I recently took part on the jury of the first IxDA Global Student Design competition, which had over 40 entries, representing university programs in Australia, China, Columbia, Denmark, India, the Netherlands, South Korea, Taiwan, and the United States. Of those many entries, five have earned a full scholarship to Interaction10 conference Read More…

With heavy coverage from newspapers and television, you may have become quite familiar with the theme of the Shanghai World Expo – “Better City, Better Life.” Read More…

Helping to promote careers and excellence in engineering, Autodesk has sponsored Formula Student 2009, the largest student motorsport event in Europe (Silverstone, UK, 16–19 July 2009). Read More…

A Dutch superstar, an unyielding architect, a force for good, a style soothsayer, a digital visionary and 71 perfect products. That’s what you’ll find on Fast Company’s fifth annual report on the intersection of business and design. Read More…

A great user experience starts with the user interface. In this talk, Jason Beres explores best practices in user interface design in a learn-by-example approach of the good, bad and the ugly in user interface design. From web sites to rich client, you will learn how areas such as navigation, layout, typography, controls and dialogs can make or break the usefulness of an application. Read More…

Bill Buxton, in his keynote during for the opening of IxDA | Interaction ‘08 Conference, asks us: “How Can We Design Great Products if we don’t First Design our Environment?” Great ideas are not enough. In many ways, they are the easy part of design. The hard part is seeing those great ideas through to reality. But the weight of that hard part can be significantly lightened if one has the right tools, the right team, and is working in the right physical and cultural space. While this sounds obvious – banal even, the reality is that in the technology sector, the eco-system in which much design takes place is not conducive to the task. Designers are generally significantly out-numbered by technical staff. Unless proper attention is paid to details, the resulting physical and cultural eco-system will be determined by those with the larger numbers. The end result pays the price.

This result is not due to any sinister objectives, rather than to human nature. The objective here is to point out the dynamic, what gets lost in the process and provide some thoughts on how to bring about change that benefits all.

Bill Buxton is a designer and a researcher concerned with the human aspects of technology. His work reflects a particular interest in the use of technology to support creative activities such as design, film-making and music. Buxton’s research specialties include technologies, techniques and theories of input to computers, technology mediated human-human collaboration, and ubiquitous computing

In December 2005, he was appointed Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research. Prior to that, he was Principal of his own Toronto-based boutique design and consulting firm Buxton Design, where his time was split between working for clients, lecturing, and trying to finish a long-delayed book on sketching and interaction design. He is also an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto, where he still works with graduate students.

Buxton began his career in music, having done a Bachelor of Music degree at Queen’s University. He then studied and taught at the Institute of Sonology, Utrecht, Holland for two years. After completing an M.Sc. in Computer Science on Computer Music at the University of Toronto, he joined the faculty as a lecturer. Designing and using computer-based tools for music composition and performance is what led him into the area of human-computer interaction. From 1994 until December 2002, he was Chief Scientist of Alias|Wavefront, (now part of Autodesk) and from 1995, its parent company SGI Inc. In the fall of 2004, he was a part-time instructor in the Department of Industrial Design at the Ontario College of Art and Design. In 2004/05 he was also Visiting Professor at the Knowledge Media Design Institute (KMDI) at the University of Toronto. And from January through April 2005 and 2006, was a Visiting Researcher with the Computer-Mediated Living Group at Microsoft Research, Cambridge England. He currently splits his time between Redmond and Toronto.

Buxton has always maintained a strong connection to both pure research and applied work. He has consulted to a number of technology companies and had a long association as a consulting research scientist with Xerox PARC. He has also lectured at, and collaborated with leading research labs and universities around the world.

In 1995, Buxton became the third recipient of the Canadian Human-Computer Communications Society Award for contributions to research in computer graphics and human-computer interaction, and was given the New Media Visionary of the Year Award at the 2000 Canadian New Media Awards. In 2002, he was elected to the CHI Academy and Time Magazine named him one of the top 5 designers in Canada. In 2001, The Hollywood Reporter named him one of the 10 most influential innovators in Hollywood. In October 2005 he and Gord Kurtenbach received the ‘Lasting Impact Award’ from ACM UIST 2005, which was awarded for their 1991 paper Issues in Combining Marking and Direct Manipulation Techniques. In June 2007 he was named Doctor of Design, Honoris Causa by the Ontario College of Art and Design.

Ferrari Store
credits: shanghaidiaries.com

With the opening to new markets and the growth of the Chinese economy, a new social class has emerged — to some extend, unthinkable in a Communist China: the millionaires. According to a survey from Cap Gemini/Merrill Lynch, the number of millionaires (in US Dollars) in China have reached more than 230,000. The large majority of these new riches choose Shanghai to invest their money and also spend their money. And these new riches can by quite demanding consumers: Yang Qingshan — secretary-general of the Chinese Strategy and Branding Association — says that more and more Chinese people invest in luxury items, such as cars, watches, designer clothes, accessories and cosmetics.

Seeking to target such people, new businesses that will recently were unthinkable in the “Empire of the Center”: the Millionaire’s Fair — event organized by the Millionaire Magazine, held for the first time in 2001 em Amsterdam — since then showcased products in countries such as France, Belgium and Holland, was hosted for the first time in an Asian country this year, in Shanghai.

Despite of the poor infrastructure, the e-commerce is also flourishing in China, fueled by so many wealthy clients: the number of online business in China surpasses 20 million.

Several luxury brands from all over the world have been attracted by these consumers: Dior, after opening several stores in china which sells over 11 million Yuan an year — something around 1.3 million dollars–, recently opened a Dior Center in Shanghai, the third in the world after Paris and Tokyo, hoping to reach 15 million Yuan in annual revenues.

The luxury automobile industry was to first to acknowledge such market potential, and for years have been harvesting fruits of their investment in Asia: 3 of 4 most expensive units manufactured by Bentley last year, each one costing more than 8 million Yuan — something around 1 million dollars, were bought by Chinese millionaires; 15% of all the limousines manufactured by Rolls-Royce had Asia has their buyers.

Despite of such explosion of consumption, the ordinary joe in China still keeps his money under the mattress: the Chinese National Savings is over 9 trillion Yuan– a little over 1 trillion dollars, representing 45% of the Chinese Gross National Product (GNP). As a comparison, Brazilian National Savings — also an emerging economy, goes around 25% of the Brazilian GNP. The rate of consumption over the Chinese GNP doesn’t go over 50%, much lower the the overall world average of 80%.

Nevertheless, the Chinese Central Government doesn’t want their comrades to stray away and recently created a system to overtax luxury items, trying to discourage spending and promote socialist values.