design

Cooking simulator adds a sense of touch to virtual food

Learning how to cook can be a frustrating experience. This should not be the case. Aside from an occasional overcooked steak, the process should be an enjoyable one. And considering that one gets to eat the results of one's labor, the aftermath isn't too bad either. (Unless that steak is really overdone.) Understanding that learning how to cook can be thought of as a game, a research team at the Tokyo Institute of Technology has created a cooking simulator designed to give novice cooks instantaneous feedback.

As a novel approach to culinary education, the system is composed of … Read more

Wear a Wampa skin: 'Star Wars' outfits for the ladies

Some people watch the Wampa cave scene from "Star Wars" and think, "Look out! Wampa attack!" Others watch it and think, "I could make a dress out of that!"

Nerd Alert Designs falls into the latter camp. The geeky Etsy store is full of custom dresses with "Star Wars" themes.

One of the most impressive of the lot is the $130 Wampa dress crafted of fake white fur with a bomber-style horned hat and clawed boot covers. A little touch of blood on the chest really makes it pop.… Read more

Design 3D lava lamps with gestures on Handy-Potter

Gestural interfaces like the Leap promise a world in which we'll all be driving cars and flying planes by waving our hands in the air, "Minority Report"-style.

Pudue University is joining the fun with the Handy-Potter, a design tool that lets you fashion 3D virtual objects with your bare hands.

Recently presented at the ASME 2012 International Design Engineering Technical Conferences and Computers and Information in Engineering Conference in Chicago, the research won the All-Conference Best Paper award.

The Handy-Potter is a departure from traditional computer-aided design. It works with the Microsoft Kinect to track the user's body and hand gestures, modifying 3D shapes according to motions such as waving or pulling. … Read more

Geekify your living room with a recycled Mac coffee table

You're lounging on your couch watching "Star Trek" reruns. You need someplace to set your sleek new MacBook. How about on your Crunching Numbers G4 coffee table, where its ancestors can keep it company while you're gone?

Reform Designs is recycling old Macs in a creative way by turning them into coffee tables that will match your geeky decor. The whole table is made from up to 70 percent reclaimed materials, so you can feel green about your purchase.… Read more

A view to the future with the Electrolux Design Lab 2012 semifinalists

The Electrolux Design Lab is a yearly competition that challenges design students across the globe. This year's competition asked students to create home appliances that would "provide a fuller sensory experience." Perhaps one day, some of these entries will be used in the home kitchen. Below are a few highlights:

Ingresure (seen above) is by Jongwoo Choi. It is a gadget designed to be a taste tester. Instead of chef's tasting their own creation, they would use the device to taste it for them. The idea is that the Ingresure would give amateur chefs the assurance … Read more

Skip the run and try footwear headgear instead

Some people look at a pair of Nikes and picture a jog. Others look at the shoes and see each section of the sole as a lobe of the human brain. Put the designers at Wieden + Kennedy London in the latter category.

A team from the design firm made the shoe-brain connection when asked to participate in Nike78, a challenge that tasked designers with rethinking a pair of new Nikes.

Wieden + Kennedy got the Nike Free -- a shoe inspired by athletes who train barefoot to make their feet stronger -- and the designers looked at the segmented soles and saw gray matter. Nike Free Your Mind was born. … Read more

Samsung keeps prior art parade marching against Apple

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Samsung today brought out early technology relics in hopes of busting Apple's design patents for the iPhone and iPad -- the very ones Apple has pointed at it like howitzers.

The South Korean technology giant called upon a pair of experts -- one in person, another by video deposition -- to make the case that others had beaten Apple to the punch, effectively rendering those patents useless.

Samsung's argument relied mainly on foreign patent designs and an early prototype for a tablet that never made it into commercial production. However, Samsung also brought out … Read more

Top Samsung designer: We didn't copy Apple

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- In an effort to rebut allegations that it copied the design of Apple's iOS home screen, icons, and other visual features, Samsung brought out one of the people in charge of designing the software in its phones.

Jeeyuen Wang, Samsung's senior designer, testified this afternoon with the help of an interpreter, and flat out told the court that the company did not copy Apple's designs.

Samsung brought out Wang to counter copycat claims made by Apple earlier in the trial that put the Samsung's iconography and features side by side. That offense … Read more

Smartphones with unique designs (roundup)

Phone-makers use every trick in the book to differentiate their phones on store shelves, from bright colors to unusual proportions, textures, and materials.

Here are five smartphones that turn heads for striking shapes, aggressive style, and distinct physical features that you just don't see every day.

Nokia 808 PureView (unlocked), June 2012 You can't expect to slip a camera module as large as the 808 PureView's 41-megapixel shooter into a smartphone chassis without a little give. The trade-off is a thicker middle and a huge hump at one end of the phone that makes for some potentially … Read more