Just a small post to say that for the time being my website (mrdouglaswood.com) is currently down.
It does need a little bit of updating done to it, but overall I was and still are quite happy with it.
Watch this space for when it’ll be back.
mrdouglaswood
the idiosyncratic musings of a designer
Category Archives: Design Musings
夜間night*mode
One of the main issues which my final year project, 夜間night*, tried to solve was young people using their mobile phone too much in bed and not getting enough sleep. There was a sense all through out the project that it could be taken further on the software side of things. I was massively disappointed when my idea for an accompanying application could not be made due to iOS developer limitations. This led to the shelving of the application idea and the focus remained on the physical project.
Recently, in an attempt to get back into the way of thinking, I decided to revisit the idea of a software based 夜間night* but look at it from a different angle. Taking the computer as the main focus and the application I blogged about a while ago, f.lux, I wanted to combine the two to envisage what I am calling 夜間night*mode.
Computer screens are generally bad for your eyes. However, this is more apparent at night when the ambient light is lower and the stark blue light from the computer screen can cause eye strain. F.lux gives the screen warmer tones, matching it more to the artificial lighting found in your home (my f.lux setting at the moment is the equivalent of halogen or 3400k).
夜間night*mode expands the idea of f.lux into what I would imaging being a feature built into computer operating systems. Not only would it change the colour temperature of the screen, but it would make a whole host of visual changes to the computer to make it easier on they eye, which would subsequently help reduce eye strain and help the user get to sleep.
Even though this is just a concept and the result of an afternoon of work, it does provide an endless scope of possibilities to take 夜間night* and turn it into something that will actually be of use to someone. Additionally, with the launch of iOS6 and ‘Do Not Disturb’ there may be a renewed possibility of making a mobile application more relating to my project once more. But that is for another time as I have another personal project that is in the sidelines waiting to be completed.
A full write up can be found on the project page I made for it on behance (click here or on the image below).
New Designers 2012: A Picture Summary
It has been about a week since New Designers finished in London. It was a very mixed week. Not only was it very long, but it went by very quickly. I am still feeling the repercussions of it. I still have no idea what the day or date is. I am going to wait to write a proper written summary of what happened. I spoke to a lot of people about my project, but I am still letting it all sink in, and hopefully get a job soon.
On one hand New Designers marked the end of University life. It was a more natural end than the degree show at the end of May because it tried to give a helping hand for our futures. The other hand says differently, it is the beginning of our professional careers. More on that when I get around to writing a proper summary of it. In the mean time, here is a picture summary of the 8 days and 7 nights spent down in the hustle and bustle.
I would like to point out that these pictures are not exclusively of New Designers. Some are from other small escapades throughout the week.
Day 1: The Pendolino in Euston.
Day 1: South Bank
Day 1: Big Ben
Day 2: Waiting to get in to the Business Design Centre set up.
Day 2: Setting up. This was taken pretty much just as soon as everything was taken out of the van.
Day 2: A rather empty looking exhibition space. This would change massively in the next 48 hours.
Day 2: Floor down and walls up. Just cabinets and tables to erect.
Day 2: DJCAD University of Dundee. That’s us.
Day 3: With the Hilton right next door to the Business Design Centre, these three lovelies were constantly there to be ogled.
Day 3: A Mr Brown looking rather pleased. The space was almost completely finished.
Day 3: The almost completed exhibition space. All the exhibitors had arrived by this point.
Day 3: The new London Bus.
Day 3: The space is getting its finishing touches applied.
Day 4: Audi R8, Nissan Munaro and BMW 7 Series out of hotel window.
Day 4: Project set up awaiting the opening of New Designers.
Day 4: Business cards ready and waiting.
Day 4: Interview
Day 4: One of the nicest projects on display.
Day 4: Starting to get busier.
Day 4: A lot busier once it opened to industry and premium paying public.
Day 4: Mr Browns Bear.
Day 4: A sauve looking Robin on opening night.
Day 5: One of the actual times when we had free time to ourselves. The official opening of the Shard with light and laser display. A little disappointing but it was hoaching along the riverside.
Day 6: More free time meant that a little more could be explored. The Emirates Sky Ride had not long opened, so it was visited.
Day 6: Hello London.
Day 6: Some of the best weather we had all week.
Day 7: Fiona and Alasdair.
Day 7: Debbie’s eye. By this point it was within an hour or so of ending and everyone was knackered from standing about for the past few days.
Day 7: Despite four days of being played with, all the products lasted.
Day 7: Our stand was next to the entrance. This was one of the greeting sign plinths.
Day 7: It had taken us two days to build everything but only 90 minutes to take everything down again.
Day 8: Went to Camden whilst waiting for the train.
Day 8: Standing in Euston holding the box that was carrying the project. The F1 was on so I made the use of a good 3G signal and watched most of it in the station and on the train home. This was whilst almost everyone else watched the tennis.
That’s What I Wanted To Do… Sort of…
Whilst keeping track of one of many available liveblogs last night regarding the Apple keynote at the WWDC in San Francisco, something caught my attention. Actually almost everything I found interesting, but one thing in particular reminded me a lot of what I wanted to do for my fourth year university project.
