Defining the Digital Home

Now here's a problem space we can all associate with. The home. Well, let me be specific; the digital home, to be exact.

Here's a quote from Miss Seto, who thoroughly enjoyed her stay over in Reykjavik, Iceland in the above pictured space above:

"Check out the cool furniture and the flatscreen tv. There was also a Mac Mini loaded with movies and speakers for our ipods. We really felt at home.

The apartment was very central-- close to the main drag but removed enough so that we didn't have to hear the very heavy partying until 5 am. Those Icelanders (and all the visitors from the UK can really party)."

For some, technology in the home ends with an entertainment system. Anything else would be considered outlandish and be labeled as a "mancave-esque." This is an unfortunate stereotype as the possibilities are becoming rather limitless as we slowly shift to a new era in ubiquitous computing. An era where OLED's are so cheap, they're pretty much embedded in everything, bedroom mirrors double as screens, and by holding clothes up to it, one can figure out if it's "hot" or "cold" wash via fabric recognition. Microsoft came up with these ideas first, by the way. Back in 2006.

And so the exploration continues. Luckily, for our upcoming design project, numero tres, we're to do just that. Take a ridiculous hypothetical situation - in our case, deal with the merger of Google and Crate and Barrel - and create a product which the furniture craft masters will sell in their stores under their new Home Tech line. Oh, and it has to utilize GPS technologies as well.

If you don't call that insane, I don't know what is. Luckily, this insane project happens to be due in 2 weeks so if you don't hear from me, that's probably what I will be doing. Sketching. Prototyping. And filling the design studio with plentiful volumes of vibrant cursing.