Ideas

Harry Hutton

[harryhutton]

Reversible USB Stick - goes in either way round to a standard USB port

[harryhutton]

Design Principles

I don't think I am grumpy enough to have design principles yet

But here's my design principles:

1. Simplicity.

2. Honesty in materials - e.g. no fake metal plastic, use real metal.

3. DIY. Ability to repair products if they break, or make them yourself.

4. Craftsmanship. Hard work and dedication to make something remarkable.

7. Occasional disregard of order.

5. Sustainability. Thinking products through the whole life cycle from raw material to recycling.

6. Rugged. things should be able to take a good kicking.

[harryhutton]

Working prototype for an A3 filing box. I tend to have a lot of projects and sketches, needed to organise them somehow. This fits really nicely under my desk.

Hopefully I can draw up some plans for a CNC router to be able to cut this out for a mass manufacture design, IKEA flat pack style. I might lose the metal handle in favour of a simple slot in the wood.

The folders themselves are cardboard, which could be laser cut. They are supported by wooden dowels.

[harryhutton]

Simple pen.

Compatible with a range of refills.

I aim to eventually make the designs for this open source, such that anyone could produce it from the CAD files on a workshop CNC machine.

[harryhutton]

A few sketches and a paper prototype for a desk pomodoro clock. The idea is that you do 25 minutes of work, then a 5 minute break. 

There's loads of web timers like Tomatoi.st but I'd rather have something physical on my desk.

[harryhutton]

10 Ideas for the Design of Digital Writers

Digital notetaking in the future will be useful for a wide variety of people, whether student, business professional, writer, designer or artist.

The advantages of a digital notetaker

Digital textbooks - infinitely lighter! Ability to put in a page where there was previously nothing Merging, organisation of notes Infinite paper Easy to insert pictures and other media into notes to aid understanding Collaboration and sharing Backup, security of files

Current devices though, are absolute crap. It'll be a few years before digital notetaking really takes off.

Ideas for the design of digital writers:

1)

Texture - It would be nice to replicate the feel of writing on paper, rather than a horrible slippery glass feeling. This affects handwriting.

2)

Pressure sensitivity - Need to get this perfect. Some tablets are already using these.

3)

Accuracy - Where the user places the pen should be where the "ink" comes out. The glass gap in current devices creates a parallax effect when viewing from a side angle - not acceptable.

4)

Speed - Should look like ink is actually flowing from the nib of the pen - not lagging behind it by a few millimetres

5)

Palm rejection - Current devices that state they feature palm rejection havn't got this quite right - users often end up pressing random buttons anyway. The Samsung Note actually has an options popup button exactly where your palm rests. Not good enough - needs to work the same way a piece of paper offers palm rejection!

6)

Interaction - Currently, there are loads of options menus and buttons. Surely there are more intuitive ways to interact when changing pen.

7)

In-document navigation - Better ways to quickly flip through a document - as if it were a physical notebook. 8)

Multiple documents - similarly, it should be incredibly easy to handle, open, find, and switch between multiple documents. 9)

Collaboration and sharing - there is huge potential for GoogleDocs style collaboration for annotating documents - could be especially useful for textbooks. Missed a lecture? Just check out what your classmates have written. 10)

Simplicity - Paper is simple and minimal. The focus is on content. Let's move away from menus and buttons.

[harryhutton]

A minimal wallpaper featuring a modified version of the open source logo. The logo is based on the copyright symbol.

Reminds me of a pirate flag too, which is fairly apt, seeing as a lot of freely shared information in the open source world is copyright or patent infringement. Does our current Intellectual Property system make sense in the digital era?

"The only rules that really matter are these: What a man can do, and what a man can't do." - Captain Jack Sparrow

CC0 (Creative Commons - No Rights Reserved)

[harryhutton]

Wooden A3 Presentation Folio.

Click here to download

[harryhutton]

Kinetic Beer Engineering by Project Studio.

Salvaged wood and bottles creating a three dimensional sine wave.

[harryhutton]

An open idea for an E-Ink Photoframe. Photos of selected friends and family from Facebook.

[harryhutton]

Spritz Chrome Extension - a superfast way to read articles and PDFs on your laptop

Spritz has been described as "flashcards on steroids". It uses the Optimal Recognition Point of a word to position and flash words quickly in sequence, so your brain is focused on recognition and comprehension, rather than finding the next word on the page. With a bit of practice, you can find yourself reading at speeds around 1000 words per minute.

For more, check out the Spritz website

Currently, Spritz seems to be aimed towards mobile platforms (would also be awesome on Google Glass!)

I was fairly inspired! I wondered if a simple browser extension could be developed so that it could be a better way to read articles and PDFs.

The article below, assuming you have an average reading speed, and you are not distracted by the ads at the side, takes just under 3 minutes.

Instead, how about highlighting the text you want to read, then right clicking "Spritz"?

At 1000 words per minute, the article takes 38.1 seconds to read.

Some UX details - the article scrolls down as it is read - useful if there are pictures to illustrate the text. The current word in the Spritz redicle (box) is highlighted in grey on the web page.

Clicking anywhere pauses the Spritz redicle. Potentially there could be some way to rewind text if you missed it (could be as simple as just clicking on the word?).

This also enables you to blink...

So that's my little idea for Spritz. If there's a developer out there with the skills, make it happen please!

[harryhutton]

An open idea for a doublesided USB cable. Works either way up.

[harryhutton]

Welcome to the community. A place for designers, makers and users to come together and chat - gaining support, sharing designs, asking questions and seeing how other people are engaging in open design across the world.

Have a look

[harryhutton]

Aluminium E-Reader Intended for reading PDF's and digital textbooks, but with the feel of paper. Ideal for academic and professional use.

[harryhutton]

The Amazing* Bottle Sharpener *(May or may not be amazing)

A little hack I made for my desk.

[harryhutton]

Barblade hack http://www.barblades.com/

Magnet retains the cap when you pop a beer.

Would also be nice if there was some satisfying way to flick the cap into the bin afterwards

[harryhutton]

Beer Engineering. A kinetic sculpture that creates a three dimensional sine wave using beer bottles. Mechanism constructed using an old wine rack, a door we found in the street, fishing twine and elbow grease.