Tech Design
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Sometimes something begs for a simple solution. The nearly-ubiquitous USB port is perhaps the technological poster child for an obvious failure to work both ways (right-side-up or upside-down) despite looking perfectly symmetrical on both sides. Thankfully, and finally, this has been tackled from two directions (appropriately enough): one more idealistic, one more realistic, but both ingenious. Ma Yi Xuan is a student designer who has solved the problem in theory, and in reality by UltraTek ‘s new Flipper . These answers have been a long time coming. This author, for example, has bend more than one USB plug (and port), though fortunately only destroyed one to date.
Double-Sided Design Solves Painfully Universal USB Problem
Watch your step – no, really. Each fade-in, fade-out, cross-tread LED light is a miniature marvel to behold in action, even inside a fairly conventional-looking home interior. Edo Kriegsmann is a German designer with a taste for interactive furniture, furnishings, and fixtures, including but not limited to light-up tables and this illuminated series of steps.
DIY LED Steps: Motion-Sensing Staircase Illuminates Itself
Plant-Based Home Purifier Accelerates Clean Air Circulation
Science still has few safer, simpler and cleaner alternatives to plants when it comes to interior (or exterior) air purification on small (or large) scales – hence this idea, which multiplies the capacity of a typical house plant to clean air by an average of one thousand percent. A mechanical fan speeds up the air that circulates inside of this elemental plastic pod, driving the process of detoxification to move toxins more quickly through leaves, roots and soil into a collection basin below. Titled Andrea , the device absorbs toxic gasses from everyday home and office surroundings better than carbon filters. Depending on the substance, it works between 350% and 4400% more efficiently than comparable artificial strategies. Biochemical by design, it operates free of ozone, quiet inside and with low power requirements. It works with most any household plant, too, so you can pick what fits your style and don’t have to worry about replacement filters either.
Until electricity is entirely wireless, the question of how to deal with dense plugs will continue to nag at designers – this solution, while nifty, poses a new problem while trying to solve the old one. There are angled, bent and flush-fitting solutions, but when you go to change configurations (like standing up from a low seat with your laptop) your cord may have other ideas. Huang Guanglei ‘s vision for this flexing plug looks perfect, but in addressing the issue of mobility it creates a problem of power. Specifically, it is designed to flip up and down not just to accommodate movement but also to turn on and off.
Flipping Nifty: Flexible Folding Plug for Interior Wall Sockets
Imagine waiting for the train while picking out your groceries from a display case filled with products identical in size, scale and color to really grocery store shelves. If the first round of the digital revolution was about making the real virtual, this time it is about making the virtual real again. South Korean grocery chain Tesco was looking for a way to one-up their major competitor – impossible to do in terms of physical shops due to a lack of actual stores; hence, they turned toward the world wide web with a combination of mobile phone and QR code technologies.
Mobile Smart Phone Grocery Shopping in Subway Stations
See-Through, Touch-Screen Tablet Renders Interiors in 3D
It has taken from hundreds to thousands of years for architects and designers to perfect the art of translating from two-dimensional images to the three-dimensional world and back again.