Conventional wisdom

The blogger Anders Gustavsson have read Freakonomics and is discussing some interesting thoughts about conventional wisdom, and how people tend to believe things that the (their) majority believe in...

http://andersgustafsson.wordpress.com/2009/12/22/konventionell-visdom/
(in swedish)

Crowdsourcing

This is old, but still interesting: Crowdsourcing. Picture databases such as Istockphoto.com and flickr are good examples of this. Instead of buying a picture from a professional, you now buy your picture (or use it for free if allowed) from anyone sharing their pictures. The special practice has converged into something everyone can be part of making money on... as long as you create pictures that someone else wants.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.06/crowds.html

Looking beyond the masses...

Ariel Meadow Stallings wrote the book "Offbeat Bride: Taffeta-Free Alternatives for Independent Brides". Can potentially inspire people to have a less narrow mindset about the perfect wedding... :-)

Now she is working for Microsoft and writes the blog Microspotting (Like the paparazzi but for geeks) She hunts down smart, interesting and geeky people, and this apparently supports changing peoples views about the typical "Microsoft" person. The atypical people will make the company appear more interesting for talents that previously might not have felt like a typical "Microsoft" person. It also shows that the company has a perspective that goes beyond work...
Smart.

Glowbots

Glowbots are small wheel-based robots, which communicates with each other and visually presents this as animated light patterns. The emerging patterns can be encouraged or discouraged by shaking the robots. The concept of Glowbots was initially inspired by the interests and experiences found among people that has lizards, spiders and snakes as pets. From interviews we found that such pets involve a different experience and relation, than what owning a dog or a cat does. Some expressed their pets as a hobby of breeding lizards with interesting patterns, without being interested in different personalities. Such findings were investigated as inspiration for these robots. The concept has now been technically implemented on a robotic platform called E-puck. Glowbots have been presented at Siggraph'07, Wired Next Fest'07 and will appear as a video at HRI'08. Furthermore, they have appeared in media such as Discovery news, and the New Scientist blog.

Glowbots project website

Autonomous Wallpaper at Discovery web-news

The application Autonomous Wallpaper has been developed with the design method Transfer Scenarios. This application allows users to send pictures taken with their mobile phone to affect the wallpaper at their living room wall. This is further described at Discovery Technology News by Tracy Staedter and is commented on by Bill Gaver, who is a senior researcher in experience centred design and interaction design.
Read more at Discovery news

Transfer Scenarios at Pasta and Vinegar

Nicholas Nova blogged recently about the method transfer scenarios, marginal practices and design. He finds marginal practices interesting as they "involve passionate users about certain domains and areas". He suggests that people in the music industri should read “Choosing Death: The Improbable History of Death Metal and Grindcore” (Albert Mudrian, John Peel),which according to Nicholas is a good example of an interesting marginal practice (people playing music as speed as possible with extreme vocals).

Designing for New Photographic Experiences: How the Lomographic Practice Informed Context Photography

This paper has been accepted to theDPPI'07 Conference in Helsinki,22-25thj of August.

The paper describes how Lomographers (amateur photographers using old russian cameras) contributed in the design process of context photography.