Mizugomo: Unusual Ninja Footwear by Rain Noe

In Mie Prefecture, Japan, is the Iga-Ryu Ninja Museum. My scout learned of this on the Instagram of Hiroshi Seki (Muji's former Director of Industrial Design and founder of Seki Design Lab). Seki posted this shot from the museum's exhibition of ninja tools:

I was eager to see more, but the museum's website doesn't have many photos. However, I found the blog of Japanese resident Manisha Kundu-Nagata, who visited the museum nearly a decade ago and wrote a comprehensive entry on the experience. She posted this photo of specialty ninja footwear called mizugomo, which translates to "water spider:"

Image: Manisha Kundu-Nagata

To explain, some Japanese castles were surrounded by marshy moats or flooded rice paddies. These were impossible for invaders to swim through and difficult to traverse on foot. The mizugomo were developed as the solution. They're essentially snowshoes for marshy conditions.

Kundu-Nagata also posted photos of a variety of weapons and tools with detailed descriptions:

"Second display case exhibiting 1) Makibashi (caltrops), 2) Manrikigusari (chain & weight), 3) Sojingama (double-edged sickle), 4) Shuriken (throwing stars), 5) Kusarigama (sickle & chain), 6) Fundo tsubute (throwing weights), and 7) Fukiyazutsu (blowgun)" - Image: Manisha Kundu-Nagata

"Third display case exhibiting Shuriken stars of different shapes" - Image: Manisha Kundu-Nagata

I don't want to rip off her entire blog, so if you'd like to see more, do click over to her entry. There's enough interesting stuff that if I were in that area of Japan, I'd definitely drop by the museum.

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Researchers Create Gel That Can Harvest Water Out of Dry Air by Rain Noe

In Star Wars, the Skywalker family are introduced as "moisture farmers." On their desert planet, they somehow pull water out of the sky using towering metal structures, which sounds more sci-fi than placing buckets under in-window air conditioners.

Researchers at UT Austin have developed a material that can actually produce water out of thin air, and it doesn't involve any metal towers or drippy A/C units. Instead they've concocted a simple, low-cost gel—apparently something even you or I could make in our kitchen—with astonishing properties. When placed in an area with 30% relative humidity, 1kg of the stuff can produce 13 liters (3.4 gallons) of water a day. (For reference's sake, Arizona and Nevada have average relative humidities around 38%.) Even when placed in a bone-dry climate of just 15% humidity, the gel can still generate 6 liters (1.6 gallons) daily.

"This new work is about practical solutions that people can use to get water in the hottest, driest places on Earth," said Guihua Yu, professor of materials science and mechanical engineering in the Cockrell School of Engineering's Walker Department of Mechanical Engineering. "This could allow millions of people without consistent access to drinking water to have simple, water generating devices at home that they can easily operate."

So how does it work? The gel, called SHPF (super hygroscopic polymer film) is made from just two ingredients: Konjac gum, a common food additive made from the root of the konjac plant, and cellulose, i.e. plant fiber. The konjac gum is what absorbs the water from the air. The cellulose has been somehow engineered to be thermo-responsive (details aren't provided) and is hydrophobic, so they shed the water when heated.

Making the gel is apparently cheap--$2 yields enough material to produce 1kg—and straightforward: The two ingredients are mixed and poured into a mold, where they reportedly set in two minutes. The mold is then freeze-dried, after which it's ready to use.

"This is not something you need an advanced degree to use," said Youhong "Nancy" Guo, the lead author on the paper and a former doctoral student in Yu's lab, now a postdoctoral researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "It's straightforward enough that anyone can make it at home if they have the materials."

The research was funded by the U.S. Department of Defense's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and drinking water for soldiers in arid climates is a big part of the project. However, the researchers also envision this as something that people could someday buy at a hardware store and use in their homes because of the simplicity.

The gel can easily be cut into different shapes to suit whatever vessel or contraption it's meant to inhabit. Which brings us to the next thing needed to realize this technology: Design. The lab-built equipment used to prove the technology looks like what you'd expect from a lab:

I think a good next step would be to pair with an Industrial Design program and have the students work on forms and UI/UX.

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The Trailo Office Desk's Metal Rail System for Accessories by Rain Noe

Laufer & Keichel, an industrial design firm based in Berlin, designed this Trailo desk for office furniture manufacturer Reiss.

The largely unseen core of the desk is a sheet metal schiene (rail) system, which provides a lot of flexibility for customers:

"TRAILO is an office table program with a wide range of accessories. The centrepiece is the REISS SCHIENE™?, a sheet metal profile positioned under the tabletop that accommodates various types of table legs, but also a variety of add-ons."

"Some of these add-ons – acoustic panel, document tray and monitor holder – can be moved freely along the REISS SCHIENE™? via a trolley. No tools are needed to assemble and move the add-ons."

"The product is designed in such a way that it can be produced on an Industry 4.0 system in batch size one."

Here's a better look at how the accessories integrate with the rail:

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Fantastic Industrial Design Student Work: A Custom-Fit Computer Mouse Made with Less Plastic by Rain Noe

At ID school, as we learned about interfaces one of my professors explained that aspirin pills are mostly powder; the active ingredient is too small to handle, and the bulk of the pill exists simply so you can pick it up.

I don't know whether or not he got the same lesson, but Tianrui Xie, an Industrial Design student at the Georgia Institute of Technology, realized the same thing about computer mice. The "active ingredient" is the laser and the button(s), and the rest of it is just a palm-sized piece of plastic.

Xie then designed this Morph Wireless Mouse concept:

In addition to using less plastic than a traditional mouse, the concept would wield the power of digital fabrication to make each product better suited to the individual user. Xie's vision is that users would scan their mouse hand, and software would generate a custom-fit pattern that would be sent to a laser cutter.

The surface of the mouse would be, intriguingly, leather: "I thought of using 2mm thick veg-tanned leather as the substitution material for the traditional ABS plastic. It is flexible and sturdy enough at the same to achieve the transition from two-dimensional to three-dimensional."

Great work, Xie!

Worth noting: As mentioned, Xie is an ID student at Georgia Tech, but he designed the Morph while enrolled in the Offsite – Advanced Design program. Check 'em out!

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Industrial Design Student Work: María Ruiz Cozcolluela's Multipurpose Furniture Unit by Rain Noe

This Kami furniture piece is by María Ruiz Cozcolluela, done as her Industrial Design Masters thesis at Switzerland's University of Applied Sciences and Arts. The concept is intended to start out as children's furniture, but to offer new utility and thus remain relevant as the child grows.

Assembly is simple, as the unit consists of relatively few parts:

"Kami is a versatile furniture system that adapts to the different needs of a family and grows along with the children. The system is designed to allow that its elements can be rearranged in different positions. It can be used as a toy box, children's shelf, changing table, children's table, desk, wardrobe or as a shoe rack. "

The idea of having different modules that can plug into the frame, to increase the piece's longevity, is a good one; I could see Ikea selling a version of this.

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