technology – Page 5 – Mac Funamizu Design Blog

iPhone Dock Sketches

未分類, apple, Design, Gadget, iphone, iPod, Macintosh, technology, future, concept, inspiration

iHammock

I use my iPhone at work and at home. When I’m at work in the office, I can’t make it ring loud when there’s an incoming phone call or an email, so I change the setting to the silent (vibration) mode. But when it vibrates on my desk, it makes even louder noise than a beep, so I was thinking if I could make something soft to put my iPhone on so that it doesn’t rattle when vibrating, and thought that a hammock style would be fun. It looks like your iPhone is relaxing on a hammock, so I added a parasol that works as a solar power battery charger. You open and flip the parasol in the sun to get electricity and close and fix it on the hammock to charge your iPhone.
“iHammock”?

Just for fun again.

iAcqua2

Wouldn’t it be nice if you had a 3D screen that displays stereoscopic images of music visualizer and stocked photos when your iPhone is docked? It’s like a combination of my old ideas (snow globe screen and iAcqua).

3D screen and a speaker

Cover flow in the water flow?

This one tilts a bit when your iPhone is docked, making the speakers and the transparent screen float.
It tells you when there’s a phone call and an email by rocking from side to side.

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Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

red dot design concept award 2009

未分類, Design, Gadget, technology, concept, inspiration, augmented reality, competition

I can’t believe I won the red dot design concept award for the Looking Glass concept!! (I added some photos of the awarding ceremony on my Flickr.)

First of all, let me thank Radhika Seth (for everything), Mika Ueno and *momoc (for beautiful photos), Takashi Yamada (for first picking up and naming this gadget), Regina Teh (for inviting me for the competition) and my family (for letting me keep doing this crazy hobby).
This is really exciting for me because it’s the first award I won since I became a designer.

I added some new images and fixed a few old ones.

Dragging stuff like a building floor to see its floor map would be useful and fun.

And here’s the presentation sheet I submitted to the red dot.

I also appreciate all the support I’ve got from the readers and magazine/newspaper editors who wrote articles of this gadget.
I’m planning to attend the award ceremony on November 24th in Singapore, so anyone who happens to be there, please talk to me. I’ll post some photos on my Flickr if I can shoot good ones there. And of course I’ll keep twitting in Singapore, too.

3D Desktop Concept

未分類, Design, Gadget, technology, future, concept, inspiration, 3D, augmented reality

I’m back! Thank you so much for all the get-well messages and comments. As I wrote on Twitter, the operation went OK and I’m 90% back to normal. I drew some sketches in my Moleskine while I was in the hospital, and this is one of them.

This 3D hologram video just makes me want to have a desktop like this.

When you’re not using it, it works as a desk lamp.

Bring the black curtain down so that the hologram can be seen more clearly in front of you.
There are tiny projectors installed, giving off 3D hologram in front of the curtain.

A browser window can be resized by actually “pinching” and dragging the tab at bottom right.

It would be fun if a document could be made as if you were using a typewriter. The curled paper hologram comes out of the keyboard.

Touching the 3D objects would be really fun. Dragging, throwing, resizing, etc., but crushing paper to dispose it would be the most interesting.

You have to adjust the “depth” of the cursor on screen, so how about a mouse like this? By pressing the mouse body downwards, the cursor sinks (goes deeper) on screen. When you release it, it goes back to the default position (front).

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Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Trou – Hologram Projecting Flexible Mobile Phone Concept

未分類, Design, Gadget, technology, future, concept, inspiration, competition

This is the second idea I submitted for a future mobile design competition held last month. The theme was “Design the mobile phone of 2020″.

The technology of holography is progressing day by day. In 10 years, I hope it will have already been developed for mass production and will of course used in our mobile phones. The area conventionally used for a display in a mobile phone will no longer need to be a screen with 3D projecters. Instead, it could be a hole, which allows another useful purposes.

At the same time, the materials used for the outer body of a mobile phone will become softer and softer. By successfully combine those attributes, there could be a mobile phone with a flexible vacant frame, which projects hologram in the vacant area.

When you have it in your hand, you can use it just as a conventional mobile phone except for the fact that what you see is 3D holography!

Because its frame area is flexible enough to let your wrist go through the hole, you can wear it around your wrist. A quick phone answering can be done while you are wearing it.

3D projectors are located inside the flexible frame, which project dramatic holography.

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PHYDI – Physical and Digital Message

未分類, Design, Gadget, technology, future, concept, inspiration, competition, mobile

This is one of two ideas I submitted for a future mobile design competition held last month. The theme was “Design the mobile phone of 2020”.

We all know how great a touch screen is and the reason doesn’t have to be mentioned. But have you ever thought that a touch screen is a nightmare for the blind? You never know what you’re touching because everything is flat. All the information and status are on the screen, so a user has to take the device up from a pocket, touch the necessary buttons and see with his eyes even when he just wants to know if he’s got a single email or not. In the future, information is told in 3D or with something that a user can FEEL by touching or just seeing so that the above problems can be solved.

