"Infoxication". Do you ever heard about this concept?

How can we decide if a news it's real or not (said that sources are often scarcely reported)? Do we have to rely on our own concept of "trust" in a person/institution? Are we going to create a collective wisdom or looseness?

I think it's just too serious to be left to an ads...

Maybe you know My Lane already.

It’s a project on which we’ve been working for more than one year now. It all started with a simple consideration: we all love to go running in the park, but we all experience the same problem. Where do I change myself? where do I leave my helmet? Some friends solved the problem subscribing to a gym (just for leaving their jacket and have a shower…) and then going to the park: quite silly, but till now is the only solution.

We started thinking of a reply: it’s based on running and it’s about using the city’s green areas and our own time in a better way by proposing a new structure for the parks of Milano. We made on-site observations and research, asked our friends’ opinion, made small prototyping and developed some concepts. Luis (Felipe Bueno) took them as a starting point to develop a PSSD for his thesis, which implemented the feedbacks on the ideas and fixed some points for the service design.

Basically speaking, the project is composed by a series of structures providing showers, lockers, bathrooms and changerooms for running newbies or habitués, which are manageable by a web platform where users can book their lockers for a fix period of time. More or less it works as the bike sharing service. 

We presented this project to the Municipality and they appreciated it a lot, but, as expected, didn’t offered any financial support. We tried to search for a sponsors on our own, but no one of the companies we contacted wanted to invest in this moment. So it seems that everybody like the project, but no institution wants to do it.

Now we have decide to go on a different road: inspired by “crowd-actions” we started to question if it wouldn’t be possible to use critical mass to promote this project and hopefully make it possible. We started a Facebook page for spreading the idea and to check people’s opinion. A pdf brochure is also available.

Next step? Crowdsourcing… Give us opinions, comments, suggestions on the project and on the strategy we should follow to make a meaningful next step… Do you believe its possible to develop a project by creating and motivating critical mass? And how would you promote your idea?

If you want it, My Lane is going to be yours…

Click here to download:

My_Lane_-_Il_Progetto.pdf (1.66 MB)

(download)

Click here to download:

My_Lane_-_Il_Progetto.pdf (1.66 MB)

On January 29th, the Triennale inaugurated an exhibition on Joe Velluto's work, entitled "funcooldesign", a deliberately provocative title that aims to demolish the idea that the designer's work is "fun" and "cool" and want to play with the pronunciation  ("fancul" in Italian) as a final comdemnation for the contemporary design, especially the Italian and Milanese one. 

The intention of JVLT's exhibit is to celebrate the concept of "Adesign", i.e. a design that "si ribella all'idea di essere sempre più inutile ornamento modaiolo" (in the words of Oliviero Toscani, curator of the exhibition), used as a marketing tool or cosmetics, but socially empty. 

But the overall feeling I felt - along with the purity and beauty (the useless one, as in JVLT's Manifesto) of certain products on display - is the futile incoherence of the exhibition in terms of cultural initiative. 

I start mentioning the comments by Toscani (check video interview in Ultrafragola), totally resumed in his sterile provocation and super-banal when comparing Helsinki to Milan (how "pure" is the design in the first city and how "dirt" is in the second, apart during the design week - sic!)

The show underlines the poorness of a design which is all about the form, the aesthetics and the color, completely driven by marketing, but then... it doesn't offer any possible way out.

The authors are "disgusted" by the situation, but ultimately drawn from it all advantages. Irresponsibly: they do "design alla moda", protesting against "design alla moda", but being "designers alla moda". 

By the way, not a mention to all those who work every day considering design as a rare opportunity for social innovation, a possibility of reflection on sustainability (not only the environmental one) and - last but not least - an instrument for investigating human behaviors. 

That kind of reflections - for example - which are gathered into a small blog (DesignDoc) just started by three former students of PSSD Master Course, Daniel Metcalfe, Nissan Graisel and Hussain Indorewala; three young professionals who share a vision on design that could seems similar to the funcooldesign exhibition, but trying to go deeper in the analisys and coming to different conclusion. . They developed this vision by working and studying on opposite sides of the Mediterranean Sea and rescuing Victor Papanek's works (among other) and actualizing them through some cutting-edge ecological and social experiences.

In the end the comment on the reality of nowadays design (not only in Italy) is quite easy: if "create lipstick for an honest whore is one thing, but to create deodorant for her pimp is another", Nissan says "now, all we need to do is to decide, if we want to work for the pimp or the whore..."

Simple, straightforward, unequivocal ... (I'm proud of you guys!) 

Unfortunately the exhibition lost the opportunity of going beyond an easy and fruitless criticism.

Perhaps the best description of the "funcooldesign" lays in the words of Silvana Annichiarico, director of the Triennale Design Museum, which says: "This exhibition is palindrome. Whether you take it from one side or the opposite, it always leads to the same point: in the heart of the contradictions and problems that characterize today's world of design." 

Now, though, I think it's time for proposing values and solutions.  

Prototyping an idea, our office has been invaded by natural elements: we'll be the lab rats of our own experiment for a while...

(download)

Click here to download:

contaminated-by-nature-pidbkxgbipspGoCzcEbk.zip (2.13 MB)

Henry Ford once said "if I had asked my customers what they wanted they would have told me a faster horse"

One of the most important challenge of behavioral design is developing a deeper understanding of persons/customers than just asking them what they want.
In PA we trying every day to understand better what the people want or need but they don't know because the conventional way of thinking is unable to give them

Jonathan Safran Foer is by far one of the most unconventional (and interesting) contemporary authors. After his two must-read novels "Everything is illuminated" (2002) and "Extremely loud and incredibly close" (2005), last year he published his heartfelt public appeal to the vegetarian cause, describing the unsustainability of the food industry in contemporary society ("Eating animals", 2009).

Now he's back with a brand-new creation: an experimental graphic novel which is going to revolutionize the very same concepts of "book" and "interactive story". And - by the way - is going to became an icon of design (not only the graphic one).

The title is "Tree of Codes", now available for pre-order on Amazon.

All started with the interest of the author for the "die-cut" technique and for the physical relationship this could created between the pages.

As any other "innovator" he faced the problem of making his work coming to reality as every printer he approached said the book was impossible to make...

Until he found Die Keure in Belgium and Sara De Bondt Studio who helped him in this fatigue.

I dare to say that the final result is extremely "behavioral" as it is evident from the following video:

The plot was "carved out" from one of Safran Foer's favorite novel "The Street of Crocodiles": curious to know the peculiarity of this book and how it looks like on the inside? Check these photos...

As Olafur Eliasson said: “Jonathan Safran Foer, deftly deploys sculptural means to craft a truly compelling story. In our world of screens, he welds narrative, materiality, and our reading experience into a book that remembers that it actually has a body.” 

(via www.fastcodesign.com)

So here they are, our behavioral series, composed of five different visit cards (yep, the world still uses them...), each of them with a different message so you can pick the one that fits best with your mood. Answer with a smile, that's all we ask in return!

(download)

Click here to download:

our-brand-new-visit-cards-dGwberxzLzOwSAmCe1Cw.zip (580 KB)