Simple Is Not As Simple As It Seems

An article in the New York Times says customers are being more attracted to "simple" products:

And, as it turns out, the buyers of consumer electronics could very well have been a leading economic indicator. Over the last year, they chose to buy two inexpensive and simple products, the Wii and the Flip, over competing gadgets bristling with more features.

Larry Burns: Reinventing the car

General Motors veep Larry Burns previews cool next-gen car design: sleek, customizable (and computer-enhanced) vehicles that run clean on hydrogen -- and pump energy back into the electrical grid when they're idle.

What makes a 'User Experience expert'?

So what is the added value that a user experience expert brings?

Robert Brunner

Before Jonathan Ive, there was Robert Brunner, the designer behind Apple's original, iconic PowerBook. Brunner, now has a new product-design studio, Ammunition, worked with Amazon.com's Lab126 unit, also staffed with Apple veterans, to design the Kindle e-book reader

Apple Store - Glass Staircases

A unique and eye-catching feature of Apple's high-profile stores is the glass staircase, intended to attract visitors to visit the second (or even third) floor, which most retail shoppers avoid. Besides the visually interesting design, the stairways and their accompanying glass bridges are engineering and architectural marvels, and made possibly by recent advances in glass technology that allows its use in more demanding applications.

Six Design Lessons From the Apple Store

Here are a few design ideas and lessons, to learn from the Apple Store.

20 Cool Interaction Design Concepts

Here are twenty interaction design concepts, both 2D and 3D concepts. Every interaction designer out there should have a look at these concepts to get inspired!

21 Simple But Impressive Corporate Web Designs Of Top Brands

If you want to come up with some creative web design ideas or just need to motivate and inspire yourself, browse these 21 simple but impressive corporate web designs of top brands.

IDEO Labs

Welcome to IDEO Labs workshop, playroom, garage, and launch pad. This is a place where they show bits of what they’re working on, talk about prototyping, and share their excitement over the tools that help them create.

Social Innovation

How can we unleash and leverage the power of the global design community on some of the world’s most intractable problems? Find out here.

Speed bumps that won't flatten your tires

Designers Jae-yun Kim & Jong-Su Lee say it’s time to move on! No more of this silly giant bumps in the road when we could advance!

Liquid Mongoose adds Picasa to its repertoire

Liquid Mongoose, the purveyors of the do-it-yourself DVD and music CD sleeves has put out a new version of its bookmarklet that supports Picasa Web albums.

The visual thinking weblog

Visualization can be a very powerful tool. Even simple images have the power to be provocative, insightful, challenging, and even funny

Feeling Muji

Satoshi Yasui is the kind of designer who can riff on any product--including socks. Not just any socks, but comfy ones with a 90-degree heel, knit for a perfect fit by Czech grandmothers, that he and his 15-member design team at Muji transformed into one of the Japanese retailer's roughly 7,000 products.

A green city blooms in the desert

Abu Dhabi, which reckons the world will wean itself from fossil fuels, is building a city that runs on solar power, recycles all waste, and bans cars. How will it work?

10 Futuristic Concept Laptop Designs

Technology grows too fast and to keep ourselves synchronized with the modern trends, we must take into account every progress whether that may be of past or of the future.

Compiled below is a list of the most futuristic concept laptop designs, some of which have won achievement awards while the rest are just too cool to know about.

10 Top Social News Sites Ranked by Design

Digg, Reddit, Mixx, Slashdot, and so on. They are all great social news and media websites, but how do they rank in terms of how easy they are on the eyes?

Creative and Unsual Bike Designs

Collection of creative and unusual bicycle designs from around the world.

Mobile Optimized Websites, More Harm Than Good?

Many websites automatically redirect iPhones to mobile versions of their sites. Many of these sites often deliver limited content, wasting space, and eliminate zooming.

2008 Masters of Design

A Dutch superstar, an unyielding architect, a force for good, a style soothsayer, a digital visionary and 71 perfect products. That’s what you’ll find here in our fifth annual report on the intersection of business and design.