This PHYDI mobile phone is just that. The front face and the sides of a PHYDI transforms the shapes according to what information or status is expressed. It makes concavity and convexity on the surface. For example, the face can be customized with contoured graphics. It could be dressed up with a kimono-like graphic or it could have a concave clock so that a blind user can know the time.

The status is shown on its sides.
A convexity means a “+” notice, for example there’s an unread email message and unanswered phone call. For a negative status, for example, the battery running out soon or having a bad reception, a concavity appears at a certain location. With this function, you can know without even touching or looking at the phone if your current location has a good reception to talk on the phone, if the battery has to be charged and if you have unread emails or unanswered calls. You wouldn’t have to travel around a place to find a good spot to talk on the phone, taking a look at the small icon on the screen many times.

PHYDI’s front face (left) and back (right)

customized front look

an email notice

poor reception status (top) and running out battery status (below)

unread email message (top) and unanswered phone calls (below)

When a PHYDI is making a continuous movement, it means you have an imminent status to take action. For instance, when its surface is moving like a wave, you’re getting a phone call. The movement can be customized freely.

wave movement on the face for an incoming phone call

With its flexible surface, the information on the screen could be dramatically expressed. Even an email message could be on a protruded paper.
Your file management could be done in 3D. Open a folder to take out movies and photos in it just like you do in the physical world.

an email message

file management control in 3D

The biggest merit with this feature could be a 3D map. you can get a much greater feeling of locations with “heights” because in most cases, a landmark is something very high, which can be difficult to be expressed in 2D. Can you imagine how easy it would become to search where you are and which way to go with this function?

3D map

When you want to make your email message stand out, you can put an embossed present box on the screen. A calculator will be much easier to use if you can feel the keys. An RSS feed could be read on a book-like shaped surface. The curl on the bottom right corner means you have a next page to read, A flipping gesture takes you to the next page. A physical keyboard of course makes your texting faster!

email with a graphic image

calculator with embossed keys

RSS feed on a book-like surface

of course, keyboard

For advanced functions, there are limitless ideas to be realized that could never have been done with a conventional flat screen. For example, you can leave a hickey mark and handwritten message to send your love to someone! Text information could be rendered in braille for the blind. This might make even copy-and-paste possible for the blind people.

hickey mark with a handwritten message

text in braille

Touch&feel Tetris you want try? The control would be much more instinctively done.
An idle screen could be customized in dramatic ways. If you like gentle ripples on the water, just put it with heights. Try other textures such as fur, chocolate or even tatami mat!

tetris with embossed blocks to turn and move with your fingers directly

various customized idle screens

I’ll make a post of the other mobile phone design later.

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Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Funny USB Memory Sticks #5

未分類, Design, Gadget, technology, concept, inspiration, icon

How about a USB memory stick that looks hungry when there’s no data in it?

The inflated belly means the memory is full.

This one is different from the other previous ones.

Plug it in a USB port and start pumping it, then on the screen, the icon scatters what’s in it.

The harder you pump, the farther the icons travel.

Also visit the other series of this gadget.

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Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

iAcqua

未分類, apple, Design, Gadget, iphone, iPod, technology, future, concept, inspiration

Maybe I’m into projector concepts.

It’s an iPhone stand with a transparent touch screen, speaker and projector.
Dock your iPhone at the top.

Tilt it slowly to either side and your photos, songs or movies start running one after another at random like water coming out from a fountain. Each image will disappear in a few seconds. You can touch a photo to see it, a movie to play and a music icon to play the song.

Now turn up the faucet and when the dish is full, the images will be spilled on the floor, which are actually projection from the stand. You can also tilt the stand to spill images little by little to a certain direction.
And now you can play with larger images.

When you play music, you can see the visualizer working. Spill the visualizer on the floor and you see “full-screen” projected visualizer!

Behind the scenes on my Flickr.

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Snowcorn: Another Sixth Sense Device Concept

未分類, Design, Gadget, technology, future, concept, inspiration, fashion, transportation

It took a few days to render these images and while I was rendering them, I was surprised to see this demo at TED. The concept is almost identical! How nice!

Mine’s a bracelet like flexible device with a camera, a projector and Wifi installed. You can also put it on anywhere on your cloth around your chest or neck.

The transparent part is a screen to show basic function or the time. Customize it with the colors and style you like.
Complicated controls can be done in the projected UI.

Scan a business card to add the person’s name and other information to your address book through wifi.

Translate a word/phrase you’re not familiar with in a book.

Look for a way to get to a station on a train map.

There could be a lot more ways to use this device, so I’ll make the posts later.

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Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Train Ceiling as Info Screen?

未分類, Design, technology, future, concept, transportation

I want a navigation screen on a train that shows the exact location where the train is, not just “It’s now between station A and station B”.
It should also be seen clearly from almost everywhere even if the train is crowded. (In Tokyo it’s almost impossible for a stranger to know where she is on a crowded train if she misses one announcement.)
Is it the ceiling that is the most visible?