Sensorial’Org

I’m an amateur artist, and I dabble in web design and random crafts. But the other thing I’m really psyched about is interior design. Shamelessly, I watch Cityline, House and Homes, Designer Guys, Divine Design, and even Debby Travis’ Facelifts. There’s also this other program–whose name I can’t remember–where the hobbyist will challenge that professional, also the host, in a design challenge to design the same room.

The tours and projects on these shows, however, are more conservative (not in the traditional vs. contemporary sense). The designs that I’m really in love with are… not.

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To complete, you have my workspace:

Ideally, I’d have two encyclopedias between the glass top and the computer drawers to add some character, but the glass won”t hold. And if I were rich, I’d totally splurge on this piece of wall graphic.

But on the upside, I have Hugh Laurie beside my keyboard =D

Although it has its share of limitations–it doesn’t have brushes, it can’t crop, it can’t manipulate perspectives, it doesn’t have masks, it’s primitive when it comes to transparency… But once I get over the fact that it’s not an editing program, I’m convinced that OmniGraffle can do everything I’ll ever need in a wireframe.

Tips and Tricks

Stencils

The stencils library is probably the first thing a beginner should get acquainted with. Analogous to Photoshop’s brush palette (but don’t expect to be able to create ’strokes’), stencils are a collection of predefined objects that you can drag and drop onto your canvas again and again. I never have to create another ‘X’-box placeholder again.

The program comes with a set of default shapes, but you can download a wide variety of them from Graffletopia, or created on your own (Stencils > New Stencil ) set of objects.

Shapes

Out-of-the-box it has stars, dialog boxes, clouds, arrows… (not at all unlike Photoshop’s custom shapes), and what it doesn’t have, you can probably find in a stencil. But that’s not all, and I just discovered this recently, you can combine shapes via intersection, union and subtraction: Edit > Shapes. Of course, you can always create real custom shapes by using paths and making the points editable in the Edit menu.

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I mentioned earlier this month that I will be involved in another project this summer, now I have a little more details.

Reference: Breaking the Disposable Technology Paradigm. Also see the incredible amount of human waste.

The problem

• Advances in computation + dependence on technology => increase consumption on computation devices
• Disposable technology paradigm: expected short usage lifetime => increase in waste. In particular, cellphone waste where consumers replace their cellphones every 17.5 month
• Old cellphones are being deposited in landfills or kept around with no alternative use

The cause?

Questions

• Why did you get your current phone?
• Why did you choose this particular phone? Size? Functionality? Aesthetics?
• What do you do with your old phones?

• Companies offer free cellphones with contract renewal
• Increasing expectation of existing phones in light of new models
• Diminishing battery life (cheaper to get a new phone than to replace the battery); durability
• Perceived lifetime of a phone is independent from its functional lifetime

The challenge

• Recycling old phones is an inconvenience
• People don’t know about organizations out there that take old cell phones
• Although people save old phones because of its potential to benefit another user, people don’t necessarily want the old phone

The solution?

• Reform contract structure and incentive programs
• Mobile phone interfaces that encourage sustainable use
• Novel ways to reuse old cellphones to decrease the need for new devices
• Make phones with biodegradable material
• Make it easy for consumers to recycle their old phones

Ideas

• Indicate the user’s ownership of the phone in comparison to the phone’s expected functional lifetime
• Create a market place for phones to trade ownerhsip
• Old cellphones as a personalized gift; branded as a photo collection, mixed tape, etc
• Increase awareness of recycling options and locations by convenient means, e.g. through the phone itself
• Modifiable outer designs without changing the internal hardware
• Repurpose phones as entertainment devices in clinics and hospitals, pagers in restaurants

Rethinking the Ordinary — Links

• Ikea Hacker
• Yiying Lu’s Extra Ordinary series
• 60 Really Creative Advertisements
• 100 Really Creative Business Cards