One of the features touted when previewing iOS 6 was what I wanted to have done as an add on for my project. ‘Do Not Disturb’, a new feature for iOS 6 coming this autumn, basically mutes and sends calls straight to voicemail between certain user defined times of night. It will only let through those who you want to let through.
This is basically what I wanted to have done with an app as a companion to my project. I wanted it to basically turn on airplane mode after half an hour of being in the product and then it would turn airplane mode off when it was time to wake up. This was not possible with the API’s of the software developer kit so the idea was shelved.
However, this one would maybe be just as good as a companion. I know I’ll use it when the new operating system is ready to download.
One of the features of iOS 6 from http://www.apple.com/uk/ios/ios6/
MU Plug Unboxing
Ahhh. My first non uni work related blog post in quite a while. However, it isn’t really anything to write home about, but it is something quite special. If you remember from one of my posts about Uni work, I bought some MU folding plugs. What I have here is an unboxing of the plug. It really is a nice thing, and the box is fantastic. I do like a good piece of packaging design.
For more information about the MU plug, visit its website HERE
Getting Published
One of the requirements we were meant to try and have for the final hand in was to get our project published on a reputable blog or website. Getting this done and thus getting exposure of the project has been by far the most tricky part of the project because it is not in my control. Over the past week or so since I have finished it and started to publish it, it has been sent out (project and press release) many, many times. It is slowly starting to stick.
Below is a list of places that my project can be found online. Marked in bold are the uploads that I did not do. In other words, all the NON-bold links, are the ones I uploaded myself to help publicise the project. This list will be updated in due course.
- Designspotter
- Design Buzz
- ZiggyTech
- PhoneBe (in Chinese)
- Creative Dundee (towards bottom of page)
- Imagine That
- Gizmodo UK (US) (AUS)
- iphoneclub.nl
- I4U
- The Fancy
- DJCAD Students Exhibiting Page
- Phone Arena
- Zie.nl (video only)
- NOTCOT.org
- golem.de
- TUAW
- everythingicafe
- fooyoh
- mrdouglaswood.com
- mrdouglaswood.wordpress.com
- flickr
- behance
- Student Designers
Acknowledgements
The past 9 months have been filled with many highs and many lows. It is quite difficult to really describe what the project has been like for me at the moment. I need time to reflect on what has been going on first before I make any snap judgements. That is one of the reasons why I am holding off writing a proper project review.
However, one thing that I am incredibly thankful for over the course of fourth year is all those that helped to give their opinion on things, help out, provide support. Everything really. The following list of people is all those that did aid my project and even my dissertation, if I missed anyone out, forgot your name or spell your name wrong, I apologise as it was not intentional. They are not in any particular order.
My family, Scott Urquhart, Pete Linton, Fiona Harper, Jim Rankin, Richard Smith, Fraser Bruce, Roy Shearer, Gus Colvin, Sean Kingsley (in the workshop), Roddy in the workshop, Malcolm in the workshop, the Spray Factory, the Plastic People, the Higher Product Design Class (2011-12) at Kinross High School, Graham Pullin, James Lynch, John Williamson, Michael McLaren, Derek A., Lyle in the workshop, the DJCAD art shop, Dundee Uni print unit, PDQ Print Services, 4th year Product Design, the Jewellery workshop technician (don’t know her name), Kirsty Clark, Lisa Cordiner, Amazon, Royal Mail, eBay, Proto-Pic, Tim Regan, Pablo De La Pena, Andrew Cook, Martin Bontoft, Ro Ramtohul, Ali Napier, Neil Fraser Mathieson…
I am sure that there is more to be added to that list, but I have exhausted my memory at the moment.
Thanks.
夜間night*
Description
Technology has become so embedded into everyday life that it is difficult to detach from it, especially for younger generations who often lose valuable sleeping time because of ‘being online’. 夜間night* aims to discourage phone use in bed and aid the process of drifting off to sleep.
夜間night* starts a soothing mood light when the phone is inserted, encouraging sleep whilst charging the phone. 夜間night* will react to the phone when a notification or message is received by flashing brightly and vibrating, disturbing the user, questioning whether the phone needs to be on or not.
Gallery
Video
Press Release
The press release for 夜間night* is available as a .pdf or a .doc
One Hundred Words
Technology has become so embedded into everyday life that it is difficult to detach from it, especially for younger generations who often lose valuable sleeping time because of ‘being online’. 夜間night* aims to discourage phone use in bed and aid the process of drifting off to sleep.
夜間night* starts a soothing mood light when the phone is inserted, encouraging sleep whilst charging the phone. 夜間night* will react to the phone when a notification or message is received by flashing brightly and vibrating, disturbing the user, questioning whether the phone needs to be on or not.
Video
It did not take me long to decide on a sort of theme for my video. I thought that it would have been much more beneficial to the viewer to watch it in a point of view style where the camera is what the user sees. I had great trouble trying to get it filmed well enough. I tried to attach the camera to a hat to create hat-cam, but that didn’t work.
I ended up resorting to just holding the camera with one hand which is why there is only one hand in the video. In short I think it turned out quite successfully. It shows the function of the product and that is really what I wanted to get across. The design should essentially be superfluous if the function is just right. Think of your computer. You don’t really consider the design of it when using it because you are engrossed with what is on the screen.
