“The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.” — Bertrand Russell
Welcome
In this second volume of Designs On—, it’s our turn to assimilate our thoughts on time and turn them into new ideas for products, campaigns, interactions, and environments.
In an attempt to drive thinking and discussion around design issues of every stripe and kind, IDEO publishes a semi-annual review called Designs On—, part personal perspective, part collective manifesto. It addresses tricky issues of the day, minus boundaries or constraints.
01 · Longivila
By Adam Reineck
Products should be designed to last only as long as they’re useful—and when no longer useful, disappear back to the earth. Longivila Workshop is a manifestation of this philosophy, giving the owner a clear glass shell and “timeless” planting tray that can be passed down from generation to generation.
The shell acts like a chair factory, enabling people to grow the engineered Longivila plant inside. As it is watered over time, the plant fills the shell and hardens into the form of a functional chair. Two vials of growing solution come with the chair: Slow Juice and Fast Juice. The first produces a dense and precious chair with qualities similar to burlwood. The latter spurs the growth of Longivila, creating a soft, more ethereal chair, which thrives for only a short while before being tossed in the backyard.
- Plant Longivila seeds in the base of the chair shell. 2) Water your Longivila seed. 3) Add a few drops of Slow Juice (brown) to grow a dense, long-lasting chair. 4) Use the Fast Juice (green) to make a soft chair that will easily decompose when tossed in the backyard.
02 · Squeezed
By Byron Parr, Gretchen Wustrack, Santiago Prieto, Andy Deakin, Robert Suarez, Vivian Barad, Joanne Oliver, Peter Riering-Czekalla, and Alex Coriano
As time marches on, don’t you feel more and more pressed for time? The beginning of anything always feels more expansive and full of potential than the end. This applies to all increments of time—days, weeks, decades. It even applies to one’s life stage.
For a child, days are endless. But to an adult, there never seems to be enough space in a day. Squeezed reflects these perceptions of time, visualized as a hanging wall calendar and weekly planner. The skewed grid of the wall calendar contracts time over the span of a year. For the weekly planner, the shrinking days and weeks become nearly imperceptible.
3 · Drip
By Eric Toyofuku
The drip drops. The plant grows. The expression of time finds new meaning in both growth and depletion. With each drip leaving the water reservoir, time passes and is measured. With each drop nurturing the plant, the plant grows and is measured. Water transforms into time, and time into growth. A cycle emerges, expressing passing moments.
We use time as a daily measurement of our lives: 40 minutes to cook dinner, 30 minutes to take a nap, 15 minutes to write an email. But more often than not, time just flies by without anything to show for it. Drip offers a way to account for passing time while simultaneously achieving beauty.
Materials: porcelain, glass, and grass.
04 · Hijacker
By Santiago Prieto, Andy Deakin, Robert Suarez, Vivian Barad, Joanne Oliver, Gretchen Wustrack, Peter Riering-Czekalla, Alex Coriano
Hijacker is an iPhone service application designed to give users an hour of quality time. They select a theme—education, spirituality, love—and the application does the rest, including deciding when the quality time will occur. Call it “quality time hijacking.”
The application gives a 45-minute warning before quality time begins. Upon activation, it shuts down the iPhone and computer for the duration of the hijack. The user has no choice but to relax and enjoy.
05 · The Final Time
By John Lai
The Letter is a personal perspective on time and a tribute to my late sister Irene, who passed away two years ago from cancer. Inspired by a letter she wrote to her family before her death, I’ve designed an experience to remind us of the frailty and preciousness of time. Displayed on a vertical monitor connected to a computer, The Letter sits idly on a white screen until someone launches it into activity. With a simple click, and illustrated flower, then letter and words, grow from the blank page. The eyes follow the forms, awaiting meaning to unfold. A name, date and epitaph on the bottom of the screen signal the event’s completion. Looking back on the page, however, portions of the letter begin disappearing, until only the epitaph remains. But only temporarily, as it too gently fades away.
06 · 10 Minutes
By Larry Cheng
Can a paper token make playtime more permissible? 10 Minutes hopes so, but wants to know for sure. It’s an interactive concept designed to encourage people to be playful with the time they have.
6,000 total tokens were created, in increments of 10 minutes, with a website address printed on each, directing recipients to submit their stories. Since its inception, 40 hours worth of tokens (and growing) have been distributed to students, commuters, friends and coworkers.
