A Rollercoaster Designed to Kill Humanely It’s a ride definitely not for the faint-hearted—a PhD candidate in Design Interactions at the Royal College of Art has designed a hypothetical rollercoaster meant to kill. Julijonas Urbonas created his coaster as a hypothetical euthanasia machine; it will, he claims, take lives as humanely and euphorically as possible. “Riding the coaster’s track, the rider is subjected to a series of intensive motion elements that induce various unique experiences: from euphoria to thrill, and from tunnel vision to loss of consciousness and, eventually, death,” he wrote on his website. The 500-meter structure is designed to kill its rider from cerebral hypoxia, or a lack of oxygen supply to the brain. Urbonas said he was inspired to create the rollercoaster by a quote from John Allen, former president of the Philadelphia Toboggan Company: “The ultimate rollercoaster is built when you send out 24 people and they all come back dead. [via Boing Boing] Receive interesting stories like this one in your inbox
When Data Visualization Works — And When It Doesn't - Jim Stikeleather by Jim Stikeleather | 10:00 AM March 27, 2013 I am uncomfortable with the growing emphasis on big data and its stylist, visualization. Don’t get me wrong — I love infographic representations of large data sets. The value of representing information concisely and effectively dates back to Florence Nightingale, when she developed a new type of pie chart to clearly show that more soldiers were dying from preventable illnesses than from their wounds. Ultimately, data visualization is about communicating an idea that will drive action. For information to provide valuable insights, it must be interpretable, relevant, and novel. Once we’ve narrowed the universe of data down to those that satisfy these three requirements, we must also understand the legitimate reasons to construct data visualizations, and recognize what factors affect the quality of data visualizations. Data quality: The quality of the underlying data is crucial to the value of visualization.
10 Bizarre Green Ideas! « Epic Swag If you waste too much water, you might end up killing your pet! The water level restores to normal when the tap is off. Even though designer Yan Lu received a letter from PETA saying “environmental education does not require cruelty to animals”, yet an emotional way to persuade consumers to think about saving water will always work. When this concept of printer by Hoyoung Lee becomes a reality, you’ll never need to buy an ink cartridge or join those pencil stubs to make a longer pencil. The Crown Plaza Hotel in Copenhagen, Denmark, is offering a free meal to any guest who is able to produce electricity for the hotel on an exercise bike attached to a generator. Here is a shower by designer Tommaso Colia that kicks you out for wasting water. It is very important to conserve energy and is even more important to make kids learn the good habits to conserve energy. White Goat as it has been named is a machine that turns waste office paper into toilet paper.
Nightingale's 'Coxcombs' Through her work as a nurse in the Crimean War, Florence Nightingale was a pioneer in establishing the importance of sanitation in hospitals. She meticulously gathered data on relating death tolls in hospitals to cleanliness, and, because of her novel methods of communicating this data, she was also a pioneer in applied statistics. We explore the work of Nightingale, and in particular focus on her use of certain graphs which, following misreading of her work, are now commonly known as 'coxcombs'. In March 1854 war broke out between France, Great Britain, Sardinia, and the Ottoman Empire on one side, and Russia on the other side. Most of the fighting in the war occurred on the Crimean Peninsula, in the south of Ukraine, but wounded British troops were shipped across the Black Sea to hospitals in Turkey. The sanitary conditions of these hospitals were awful, and many more people died from diseases than from wounds. Nightingale's coxcombs
Discover a new material: NewspaperWood NewspaperWood // Image Courtesy of Vij5 When we think of wood and paper, we usually see it in this manner; wood=source, paper=result. What if we flipped the model and saw paper as the source and wood as the end product? This was the concept behind Mieke Meijer's project at the Design Academy Eindhoven. To think of paper as the end state of the product was limiting. With so much paper as the end result of making newspapers, Mieke envisioned an opportunity to upcycle the process and re-create wood. Being a student, Mieke Meijer seeked the most practical way to re-create this and taking a stack of newspapers, he began glueing them one by one. From A to Z // NewspaperWood desk by Greetje van TiemImage Courtesy of Vij5 From A to Z // NewspaperWood desk by Greetje van Tiem Image Courtesy of Vij5 NewspaperWood was a laborious and time consuming process when it was first conceived. Framed // NewspaperWood cupboard by Breg HanssenImage Courtesy of Vij5 sources: Vij5
2013 Winners We’ve been through hell and high water to bring you the best and brightest of the data viz world in 2013 for the Kantar Information is Beautiful Awards. Many hours of cogitation, digestion and deliberation have been spent and now here they are, all of our glorious winners on one uber-long scrolling page. Congratulations to all our winners. Now sit back and marvel! Data Visualization Gold Nobels, no degreesGiorgia Lupi, Simone Quadri, Gabriele Rossi, Davide Ciuffi, Federica Fragapane, Francesco Majno Giorgia Lupi, Simone Quadri, Gabriele Rossi, Davide Ciuffi, Federica Fragapane, Francesco Majno This visualization explores the story of Nobel prizes through years.Visualized for each laureate are prize category, year the prize was awarded, and age of the recipient at the time, as well as principal academic affiliations and hometown. Silver How to win an OscarChristian Tate Christian Tate Bronze emoto InstallationMoritz Stefaner, Drew Hemment, Studio NAND
Transition Shoes by Nicholas Couch Transition is a “back to basics” sustainably made running shoe that follows the barefoot style principle. Traditional running shoes are made of 52 components. This shoe is only made of 5. By avoiding glues and complex co-moulded parts, components are easily assembled and more importantly, recycled. Transition Shoes is a 2011 IDEA Awards Winner! Designer: Nicholas Couch
4 Glasses in 1: From Water to Wine, Champagne or Cognac Does it ever strike you as strange that we have so many objects dedicated to drinking? Unlike food, which comes in many consistencies, liquid is relatively uniform. This all-purpose beverage glass plays to different kinds of Connoisseur without compromising its essential shape or requiring that you store glassware for every occasion. Simply want water? For cognac drinkers, an angled base tilts the tableware to let it breath better – turning it into an effective side-tilted snifter. Sven Milcent &?