Art

A-Typical Uses for Household Goods

- Cam Proctor

Taking your beer and liqour bottles back to the beer store is a fantastic GREEN option called re-using. Its been around for a while, but North America seems to have forgotten how to do it; opting for a simple trash and replace mindset. Now a new funky eco-chic movement is taking re-use to new heights and its called up-cycling.
 I started thinking about up-cycling a couple of months ago whenever I was going to recycle something (I have a bread bag of trash every 2-3 weeks) and I was amazed at how creative and rewarding it can be. My best upcycles include:

1. Hydroponic watering system from 2L pop bottles
2. Using a wine bottle as a rolling pin
3. Old shirts, cloths, etc as drapes
4. TV or Computer stand stand of aluminum cans
5. Various cat toys

Fun Cartoon Room

- Adam Clare 1 Comment

Cartoony Room

An artist as made a really cool paint scheme in a room, it’s like living in a cartoon.

I would love to live in a house painted like this!

More images and a brief description can be found here.

Robothink: Japanese Robot Museum

- Adam Clare 1 Comment

robotThis a fun thing for this Friday. Japan now has a robot museum.

“Finally, scholars have a place to conduct Astro Boy studies. Robothink, Japan’s first bot museum, opened its doors this fall. The 28,000-square-foot facility is housed in a former used-car dealership in Nagoya. From Robby to Aibo, the droid depository features dozens of actual automatons, plus replicas of real and fictional bots.”

Stained Art Tea Cups

- Adam Clare

tea cupTea cups get stained and that’s a fact that once was bad and now is good. Thanks to artist Bethan Wood who has made a tea cup that shows groovy designs when it gets stained.

“Stain is a set of a teacups designed to improve through use. This project examines the assumption that use is damaging to a product (For example, scratches on an iPod).

The interior surface of the cup is treated so as to stain more in predetermined places. The more the cups are used, the more the pattern is revealed. Over time they will build up an individual pattern dependent on the users personal way of drinking tea.”

World Usability Day

- Adam Clare

Today is World Usability Day!

Making things easy to use is hard, and it goes unappreciated. People are more likely to complain how something is not working and hard to use than express their appreciation of things that just work.

World Usability Day wants to make the world easier to use. That sounds weird, but I assure you that it’s a good thing.

“Why doesn’t this work right? What am I supposed to do with this now?”

World Usability Day, November 14, 2006, is for everyone who’s ever asked these questions. This Earth Day style event, focused on raising awareness and visibility of usability engineering and user centered design, is currently being organized by volunteers and local event coordinators from around the world. Whether a usability professional or just an enthusiastic (or frustrated) user, each participant is making a contribution to “making life easy”.

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