07 · Time is Water
By Martin Zabaleta and Paul Silberschatz
Time is Water is a set of water glasses with a mission. To spark conversations around water usage – specifically, its unnecessary overuse, like running water while brushing teeth or taking excessively long showers. Each of the four glasses presents a water-consuming activity and shows how much clean drinking water is used per second. An open faucet, for example, fills a glass of water in about five seconds. Time is Water: provocative, yet functional, with the goal of promoting behaviour change.
08 · Daylight Savings Pig
By Santiago Prieto, Andy Deakin, Robert Suarez, Vivian Barad, Joanne Oliver, Gretchen Wustrack, Peter Riering-Czekalla, Alex Coriano
Ever wonder where those daylight savings hours go? The Daylight Savings Pig helps you store and savor solar savings. The pig collects sunlight via solar cells and can be used as a stand-alone power-source for a lamp, cell phone charger, or anything else that can plug into its snout. The pig makes use of recent advances in solar technology and is coated with Nanosolar’s newly developed proprietary ink that makes it possible to simply print the semiconductor of a high-performance solar cell.
09 · Time of Death
By Stephen Kim
Time of Death is a personal wristband health monitor that communicates the long-term health consequences of short-term decisions.
10 · Time Brings Resolution
By Lukas Scherrer
We live in an era of mass production, quick-to-market thinking, unsustainable consumption, and assumed fast earnings based on non-measureable, bloated projections.
Time Brings Resolution visualizes the assumption that anything worthwhile (or with acceptable resolution) is based on quality craftsmanship and considered design. Though both a virtual and a tangible output, the word ‘resolution’ is given the room to unfold into full view, reminding the viewer of the lasting virtue of wisdom gained over time.
11 · Time = Length
By Susanne Stage
Anticipating a special future event can influence one’s perception of time. Unlike a clock, which measures time circularly, Time = Length is a linear timepiece that quantifies time in ‘short’ or ‘long’ increments. The tape measure can be pulled out to help visualize how ‘long’ an upcoming event will take, e.g. where one units equals on day, a vacation two weeks out can be measured down in daily single units, beginning at 14. Each passing day, the tape measure moves up a unit until the special day arrives. A range of magnets accompanies the timepiece, representing common events, such as birthdays, date nights, house parties and holidays.
12 · Timeline
By Svava Atladottir
Timeline is a dynamic in-home display whose data is automatically updated by way of a phone application, which captures photos, information, and even thoughts. Timeline can flexibly roll up (using and e-ink display), perform as wall art (using an oversize LCD screen), or live on the screensaver of a networked computer. This concept aims to promote learning, deepen an understanding of time, and make accessible a big picture view of individual lives, which can be shared with family and friends.
13 · No Coaster Please
By Thomas Brisebras
No Coaster Please is a ‘living’ dining set (table and chairs), made from wood and painted with several layers of color. Over time, the layers of paint begin to wear away, subtly revealing the colored layers beneath. Each set becomes a unique graphic, reflecting personal and social patterns of use. Like a guest book, No Coaster Please invites guests to inscribe their mark with one of the aluminum pens, contributing to the life story of the furniture.
14 · Timeless Beauty
By Santiago Prieto, Andy Deakin, Robert Suarez, Vivian Barad, Joanne Oliver, Gretchen Wustrack, Peter Riering-Czekalla, Alex Coriano
Timeless Beauty is a concept to eliminate the need for beauty products altogether. Each glass bottle – Hair, Face and Body – contains only purified spring water. The water replaces a daily regime of beauty products, allowing skin and hair to naturally repair the effects of years of abuse. After a nine-week cleanse, skin and hair regains its natural balance of oils and rewards the user with glowing natural beauty. The only ingredient is time.
15 · Personal Time Zone
By Jef Cunningham
Personal Time Zone ’rounds’ the hard corners of time to meet the emotional needs of human. Instead of time being split into regional zones, stepped in increments of one hour, time for individuals would be stepped in increments of microseconds, reflecting one’s precise distance from the Prime Meridian in Greenwich, London. (Personal timepieces would feature GPS technology to compute this distance, and time.) This way, the 40 standard time zones become an infinite number of time zones. And when people share a space, they share an intimate time zone. They literally spend time together.
16 · Counter Clock
By Engin Erdogan
Time? In an age of countdowns, when our natural resources are becoming increasingly limited, when our lives are getting faster, and when we’re trying to squeeze more into less time, isn’t remaining time more relevant than elapsed time? Counter Clock is a concept that responds to this, displaying the quantity of time still left in a day, so that we can focus on how much more we can do in the time that remains.
Cover image: iStockphoto
Additional photography: iStockphoto
