Industrial & Product Design

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 29 feb 2016

According to World Health Organization (WHO), air pollution has become the world's biggest environmental risk, linked to over 7 million deaths a year. A global team of scientists (Farid Touati, Claudio Legena, Alessio Galli, Damiano Crescini, Paolo Crescini, Adel Ben Mnaouer) from Canadian University Dubai, Qatar University, and the University of Brescia (Italy), have developed a technology, known as SENNO (Sensor Node), that enables high-efficiency air quality monitoring, to help promote a cleaner environment and reduce the health risks associated with poor atmospheric quality. The technology promises to make air quality monitoring cost-effective. The research paper, 'Environmentally Powered Multiparametric Wireless Sensor Node for Air Quality Diagnostic', was published in Sensors and Materials journal. Prof. Adel Ben Mnaouer of Canadian University Dubai (CUD), says, 'Sensor networks dedicated to atmospheric monitoring can provide an early warning of environmental hazards. However, remote systems need robust and reliable sensor nodes, which require high levels of power efficiency for autonomous, continuous and long-term use...Our technology harvests environmental energy...it optimises energy use by the sensory equipment, so as to function only for the time needed to achieve the operations of sensor warm-up, sampling, data processing and wireless data transmission, thereby creating an air quality monitoring system that measures pollutants in a sustainable and efficient way.' Read on...

The Gulf Today: Dubai professor develops innovation to combat increasing air pollution
Author: NA

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 23 feb 2016

As digital get seamlessly interwoven into the fabric of life, it will not remain anything extraordinary. In future, advancements in digital technologies will converge to enhance physical experiences that involve our bodies, feelings, emotions, actions and reactions. Auro Trini Castelli, Chief Strategy & Innovation Officer at gyro, explains how the 'Physical Revolution' will be driven by the following five trends - (1) Sensors will be the new devices (Virtual Reality; Motion and Gesture Recognition Technologies; Haptic Technology). (2) Surfaces will be the new screens (Interactive digital screens on walls, floors, ceilings, walkways etc). (3) Smart cities will make us smart citizens (Interactive city systems and digital environments). (4) Only meaningful interactions will survive (Well-integrated interfaces that get activated when required; Focus on human experience). (5) The world will be printed (3D printing for mass customization; Laser cutting; Computer modeling). In this experiential world, architects, designers, engineers, technologists, marketers, advertisers etc have to increasingly think and create with focus on providing solutions that appeal to all five human senses. The success will depend on how invisibly the digital will become part of the physical and improves every aspect of human interactions and experiences. Read on...

AdvertisingAge: The New Revolution Will Be Physical, Not Digital
Author: Auro Trini Castelli

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 14 feb 2016

Make in India Week has now started in Mumbai and along with it India Design Forum (IDF) 2016 is developing strategies and advocating how a facilitating design environment and culture can be nurtured to enable growth of manufacturing. IDF is integrated into Make in India campaign's plan to demonstrate the potential of design, innovation and sustainability across India's manufacturing sector. Rajshree Pathy, founder of IDF, explains, 'Design is not merely about clothes, shoes, handbags and jewellery, as is commonly believed. Those are incidental. Design is, in fact, at the heart of the manufacturing process. It is not a 'thing', it is a way of thinking.' Satyendra Pakhale, an Amsterdam-based designer, citing Tata Nano's example says, 'It is a good example of Indian design, which combined engineering innovations with a careful consideration for the demands of the domestic market. In fact, one of India's most famous qualities - jugaad - is indicative of an innovative mindset.' According to Simran Lal, CEO of Good Earth, 'It's important that we bring rural design and India's rural design communities along on this journey.' Time is now ripe for India to upgrade to a design-driven manufacturing ecosystem, attract global investments, partner with global corporations and manufacture for the world, but without losing the focus on serving the needs of the large local market. Read on...

The Indian Express: Make in India Week - Putting design at the heart of manufacturing
Author: Pooja Pillai

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 07 feb 2016

Team of researchers from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Prof. Dipanjan Pan (Bioengineering), postdoctoral researchers Manas Gartia and Santosh Misra, along with Dr. Leanne Labriola, an ophthalmologist at Carle Foundation Hospital, are collaborating to develop a portable sensor that can quickly and inexpensively detect whether the eye injury is mild or severe. The device measures the levels of vitamin C in the fluids that coat or leak from the eye. According to Prof. Pan, 'The sensor takes advantage of the fact that the ocular tear film - the viscous fluid that coats the eyeball - contains low levels of ascorbic acid, which is just vitamin C, while the interior of the eye contains much higher levels. So the concept is, if there is severe damage to the eye that penetrates deeply, the ascorbic acid will leak out in high concentration.' Dr. Labriola says, 'The new device will change the standard of care for evaluating eye traumas. This technology has the ability to impact a large number of patients, particularly in rural settings, where access to an ophthalmologist can be limited.' Researchers suggest accident sites and battlefields as other places where the device will be of great use as chances of eye injury are high there. Prof. Pan comments on the new engineering-based medical college coming up at UIUC, 'This is a perfect example of physicians and engineers working together to find solutions to current problems in healthcare.' The team is further collaborating with a U of I industrial design professor to build a housing for the sensor that will be portable and easy to use and have founded a startup to bring the device to market. Read on...

