Social Barometer Video

Below is a video which shows the Social Barometer in use (both recording and playing).

Goodbye

After some rearrangement of groups in the project...we are no longer Flamingo. We are now FencePost Podcasts. I can barely contain my excitment towards this venture :(

update

product in developement, prototyping phase. refining idea.

A Step Forward

With an in-class demonstration yesterday, Flamingo demonstrated their latest development of their Barometer concept.

Essentially, the Barometer concept has been turned on its head. User interaction has increased whereby the user dictates the weather to the Barometer to be sent to the user's friends who also own the product.

Here's a short video explaining the concept. Hope you can understand the accents!



Manufacturing the meter wasn't as hard as we first thought!

A Sneaky Peaky!

Just in time for tomorrow's meeting with Microsoft Interaction Designer Richard Banks, here's two concept ideas Flamingo have put together!





Have a looky at his webpage if you get the chance, quite a lot of interesting information and pictures of design expos.

Clicky for his page!

Steve's Research

I visited my granda Gordon over the Christmas break. He was the ideal candidate to be my grandperson to refer to in the Microsoft project, mainly because he is the only grandparent I have left but also he a vast store of knowledge and enjoys a good blether so information was garenteed.

My granda talked with me in his house, the first instance was me asking his permission to include him in the project, 2 and a half hours later of talking and a couple of cups of tea later I was able to leave. Pretty much every detail was explained, right down to how he used the foil tops off milk bottles to fix a tank engine in the war and other events that happened in the army and his time spent in the REME (Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers) division.

Here's the man himself.

Watch

More to follow no doubt...even if the stories might have been heard before they're still brilliant

Continuing Research

Having visited my grandmother Joyce over the Christmas break, I thought it best to involve her in the Microsoft brief as my grandperson to refer to.

My gran talked with me in a rather informal chat (I believe tea and biscuits constitutes as "informal") about what she had done with her life up until recent, being altogether frank about how she had to leave the workforce early (as a full time maternity nurse, delivering many of my friends in school!) due to a heart attack.



But on a lighter note! I gained a very valuable insight in to a field of work my gran continues to pursue. Every week, volunteers from the community (my hometown of Paisley, Renfrewshire) gather to record the local newspaper on to cassettes, which are then distributed throughout the town for free to the visually impaired.

More info here:
Clicky!

Short video of my gran setting up:
Clicky!

Perhaps a device could be made to network people, visually impaired or not, around the world with their local news back home?



My gran is way awesome.

Initial Ideas and Research

Initially we began researching our grandparents daily lives and their lifestyles. We found some very interesting insight from the videos, pictures and stories we collated.

Margaret McArthur and Hugo McArthur







My Grandparents offered some interesting views on their lives, their work and retirement. Although much of what they said was quite irrelevant, they did give me some good insights into their lifes and what they do. They showed me a newspaper article from the 70s that introduced the chain of shops that they used to own around Stirling. However, the shops were sold on later when they retired. When I asked them if they would want to go back to work at all in some way, both of them told me no! They seemed fairly satisfied with retirment. I felt I didn't get much useful information from them whilst rolling the video, however afterwords through phone calls and one to one conversations I found out that they led a quite active lifestyle.

Microsoft

As detailed, Flamingo work from Dundee University, a vastly evolving competitor within the community of further education institutes.

Dundee University has always been a particularly renowned institute, but as it happens, some major names in industry seem to be taking a great amount of interest in the Product Design course.

We are delighted to tell you that Microsoft have commissioned Product Design (along with Interactive Media Design) with an exciting brief that has been causing a stir along the Product Design corridor. It seems that the name Microsoft is upon the lips of every fellow aspiring designer in our building!


In short, the brief we have been delivered asks us to explore new ways of working within the retired population. Through related research in to the life of an elderly member of one of our families, we are to produce a networked object which will aid both parties (the elderly and the younger generation) so that they may share the skills that may be long lost in our modern environment.

As part of this process, Richard Banks of Microsoft Research (along with his colleagues) will be mentoring Flamingo and other companies taking part in this project, eventually selecting what they deem the most appropriate companys design to demonstrate as part of the Microsoft Expo in Seattle in July.

What makes this project all the more elusive is that we at Dundee University are the only institute taking part outwith Northern America (there are five institutes in total), exerting a great amount of pressure upon Flamingo to perform and deliver the optimum and altogether most appropriate concept!

Welcome

Welcome to Flamingo, a newly established design company specialising in industrial, interaction, media and environmental design.

Comprising four young designers, we at Flamingo have ambitious goals and aim to continually further our knowledge of all design disciplines.

Flamingo intend to firmly abide by an ethos, a “Mission Statement” if you will, set from our first week as a functioning company. By following this ethos, we hope to consistantly produce useful (and playful!) products that engage with the targeted market.

We will strive to source environmentally sustainable materials for all of our products, surpassing the stigma that well designed products will irrefutably find landfill.

We will attempt to use existing technology in all of our products.

We will maintain a close relationship with our stakeholders, basing our progress on their responses to proposals.

Flamingo aim to follow this ethos with passion, as we believe this is what comprises good design stratagem.