Fun = Human Interaction: Volkswagen Musical Staircase

Another example of some great design and how adding some fun into design can increase interaction tenfold. Notice how many people took the stairs? It's true that if all stairways were musical the fun would wear off eventually and people would go back to using the escalator, but Volkswagen's gotten their point across and added some fun (and branding) into a boring commuter morning.

Bionic Penguins Teach Us About Design

Festo: Pneumatic and Electric Drive Technology Developers are coming up with some of the most inspiring design developments around. What really makes most of their work unique is that they specifically aren't reinventing the wheel. Instead they are using forms that exist in nature and have been "developed" already - through millennia of genetic variation.

If you are familiar with Total Immersion Swimming techniques, you know that the way to be a great swimmer is to be a fish (or at least try and move like one). It's a similar example of learning from nature's designs and a good reminder of where we need to go.

Web 3D

Gimmick or next new web 2.0 building block? Check out GE's "Augmented Reality" site. This is a new technology meant to use built in webcams (which everybody has now don't they? ok, not everybody, but a lot), some basic image recognition and everyone's innate desire to be in the middle of the action. My first reaction is that though kind of cheesey in GE's use, there's a lot of gaming potential here. Imagine wearing some basic item of clothing, a ski mask maybe, that clues your computer in to adding an elfin head onto your body, sounds pretty cool, in a Level 3 Mage sort of way. Apparently Topps is using it to make their newest trading cards come to life, which I guess is the gateway to the new generation. Which reminds me, I still have that 1985 complete baseball card set somewhere at my mom's house. Unless, of course she's sold it on eBay by now...