If you live in America, it's relatively easy to imagine how different life would be in Haiti. It would be pretty bad. But the difference between living in New York as opposed to, say, Stockholm, is harder to quantify. Once you're in the developed world, the quality of life and technological advances are basically uniform. So how would you decide which country would make you happiest?
In my last post on Co.Design, I wrote about how mandatory implementation of electronic medical records (EMRs) technology is forcing highly skilled physicians out of practice. The trend is primarily affecting the older generation of physicians, who didn't grow up with computers. These doctors aren't used to interacting with a big screen between them and their patients, and the technology hasn't been designed to be user friendly.
No trees were used in these wall-coverings. And no, they're not made from toxic, off-gassing vinyl, either. Rather, these patterns were printed on a breakthrough material manufactured from eco-friendly powdered stone.
![A Board Game Where You Relive The Zany Life Of A Graphic Designer [Slideshow]](/multisite_files/codesign/imagecache/642x368/article_feature/Graphic-Designer-Boardgame.jpg "A Board Game Where You Relive The Zany Life Of A Graphic Designer [Slideshow]")
Graphic designers love board games. Graphic designers love graphic design. Combine the two, and you've got The Pitch, a superbly nerdish little board game about, for, and by graphic designers. This is Dungeons and Dragons for serious design freaks.
The objective: to be the top creative in your field.
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Art is all about viewer participation nowadays, which is usually just code for making viewers feel as uncomfortable as humanly possible. (See: flaccid, naked penis at MoMA and anything by Yoko Ono.)
There's only one finger we commonly know as the Bird, and most of ours can fly just fine. But for your other eight fingers, consider the Pinky Wing, a creation of New York City native and RISD-trained designer Emily Rothschild.
The piece itself is powder-coated bronze, finished in gold vermeil and plated in rhodium, and a smaller version, the Mini Pinky Wing, is finished in 24k satin gold. There are also Ear Wings available to complete the set, which Rothschild notes can be worn "directed up your lobe or hanging down," depending, we suppose, upon your mood.
I'm jealous of high school computer science students these days. I had to tap out my GOTO 10 commands on a crappy CRT monitor; they get a cheap, rugged robot to play with. The Finch, as it's called, costs just $99, so every student in a classroom can have their own.
Interface: what a weird word. But all it really means is "a means of letting you do something." When you come home, you don't "interface with your house," you open the door. When you want to curl up with a novel, you don't "access your home library interface," you peruse the bookshelf. Why can't personal data be like that -- part of an intuitive, explorable world, rather than abstract layers of "interface"? A company called Bloom thinks it can be like that, and is building the tools to make it so.
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