide variety of tools and machines to help you realize your creative vision. Given the cost and...

By An Xiao Mina - Sep 16, 2013

Take a Peek at MESH Norway, Oslo's First Coworking Space

Photo by Kjetil Hasselgård In a city like Oslo, which is officially the most expensive in the world, it can be difficult to strike out as an entrepreneur. Independent start-up founders, like artists, tend to thrive in less expensive cities, where the consequences of failure are fewer and costs of setup...

By An Xiao Mina - Sep 11, 2013

An Open Courseware Series of Textbooks for Design

A screenshot of the Interaction Design Foundation siteA solid design education is an excellent investment, but as more and more educational institutions move toward offering open courses online, free classes in design remain limited. A quick search on Coursera for graphic design yields zero results, as do results for industrial...

By An Xiao Mina - May 03, 2013

Cafe Sounds Anywhere You Go

Another day, another design, another multi-hour stretch to focus focus focus on your design work. If you're like me, you vacillate between needing the total silence of an empty studio and the busy-ness of working in a cafe. But what if you need to be in the studio? Perhaps all...

By An Xiao Mina - May 02, 2013

Notes from the Field: Solar Panels in Rural Uganda

Around California, I've been seeing more and more solar panels. Solar panels installed subtly on people's homes. Solar panels on wireless keyboards. Solar panels atop lights. In such a sunny state, these solar panels make perfect sense.On my return to northern Uganda, I started looking more carefully at the different...

By An Xiao Mina - Feb 20, 2013

Mentoring Rising Tech Talent in Uganda's Capital

Ivan Mworozi delivers the winning pitch for E-Ride, a new mobile rideshare program being developed at Mara LaunchPad. Image courtesy Mara.It's a busy, buzzing weekend at Mara LaunchPad. Nigel Ball, the director of Mara, is circulating amongst the crowd, as are a half dozen mentors, including myself. It's a scene...

By An Xiao Mina - Jan 30, 2013

Where Are the Design Apprenticeships?

Core77 Design Awards 2012 Student Notable for Educational Initiatives Retail: Retell. Recycle. Rethink.In the world of design, the portfolio is paramount, often more central than one's credentials or awards. As a designer myself, I'm more concerned with the work someone has done and is capable of. Some designers I know...

By An Xiao Mina - Jan 28, 2013

Apps for Close Friends

In the world of tech design, bigger seems to be better. The more people you can reach, the more you can broadcast, the more successful your app. And yet the root of the mobile phone—or the phone more generally—has always been about one-on-one conversation. It was relatively recently that we...

By An Xiao Mina - Jan 01, 2013

Me Yourself with 3D Printing

The first batch of Mixees arrive from the printer. All images courtesy of MixeeMe.Custom avatars have always been an addicting form of participatory making. From the famous Nintendo Miis to Mad Men Yourself and South Park Avatar Creator, avatar-making has proven to be a popular practice online time and time...

By An Xiao Mina - Dec 28, 2012

Core77 2012 Year in Review: Designing Nostalgia

Image via WikipediaAs we look to 2013, it's a common practice amongst designers to think about the future of design. The future, indeed, is quite exciting, with 3D printing, open data, green innovation, automated cars and a slew of other new technologies and systems opening the doors for designers to...

By An Xiao Mina - Dec 19, 2012

Custom Lights for Circadian Therapy, Wearable and DIY

Travel a lot? Keep weird hours? Sleep is a common problem for designers, especially those with tight deadlines and an international client base. Every designer I know has their own secret remedy for managing sleep schedules and jet lag, whether that be diets or types of music or forms of...

By An Xiao Mina - Dec 18, 2012

Solitaire.exe Finds Its Physical Roots

It's hard to imagine, but it really wasn't that long ago when we stared at computers all day without email, Twitter or even the internet in general to distract us. How on earth did anyone procrastinate effectively?Solitaire, of course. Artist Evan Roth, one of the key thinkers behind the...

By An Xiao Mina - Nov 29, 2012

Notes from the Field: Technology in Rural Uganda

Continuing from my earlier scattering of field notes, in this post, I want to turn my attentions to the rural areas of Uganda and some of the uses of technology I observed. Dubbed the "Pearl of Africa", the country has rich, fertile soil with great potential. Agriculture is...

By An Xiao Mina - Oct 30, 2012

Notes from the Field: Design Observations in Uganda

I've been living in Kampala, Uganda, for the past month now, and it's truly been a treasure trove for design observations. From the city's many tech incubation hubs to the wide variety of formal and informal solutions to everyday challenges, creativity can be found everywhere. In the spirit of...

By An Xiao Mina - Sep 06, 2012

Designing for Nostalgia--Is the iTypewriter Part of a Larger Trend?

Image via Austin YangThe iPad, as they say, is the ultimate consumer machine. Deprived of a proper a keyboard, it's more akin to a personal media consumption device. Certainly, either with the on-screen keyboard or an attachment, work can be done on it—hence the popularity of Pages on the iPad....

By An Xiao Mina - Sep 05, 2012

The Busy Trap? Get Creative by Getting Idle

A few weeks ago, an intriguing New York Times blog post started making the rounds on my Twitter feed, and it's still popping up today. I can see why. Dubbed "The Busy Trap," Tim Kreider's article makes a simple claim:Idleness is not just a vacation, an indulgence or a vice;...

By An Xiao Mina - Sep 04, 2012

A Community-Owned Map Accessed via Mesh Networks

Only accessible via a local wifi mesh network, the Red Hook version of Tide Pools lets community members access information and report trouble spots.Go almost anywhere in the world, and you can load up a map on Google, Bing or Mapquest that tells you where you are and what's around...