Car bed

This relates to design because it's about the importance of DOING as much as planning, thinking, drawing.

I've had on my mind for a while to buy a Berlingo van (or similar)

And to drive from Ireland to Wales and have a wonderful Amdro Jumpkit installed so the wee van could be a camper van. Somewhere to sleep in but small enough to be (almost) mistaken for a car.

The Amdro is designed, invented, manufacted by Iwan Lloyd Roberts by the company he has built up in Wales. It's great to support designers like this. There are copies of the Amdro jump kit doing the rounds too - the idea has taken off. 

But a conversation with a flatmate who works as a panel beater and is around cars and vans put me off a bit... because he talked about VAT on vans and DoE tests and all manner of complications.

I don't know how right he is but it got me thinking.... I should work with what I've got. Which is a 2001 Toyota Corolla.

That pic is not my car... but my car is a three-door! So it's tricky to maneuver in and out!

I found some videos. Some about people permanently living in their cars :(

So I took some measurements of my car with the passenger seat down.

 And then worked on a design

I needed:

18mm plywood (in two sections so I could fold it into the boot)

Hinges

For a mattress, I have a Thai Kapok mattress

For support under my head (between the passenger seat and the back seat), I used Ikea Adils table legs - the holder is peranently screwed to the plywood and the legs can be twisted on when needed.

And at my feet, I rested the plywood on a box, Ikea again: Samla (Width: 56 cm; Depth: 39 cm

Height: 28 cm; Volume: 45 l)

There is a lack of support, however, in the middle of the bed. I had to use pillows here (4 of them!) under the plywood. This still needs to be resolved. It probably is the biggest issue in designing a car bed - the distance that must be spanned.

So I've slept in it and it works! Comfy enough. With duvet and pillow proper bed-like. It offers great freedom to just head off and not be worried about having nowhere to stay! I can visit friends who live on smallholdings and farms with nowhere to put me up.

The condensation issue is a bit crazy, loads of moisture generated overnight even with the window a bit open.

So the message from this post is... Go ahead and do it!

Ivar v Hejne

I've moved house 6 or so times in the past two years. When I was moving first, I needed to buy shelving. I knew that it was likely I'd be moving again so the shelves I bought had to be capable of moving with me! And boy, was I right about moving again...!
I dismissed the idea of buying Ikea Billy shelving - bookshelf units that seemed permanent once built. And bulky to move.
So I narrowed the choice down to Ikea Ivar or Ikea Hejne.

Hejne was sooo much cheaper. And they won me over. I bought three Hejne units and 1 Ivar (for testing purposes!). And what am I left with? 0 Hejne + many more Ivars that I've bought over the years.
I didn't like Hejne at all. They were flimsy and cheap. No choice in height. Supposed to be adjustable but really the adjustable heights were so wide apart that the options were limited. I think there was a deep/narrow shelf depth option. I used them both in my utility room and in my sitting room. They didn't look well in the sitting room, the books were never the right scale on the shelves. The utility room was a bit scary cos the shelves didn't feel sturdy enough for all the paint and tools piled on, but then I didn't attach the shelves to a wall which would have provided sturdiness. I thought it would be handy to have four stand-alone posts at the corners that could be used on narrow or deep shelf depths but I think the stand-alone posts caused some of the wobbliness and lack in firmness.

Whereas, Ivar, I love. Very easy to deconstruct and reconstruct. Easy to move (well, with a big car for the super-tall side posts!).
In order to change the shelf heights of Hejne, the unit had to be moved away from the wall to access the allen key screws at the back (and an allen key had to be located) whereas with Ivar, the pins can be pulled out of the holes and the shelf heights adjusted without moving the shelving unit.
Dunno if I'll have them forever and ever, if they'll last *that* long. But they've lastest the 6 moves so far and there's more moves on the horizon.

Moon-reactive street-light

These winter months, I am walking home in darkness from college. There is one particular patch on my walk which is quite precarious as it is outside a building site. The rest of my route is well-lit. So I particularly notice when the moon is out because a full, bright moon makes this section of my walk easy to navigate.

Streetlights can turn on/off in daylight when they are not needed. Why couldn't streetlights turn off at night time too - on those nights that are illuminated by the moon? How much energy would be saved? Surely a minimum of 12 nights per year, i.e. 1/40th. But every watt of energy saved is a drop of oil still in the ground or an ounce less carbon in the atmosphere, eh?

So for the purposes of this blog, I did a bit of googling.
"Lunar-resonant streetlights". They exist!
 Designed by Civil Twilight Design Collective. The lamps use led bulbs and respond to moonlight, dimming according to the level of lunar brightness.
A book reference which may potentially provide info on calculations etc: Light and Color in the Outdoors By Marcel Minnaert

Size, scale: earphones

How and why do some things get used and work... and others don't?
The latest example of this in my life is earphones.
I got a gift of these large pink earphones for Christmas a few years ago (not these ones but similar).

