On fun new web resources, loving Google’s Hotel Finder experiment. It has a beautiful UI allowing you to search for hotels in the US filtering by location (with 4pt shapes), dates, price, hotel class & user rating… you can also flip between map and list view and even have hotels in your shortlist in a different color… But my favorite feature is definitely “Highlight popular areas” ~ which is perfect for new cities you are visiting when trying to figure out what hot spots are. Read more about it on the Google Search Blog and see more pics of the details on the next page.

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Tags: hotels - maps - research - travel - website

I have a mesmerizing user experience crush on WeTransfer right now. If i’m going to have to wait for ages to download files ~ it might as well be fun. There is an awesomely playful and elegant experience when i land on WeTransfer, and i actually love watching it download and excitedly await the next AD coming up… in full screen mode behind the little download progress card. It’s just gorgeous. A breath of fresh air versus the ones that have the pop ups and the speedier download if you sign up and pay, etc ones with creepy text ads trying to hide themselves as useful calls to action, and the actual download link is hidden looking like a tiny google adsense text link.

Deep breath ~ enter, WeTransfer. Dear PR people, designers, and anyone else who uses third party services to send me large files ~ there’s something magically happier about WeTransfer, i’m actually even MORE excited to see your file after going through the transfer process. And it’s just so pretty. and simple. ok, so i’m done gushing now, i just adore elegant, functional, beautiful user experiences! I even watched the ads go by AFTER the file finished downloading so i could take more screenshots to share with you guys on the next page!

p.s. Thanks Nadine Johnson’s office for the HUGE file that took long enough for me to sit here and have my WeTransfer ad filled moment of zen.

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Tags: research - website

This post is sponsored by Best Buy, and is the brainchild of NOTCOT. These tips for great photos are brought to you by Best Buy.

It’s absolutely amazing what you can see through the window of your computer these days. I won’t lie ~ my high res camera has definitely been my third eye when i’m out and about. Coming home and taking images off my Canon 5D Mark II, I ALWAYS find details i could not have possibly seen with my naked eye ~ at events, off in the horizon, tiny details… it’s unbelievable. Now take that even further… there’s an awe inspiring trend of super high res imagery from view points around the world. With sites like Paris 26 Gigapixels, 360 Cities, Gigapan, and more - the world is literally at your fingertips to spin around, and zooooooooooom into! Think of these as panoramas on steroids ~ with super vision? Take a peek at a few examples of Paris, Dresden, London, and Alpstein on the next page!

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Tags: photography - research - travel

There are some fascinating design shifts happening at Mercedes-Benz ~ from the design studio in Sindelfingen to Como to Tokyo to Carlsbad, the message was clear - the hunt is on for “Perfect Aesthetics” and in doing so, they are aggressively pushing their designs to be more fresh, young, emotional, and sexy ~ phrases like “enjoyment of innovation” + “inspire our customers” + “sensuality and joy” + “importance of perception” kept recurring in addition to talk of the future and fascination and playfulness. It was most definitely a buzzwordfest, but the excitement and passion of the design teams was impossible to ignore. There was an inescapable giddiness throughout the week around where the future may take us, and a need to think far beyond their more traditional production vehicles. Steffen Kohl’s gung ho push from the design side to gain the freedom to explore the insane ideas are guaranteed to frighten corporate types a bit. It’s inspiring to see his team indulge in the ideas designers dream about as students ~ you know, that awesomely idealistic time when you believe absolutely anything is possible?

A big part of this is the fight to create more artistic explorations through sculpture to push abstract concepts. The idea of art being key to Mercedes-Benz design strategies as well as a beautiful way to tease designs earlier in the year is intriguing. And i love these form studies of Oliver Samson, Thomas Stopka,Yves Renaud, and Sylvain Wehnert from Karim Habib’s team. Exploring lightweight forms to play with strength, perspective, and transparency, the results resemble polygons, honeycombs (all sharing one central perspective point), string art, and woven chaos. See them all on the next page!

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Tags: art - luxury - Mercedes-Benz - research - sculpture

Social Media as your new *living* search engine? You read all the rumors, you hear all the rants on how irrelevant + trivial these fleeting status updates are... And honestly, i'm still learning how/why to use these services MY way...