Illinois News Bureau: Portable device can quickly determine the extent of an eye injury
Author: Diana Yates

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 18 dec 2015

Although government of UK states that the creative industries in the country now equal £76.9 billion per year, and the design sector seeing the biggest growth. But there is another debate brewing in UK regarding the condition of design and creative education. According to John Sorrell, founder of London Design Festival and Creative Industries Federation, 'Schools in UK saw a 50% decrease in students taking design and technology GSEC (General Certificate of Secondary Education) subjects in the 10 years leading upto 2013, and 25% drop in other craft-related GCSEs between 2007 and 2013.' He says that the government is reducing investments in creative education that would eventually lead to inadequate development of the next generation of creative talent. He explains, 'It is the government's calling card everywhere in the world...it's this amazing work we're part of which makes Britain so loved by the rest of the world - our creativity.' He further adds, 'If we can get our act together and work together we can take advantage of the opportunities in international development that certainly China is going to be doing in the next 20 years.' Similar sentiments were recently voiced by this year's London Design Medal winners, Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby, who said 'UK government doesn't value the role of creativity.' Another angle to this debate was provided by inventor James Dyson, who criticized the UK government's steps regarding the foreign students to return home after completing their education. This immigration plan will threaten UK's status as a global design and architecture center. Read on...

dezeen: Design education in the UK is being "marginalised" says John Sorrell
Author: Dan Howarth

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 13 dec 2015

It has been observed in many cases that science fiction writers have talked about products that became reality later on. For example earbud headphones were first mentioned by Ray Bradbury in his classic novel 'Fahrenheit 451'. Emphasis on technological development and advancement is also part of economic agendas of many nations. Japan is one country that gives siginificant importance to merging technology with social and economic development. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his economic roadmap, often termed as 'Abenomics', puts technologies like Internet of Things (IoT), big data, robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) at the core of his revitilization strategy. Japan leads the world with its strength in robotics by bringing out the first personal robot 'Pepper'. But the robot lacks the expected intelligence as it couldn't pass the Turing Test which is a benchmark in AI to determine how close the machine thinks like humans. Although Japan's strength in industrial robotics is visible but it lags the advancements in IoT, big data and AI. According to Prof. Mitsuru Ishizuka of Waseda University and University of Tokyo, 'Japan is considerably behind the United States in 'deep learning', a central technology in AI, although the country is working hard to catch up...These companies (Google, Facebook, IBM etc) can invest big money in AI and add the resulting new values to their services. In Japan, there are much smaller companies with specific AI technologies.' IBM developed Watson, an AI computer, and over the years it has evolved into multiple applications. The computer's core framework reflects human decision-making (observe, interpret, evaluate, decide) but its data crunching abilities are incomparable. William Saito, Japanese entrepreneur and professional cook, utilized Watson to prepare some unique recipes. Citing Watson's strengths in IoT, big data and AI, Mr. Saito comments, 'Combine Watson with a refrigerator, for instance. You go to your refrigerator and it gives you a recipe based on the food in the fridge prioritized by expiration date.' Japan's focus on creating cyborgs (humans with mechanical parts) is also understandable considering its ageing population and growing need for assisted living. Toyota is collaborating with Stanford and MIT on technologies with emphasis on creating automobiles that assist the driver for safer travel, contrary to the approaches of Google and Tesla Motors that are working on driverless cars. Mr. Saito believes that Japan has to come out of its 'Galápagos Syndrome' and strike a balance between logic and creative thinking and move from electro-mechanical robotics to thinking and self-learning machines. Prof. Masakazu Hirokawa, AI researcher at University of Tsukuba, expresses similar views on Japanese model that focuses more on technology that addresses social issues and is less about creating global solutions. He comments, 'We have the hardware to be able to do it, but the important thing is developing the software...I'm trying to create algorithms that help robots learn and predictively determine what and how humans want them to act through experience-based inferences.' Read on...

JapanToday: Artificial Intelligence - Can Japan lead the way?
Author: Richard Jolley