And since I started walking to college last September, I used them nearly every day. Apart from the fact that they blocked out the sound of traffic and were comfortable, the size of them meant that I found them in the mornings, stored them in my college locker during the day, and saw them again in the evening to remember to bring them with me on the walk home.

But they broke. Dunno how. The sound stopped working.

So I sourced a wee pair of earbuds that I had lying around.

Disaster.

The size and scale of the earbuds in comparison with the large pink headphones meant that I was always leaving them behind, putting them in pockets, losing them behind things in my locker. They weren't effective in my life!

I think it's interesting regarding design and intuitive design. And designed objects that get used.

Vacuum cleaners and stairs

When I was hoovering my stairs recently, I took this photograph because I remembered a cartoon from a lecture in architecture school.

The cartoon showed a stairs and a hoover or vacuum cleaner which reached halfway and an exasperated housewife.
The question the lecturer posed was - which comes first - the length of the stairs or the length of the cable / hosepipe of the vacuum cleaner? Maybe the point he was trying to make is that architects can't be responsible for everything; the cart does come before the horse. Or maybe he was trying to suggest that a socket point halfway up a stairs wouldn't go amiss - if designers of electronic equipment can't be trusted then the architect should provide solutions for the domestic delight of housewives.
When I did a google search of "cartoon vacuum cleaner stairs", I didn't find the image I remembered but I did come across this ingenious solution!

A backpack vac.

Coffee cup waste bin

Spotted in DkIT college in Dundalk:

 

This bin is designed uniquely for the disposal of coffee cups. There are a number of round openings in the lid for coffee cups to go in and be stacked on top of one another. One of the round openings is for liquid disposal. 

Waste sorting in public places

Dublin Airport has got a new bin system.

There are three sections:

• Paper and cardboard
• Plastic and cans (includes plastic bags!)
• General Waste

Colour

Each section is a different colour.

• Blue for paper and cardboard (I think of blue for water, ie liquid, ie drinking, ie bottles)
• Green for plastic and cans (Green in my mind does not equal plastic or cans! Green is trees...!)
• Black for general waste (Yes, I think this colour makes sense).

In Ireland, our recycling wheelie bins come in a multitude of colours: orange, black, green, blue, brown. I think our heads are geared to black for general waste; brown for composting; green for recycling.

 I'd like to think that such colours are innately understood but we're not there yet.

Shape

The holes for each section are shaped differently

• Rectangular for paper/cardboard (I think this is logical)

• Circular for plastic and cans (circular is the obvious shape for bottles and can and drinking vessels, however this bin takes all kinds of plastic - bags etc)

• Square for general waste

The largest shaped opening is for general waste and I think this makes sense. However, although I think black is a good choice of colour for general waste, this opening is not the most appealing or "go-to". I think the idea of shapes is excellent, however this solution is not quite there yet.

Size

All the bins are the same size; I wonder if they could be narrower or smaller or different heights?

Design: a lot done, more to do

I am impressed but this is a protoype in my opinion.There are good design ideas but it's not quite there yet. I love that it is bilingual and I like the non-language-specific icons.

Design that makes the world work smoother

Sometimes we forget that things were designed. Systems and objects conceived in someone's mind. Solutions devised. Problems analysed. People and scenarios enquired into and understood.
How's this for a successful ubiquitous design?

The ticket machine with numbered slips of paper and correlating display. 

I have seen this in shoe shops, train station ticket offices, official government passport or motor tax offices. And used internationally also.

I especially think this is wonderful because users are empowered - it's quite a straightforward system, uncomplicated, easy to understand - and if this system is not working out in the user's scenario, it's easily removed and another queuing method devised.

Sometimes the tickets and the screen are out of synch when the customer agent clicks for the next number "64?" and nobody appears but quickly, humanly, a little bit of eye contact among queuers, a decision by the customer service agent and the numbers are brought back to function. When used in the right places, I love it!

Seen in Gotheborg Design Museum:

Turn-o-Matic, M80
Queue ticket dispenser and queue number display
A&E Design AB, Stockholm, 1974
Tom Ahlstrom
Hans Erich

Soap Collection

Since I was about 7 years old - that's more than 25 years ago! - I have had a "soap collection". My granny used to add to the collection, buying me a new coloured, smelly, shaped soap every week or so for a while.

I've carried them with me every house move I made. I tried to use a soap or two from time to time. Maybe a Christmas-theme to add yuletide atmosphere to my bathroom.