I've found that twitter and facebook have been my new go-to after obsessive internet searches when doing research... and these have spurred some incredible conversations and quick sources of great information! BUT, it's always so 1-to-many (versus 1-1 or many-to-many) and hosted in a way where all participants can't see the results. (i.e. i tweet a question and followers/repliers can't see all the other responses ~ and on facebook i have a status question and only those following it can see the evolving conversation)

End result? A post so i dont lose this fun conversation, and the valuable information that came up with it... So, if you're looking for where to stay in London during Design Week 09? (Sept 19-27) ~ well i was looking into Soho and/or Shoreditch, and here's what i've learned (on the next page!)

p.s.
if you want to join the conversation - follow notcot on twitter and friend me facebook

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Tags: facebook - hotels - research - travel - twitter

Yes, Game Libratory = Library + Laboratory. And yes, games - meaning everything from those historical ancient emulated DOS PC games to low cost edu-tainment products to the latest PS3, XBOX 360, and Wii games... It's really something that all our current libraries are missing, and there aren't nearly enough (if any) great labs organizing the history of gaming as it flies by us - in such a way that people could someday check them out like microfiche and catch up on some games of the past that are no longer accessible other than to a few who snatch them up from ebay or at a garage sale! Also, imagine how much history there is in simply watching people play these various games, and seeing how the usability and interactions have evolved over time... and when you someday tell your kids, "back in my day, we used a JOYSTICK"... well you can drag them down to the Game Libratory to experience some historical gaming first hand.

So, when this brainchild of NOTCOT friends (from the pre-notcot the site even existing days), Daniel Rehn, Derek Lomas, and Jeremy Douglass, who hooked up with the Software Studies Initiative, Center for Research in Computing and the Arts (CRCA) at Calit2, UC San Diego, launched, it was literally just an idea that is quickly growing out of the tiny lounge space they received from CRCA. They have been accumulating some incredible collections from donors (and shopping on ebay) and contributing their own gaming resources... and students and researchers internationally have been eagerly joining in to explore previously unavailable research opportunities! So while the space is quickly filling up, and they're hopefully expanding to a new home soon - i convinced Daniel to let me take a few shots of things that intrigued me, from their set up, to some of the many crazy gadgets i'd never seen before! So take a peek on the next page ~ and if you're not sure what to do with all your games and systems, but don't want to simply sell them off to anyone... the Game Libratory is a good home for them to take their place in gaming history!

p.s.
things to look forward to? How about across game comparisons of the ways characters die? Or comparisons of the evolution of button mashing across controllers? And don't you think the future Game Libratory needs to have Toledano's Video Game Faces mixed with gorgeous screenshots framed on their walls?

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Tags: game libratory - games - history - research - technology - video game

NOTConcept 001: The Ultimate Grill - [Research] [1: Idea Sketching] [2: Concept Dev] [3: 3D Renders]
Introducing the first NOTConcept! This is the intro of a new NOTCOT Experiment where NOTCOT has teamed up with industrial design duo, Leo Corrales and Jenny Lemieux, of HERO Design Lab, to put some of the constant design/trend/inspiration curating across NOTCOT to good use... by flexing our design minds and skills and to bring readers further into the design process with us, we will be presenting 4 NOTConcepts in three parts each...

Each NOTConcept will start with a brief and some visual research (starting with a search across NOTCOT.com and NOTCOT.org, and making our way through the internet and real world) - for this premier project we look to design the ultimate portable grill/BBQ utilizing newer/future technologies.
1. The first post will show you various concept sketches, doodles, and ideas (which we'd love to have you weigh in on which direction interests you).
2. The second post will take one of the previous ideas and further research and flush out the concept.
3. The third post will consist of 3D renders of that concept.
(and all three steps will happen in under 2 weeks!)

Basically we wanted to find a fun way to put our skills together, and have some fun, like in our grad school days, and have an opportunity (or excuse?) to work on projects with minimal constraints - basically playing with those inspiring crazy ideas our clients never go for! So... to kick things off, want to see every interesting grill, bbq, induction piece i put together to inspire this first project? (GIANT collage after the jump!)

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Tags: bbq - HERO-Design-Lab - kitchen - NOTConcept - research