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Designing tomorrow: It’s really needed now

As a kid, I remember watching television shows in which a surgeon would stand over a patient in the operating room and, well, seem just a tad nervous.

I don’t know if it was a nod to reality – the pressure of performing an operation – or just a made-for-television dramatic moment. But there would be another person next to the surgeon, ready to dab any perspiration when needed.

In real life, it looks like Smart Design of New York City has solved that issue with breathable operating gowns.

The Smart Design crew has many high-profile clients, including Microsoft, Starbucks, Yahoo! and Acer.

Many designs from the creative crowd at this agency are impressive. One involves a power charger for all those people, including myself, with smart phones – including the iPhone, BlackBerry and the like.

It’s a sleek flat, power charger in which you just lay your phone or electronic device on the pad.

Yes: Nice, clean, easy.

No more cords. I don’t know about you but it’s easy for me to trip over cords when I’m in a rush.

Here’s some text about the charger from Smart Design’s Web site:

The revolutionary charging system is centered on two charging mats – one for in home/office and one for travel – and a series of receivers and docks that enable “drop and charge” for devices as diverse as iPhone, BlackBerry, MP3 players, cell phones, headsets, hand held electronic games, digital cameras, and GPS units. Each component has a sleek physical design, but is also simple, intuitive, and easy to operate, eliminating the need for lots of cords or searching for the right adaptor. Innovative features include magnetic alignment so that devices hit their optimal charging spot every time, RFID handshake to maximize energy efficiency for specific devices, audio and visual confirmations to know your device is charging, and auto shut-off to save energy.

Yes, as the cliche goes, the world is a small place.

Smart Design was instrumental in helping Seattle-based Starbucks create the company’s Hear Music Media Bars.

In 2004, I covered the launch of the media bars at a company-sponsored event at one of its coffee houses in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle.

It’s needless to say.

But design – and thinking – is always an ongoing process: Refine, reposition, renew.

That thinking is always needed, as I suppose is critical analysis that enables progress to flourish. Critical analysis, in and of itself, really is just that.

There has to be an end goal with all of this – a better design, an improved economy, a compelling conclusion, a provocative question, something from which we all can learn.

Or at least, that’s what I think.

As you might have seen from my previous posts, I enjoy design – whether it’s for eyeglasses and an iPod holder, an iconic building in Beijing, a two-wheel toy, cars of the future, a great-looking shelf system, barcodes or upturned eaves. 

And I’ve posted clips from Objectified - a documentary about design - before. Have a look, if you haven’t seen it.