Or a fun soap when I expected friends with children to visit.

Now it's time to get rid of them.

So I took time out, photographed my collection and put together this slideshow together as an Ode to my Soap Collection. Some of the details are quite stunning.

My brother asked me will I sell them... but I don't think anybody would be interested. They're at the door, waiting to be taken away. Not sure where to. 27 years is a long time, I'm quite attached to these soaps in an odd unfunctional way.

Intuitive Design using Colour

My mam and I both have Hetty and Henry vaccuum cleaners. Hetty has been part of my life for three or so years and when mam needed to buy a new hoover, I had no hesitation in recommending the Numac family to her.

I noticed that everytime my mam went to turn off her Henry, that she hit the "hi power" button instead of the on/off switch.

This puzzled me. I never got this wrong. We investigated...

On my cleaner, the on/off switch is green and the hi-power switch is red - this must be the intuitive colour for operation.

Which one would you go for to switch it on/off?
Another example... I remember getting a new bank card and noticing that almost everytime I used it, I inserted it at the wrong end... whereas, this had never happened with my previous card.

Unfortunately I can't remember exactly which end I inserted first, but I think it was blue!

Spice Rack

For years, I've been needing a proper spicerack. And today, I got delivery of one which I bought on ebay.

 It's wonderful to have all the spices standing on a custom-made shelf.

So simple but so hard to find. I'm delighted I finally bit the bullet and made this purchase. Well-packaged, simply made: ian5088

Looking at that picture, my next requirement will be a carrot storage area! And something for all the bottles to :) but just imagine what the place was like before the spice rack arrived!!!

Easter Egg

I received a gorgeous Easter Egg this year. And - after opening it - realised how well produced / designed the egg and packaging were, hand-in-hand.

• Firstly, the circular tube + the base of the chocolate egg: the chocolate base is poured to just the right diameter to fit in the tube. The base keeps the egg steady in the packaging.

• Secondly, there is a hole in the back. At first I thought it was useful for getting out the little chocolates (theegg is full to the brim of little chocolates!) but then, of course, I realised the reason for this hole wasforgetting the little chocolates into the big egg in the first place!

• And thirdly, the chocolatier's name was displayed on the front of the chocolate egg in a square of chocolate dyed red. Yum!

The chocolate is delicious. Thank you, Monsieur Pierre Marcolini and, indeed the aunt who presented me with it ;)

When a spoon becomes a knife...

I love spoons. But this is taking it too far I think. In a café in Paris last week, I ordered cheese. A round portion of goat's cheese arrived and a basket of bread (baguette).

Instead of providing a knife to spread the cheese onto the bread, I was given a spoon!

Maybe this is common, maybe they had no knives to spare.

Maybe it was practical. The cheese was rather oozy. And very yummy. Such a simple meal. Washed down with a glass of wine, of course.

Cuillère à moka

I have known that a cuillère à café in French is the equivalent of a teaspoon.

Now I have become acquainted with a cuillère à moka. An even smaller version for dissolving sugar in a small cup of coffee.

Wine Bottles

For a recent party, I made home-made wine.

It was drinkable. Alcoholic-percentage remains a mystery so it may have been pink lemonade instead of a rosé!

While bottling the wine - a not-so-easy task involving an inverted vacuum corkscrew through which the cork is squeezed using lots of elbow-grease/pressure - I realised that the neck of the bottle has a purpose. This may seem extremely obvious, but I need these things pointed out to me! The neck of the bottle holds the cork.

It was when I ran out of bottles and used an ex-soft drink bottle made from glass that this lesson really hit home. The bottle was shaped thus:

Now imagine a cork in the top of that bottle... it has nowhere to sit. Nowhere to squeeze into.

This brought to mind the different shaped bottles used for different wine regions / types. And I wanted to gather them together here. Three that I know...

Bordeaux:

Burgundy:

Alsace:

As can clearly be seen in these three bottles, a cork will fit snugly in each respective neck. So clever! So under-noticed!

Spoon with hook handle

I bought this spoon a long time ago and have never used it. Perhaps it's for hooking over a saucepan and sampling the food - eg jam or a stew - something that's brewing/cooking for some time and needs to be tasted.

Spoon-knife

My Dad knows about my interest in spoons! On a recent trip to Germany, he brought back these spoon-knives for me from the AerLingus plane journey.
Our conclusion, however, is that they are fine as a spoon OR a knife but not as both!! Do you want to stir your coffee with a buttered handle?! Or butter your bread holding the knife that's wet from stirring coffee. Hmmm. Not ideal.

Clever from a manufacturing point of view - the plastic makers and the catering stockist need only worry about one item.

One of the examples of the conflict of interests between consumer and user.