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About InnovationSpace
CAREER Award for David Frakes
David Frakes' research of cardiovascular fluid dynamics and the impact on the onset, progression and treatment of major diseases such as heart disease, stroke and aneurysms has earned him a National Science Foundation CAREER Award.
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ASU news article
Prasad Boradkar’s new book wins the Institute for Humanities Research Transdisciplinary Humanities Book Award
Prasad Boradkar, Associate Professor in the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, is the recipient of the Institute for Humanities Research Transdisciplinary Humanities Book Award. His book, Designing Things: A Critical Introduction to the Culture of Objects, draws on his extensive design studies and his theory and philosophy of visual culture. Boradkar is the Director of ASU’s Innovation Space.
Video
Learning from Nature
InnovationSpace teaching assistants Adrian Smith (left) and Dan Wandrey.
Product designers create objects that help us accomplish the tasks of everyday living, from cutting vegetables for a stove-top stew and riding a subway to getting an X-ray or tapping on a computer keyboard. How comfortable, functional, safe or beautiful these objects are depends a lot on sleuths known as design researchers who carefully study the habits and needs of users. All too often, however, the nuggets of inspiration they unearth are reburied in dense reports and wordy dossiers.
Dan Wandrey, InnovationSpace teaching assistant in design, hopes to change that. As a graduate student in the School of Design Innovation, Dan is exploring the ways in which user research can be made more accessible, compelling, engaging and meaningful for the people who design the objects we rely on. Combining storytelling, in-depth research and first-person interviews, Dan has completed a series of multimedia narratives that reveal the telling connections between people and the world in which they live. The originality – and usefulness – of Dan’s documentary approach promises to introduce a powerful new communications tool in the field of design research.
You can see an example of Dan’s work in the following video, which showcases the research of fellow TA Adrian Smith. Adrian, a Ph.D. biology student in the School of Life Sciences at Arizona State University, studies chemical communication among desert-dwelling ants. Using his extensive knowledge of insects and other organisms, Adrian is helping to lead a biomimicry initiative in InnovationSpace in which students are looking to nature for sustainable solutions to human problems.
Rewind Remix Replay: Design, Music & Everyday Experience
InnovationSpace director Prasad Boradkar at the opening of "Rewind Remix Replay." Photo courtesy of Claire Warden
Most people know Prasad Boradkar as the director of InnovationSpace, the popular product-development program at ASU. But Boradkar also maintains a thriving academic career as a design historian and theorist–and now museum curator. As guest curator of the exhibition "Rewind Remix Replay: Design, Music & Everyday Experience," Boradkar looks at the evolution of music from the perspective of industrial design. The show, which runs through May 23, 2010, at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art in Arizona, explores how the designs of such musical instruments as the Moog synthesizer and playback devices like the Sony Walkman have shaped our experience of music. In turn, Boradkar points out, our use and creative modifications of these objects have inspired designers and manufacturers. more
New Toys for Children with Autism
Members of team Snug explore toy ideas for children with autism.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly one in every 100 eight-year-olds in the U.S. is afflicted with some form of autism. But there are no therapeutic toys on the market specifically designed to meet the needs of children struggling with the disorder. After months of intensive research, three teams of InnovationSpace students hope to bridge this product-opportunity gap.