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 29 oct 2015

User experience is one of the most critical factor to be considered while designing a product or service. Great designs make customers feel good, enjoy and above all fully utilize the desired functionality of the product or service for their benefit. Scott Sundvor, co-founder of 6SensorLabs, explains that there are generally two schools of thought in the product design process - 'Design-First' approach, that promotes the process of initially designing look and feel of the product and then make engineering fit that design, and the other is 'Engineering-First' approach, in which the engineering aspects of the product are considered first while the industrial design works under constraints of the engineering specifications e.g. hardware, components etc. Apple generally applies the design-first approach and gives substantial importance to the aesthetics of the product, and of course without compromising on the engineering. Mr. Sundvor suggests that startups and companies with relevantly less funds as compared to Apple can find success by following the engineering-first approach. They should focus on the utility of the product i.e. providing better usability and functionality. Hardware startups that pursue crowdfunding to generate capital often sell products with a different initial industrial design while ship something else. This generally happends due to lack of convergence of engineering and hardware aspects with the industrial design. In other cases it might happen that original industrial design was not manufacturable or the cost to manufacture it was too high. Startups and companies on low budget can avoid such problems by focusing first on making the product work and then create aesthetic aspects of industrial design around it. Engineering team and industrial design firm should work together closely. Product leader should be created within the product/engineering team to coordinate collaboration between the two and should gather feedback from all sources including user's perspective and engineering constraints. The selection of the right industrial firm could be a challenge and should be done by doing thorough research based on budgetary constraints, product requirements and the design firm's capabilities. Once the selection is made product/engineering team should pitch their product vision and specifications to the industrial design firm. The design firm should be convinced regarding the long-term viability of the product. To raise funds after this would depend on the high-quality prototype design that comes through a partnership with the design firm. Startups should be prepared to spend right amount of money to create this prototype and if they don't have much funds they should consider giving equity to the design firm. This is the critical stage of product development and startups shouldn't shy away from pulling all the strings to get a good design firm to work on their product vision and specifications. Read on...

ReadWrite: Which Came First - Product Utility Or Design?
Author: Scott Sundvor

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 21 oct 2015

In a highly competitive automobile industry in India, companies have to safeguard and secure their industrial designs by going through a registration and validation process. Sarthak Saran of BananaIP explains the step-by-step procedure to file a design application in India and how the companies should devise strategies and protect their designs. According to Mr. Saran, 'Industrial design means the shape and configuration of an article. Design does not protect the functionality of any product. It protects only the ornamentation of the product.' He also explains situations in which a design is considered to be invalid by the Controller of Design. In case there are no objections to the design by the Examiner and the Controller of Design accepts the application, it is registered and published in the patent office journal ordinarily within one month. The design is generally valid for a period of 10 years and can be renewed for another 5 years. The total number of registered designs by major companies in the automobile industry are - Tata Motors (396); Mahindra & Mahindra (205); Hero MotoCorp (85); TVS Motor Company (72). Read on...

Sinapse Blog: Industrial Designs for Automobile Industry in India
Author: Sarthak Saran

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 25 sep 2015

Design thinking is used by organizations to spur innovation. It is often a source for product innovation teams to generate radical new product ideas and concepts. Once applied effectively and become a part of organization's culture it can emerge as a sustainable competitive advantage. According to Professor Michal Herzenstein, who teaches marketing at University of Delaware, 'Radically new products are products that allow consumers to do something that they couldn't have done before. They are products that create a shift in consumption - how consumers respond to and use products.' Her chapter 'Optimal Design for Radically New Products' alongwith Prof. Steve Hoeffler of Vanderbilt University and Tamar Ginzburg of Vanderbilt University, appears in PDMA Essentials book titled, 'Design and Design Thinking' by Michael I. Luchs of College of William and Mary, Scott Swan of College of William and Mary, Abbie Griffin of University of Utah. Prof. Herzenstein provides six processes that product innovation teams need to implement to create ideas for radically new products. Large organizations can use them in an ascending sequence with a focus on communicating the goal of achieving breakthrough product to innovation team. While smaller companies and startups can pick any process that they feel will assist them to learn more about developing radically innovative product ideas. The six processes are - (1) Communicate the Challenge Goal Toward Radically New Products. (2) Shift Time Frames to Future and Past. (3) Promote an Emerging Technology Focus Across the Product Consumption Chain. (4) Promote the Use of Analogical Thinking. (5) Look for Novel Ways to Solve Simple Problems. (6) Leverage More Ideators Via Crowdsourcing. Read on...

Product Innovation Educators Blog: 6 Processes for Generating Ideas for Radical Innovations
Author: Chad McAllister

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 30 jun 2015

In addition to 'Make in India' initiative, it would be the right opportunity and strategy for India to also promote arts, design, and other creative concepts and activities. The creative community in India holds a view that 'Make in India' campaign should be complemented with participation in international art shows and cultural reach-out campaigns and also an upgrade of India's design standards. Feroze Gujral, philanthropist and art enthusiast, says 'The world now considers India to be the most important market for art and it would be prudent to participate in art fairs and organise cultural reach-outs that would tell the world about contemporary India.' Peter Martin of APCO Worldwide considers India's soft power potential as significant and suggests that more emphasis should be given to tap it. According to Latheesh Lakshman, artist and designer, 'India needs to set up art fairs and participate in such events abroad...such events would also promote a design revamp in India. There is a significant lag in the design potential of India and the standards that are in operation today.' Product designer Satish Gokhale says, 'Make in India campaign must have a design component that will focus on making manufacturing design-centric. In India, we have not fully understood the significance of design and application of design thinking. The Make in India campaign can even change the way of green growth of our country if synced with design and design thinking.' He further points out that India's creative potential will get a boost by adding a cultural reach-out and design platforms as part of the campaign. Although national design policy was brought out in 2007 that considered a need for design overhaul in India to improve manufacturing competitiveness, there is a lot that is expected from the present government to lead India towards a design-enabled economy. Read on...

The Economic Times: Why 'Make in India' should be complemented with participation in global art shows & upgrade of design ecosystem
Author: K. P. Narayana Kumar

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