This week’s posts feature case studies from Cooper Hewitt’s Digital Collections Management Project, a conservation survey of born-digital and hybrid objects in the permanent collection. The two-year project was coordinated by an in-house team of conservators, curators, and registrar, and was conducted by digital conservation specialist Cass Fino-Radin and his team at Small Data Industries....

In 2013, Cooper Hewitt acquired the iPad music application Planetary, developed by Bloom Studio Inc., along with the underlying source code. The code was freely released to enable developers to build upon and incorporate it into other software design. Planetary represents an important branch of interactive data visualization, which was a first in the consumer...

Join us for a special panel discussion featuring our 2014 National Design Award winners. Panelists will discuss what drives and inspires them as designers, and include John Edson, President, LUNAR (Product Design Award); Aaron Koblin (Interaction Design Award); Narciso Rodriguez (Fashion Design Award); and Robin Standefer, Principal, Roman and Williams Buildings and Interiors (Interior Design...

Cooper-Hewitt mourns the loss of Red Burns, who was a pioneering force in shaping the interactive media world as a designer and educator. The museum was proud to honor Red with the Design Patron award last year, in recognition of her outstanding support and patronage within the design community. Burns was an arts professor and...

From cutting-edge karaoke to interactive chair mazes, students envision museum exhibitions of the future. On February 13, DesignPrep students met for their final of four sessions with Angela Chen and Erika Tarte, professional interaction and graphic designers from the firm Local Projects, to present their ideas developed over the prior three weeks. Inspired by works...

Interaction design is not just about the way an individual interacts with his or her surroundings, it is about bringing people together and starting conversations. On February 4th at Cooper-Hewitt’s uptown Design Center, this was the theme for our group of Design Scholars’ most recent workshop. We held our first meeting with a few user...

Kevin Palmer, founding partner of Kin Design, recently stopped by Cooper-Hewitt for a chat. Seated in the beautiful North Reading Room of the National Design Library, we asked him four questions about starting his business, designing for the museum context, and a new definition of craftsmanship for digital designs.

The winner of the 2011 Interaction Design Award is Ben Fry. Ben pursues a long-held fascination with visualizing data and creating tools for interaction design, most notably Processing, co-developed with Casey Reas. Ben has developed software, printed works, installations, and books that depict and explain topics from the human genome to the evolution of text...

Having grown up with the “space race” as a national preoccupation for so many years – which provided not only a stage for scientific exploration but also for some the twentieth century’s most notable technological developments – I find it hard to believe that the Space Shuttle just completed its 130th and final mission. As...

The Megalizer is a sneaker that could put a few DJs out of business. The nearly invisible system of hardware and software allows a dancer to create live music with his shoes. The device uses Flash and Processing software, an xBee wireless module, and force sensors. Engineer Didier Brun wrote this blog post explaining his...

Cutecircuit’s M-Dress is a concept for a silk jersey dress that integrates a mobile phone. “Stay connected while remaining stylish.” Insert your SIM card in the slot underneath the label, and the dress will use your existing phone number. A sensor in the sleeve answers calls automatically when the wearer lifts an arm to the...

This is the fourth interview in Chapter 3 in my new book, Designing Media Bob Mason & Jeremy Merle, November 2008 Bob Mason cofounded Brightcove in 2004 with Jeremy Allaire. They saw the possibility of a complete end-to-end solution to deliver video from any creator to any customer, across diverse devices, allowing content owners to...

Matti Niinimaki’s Beat Blender is a device that puts a literal spin on familiar musical terminology. The modified blender allows the user to mix, blend, and chop sounds through a playful tactile interface that uses Arduino, RFID sensors, felted fruits and Ableton Live software. Watch the video below to see it in action! Select your...

Kevin Cannon & Ashwin Rajan’s Frontline Gloves are a pair of networked gloves that allow firefighters to use hand gestures to communicate wirelessly in low-visibility, low-oxygen situations. The design incorporates customized electronics based on the ATMega chip, a wireless Xbee module, a sonar sensor, ultra-bright LEDs and bend sensors. The gloves allow the wearer to...

Brooklyn-based design duo Felted Signal Processing creates plush, alien-looking synths and sensors that make noise on contact. Sisters Lara and Sarah Grant combine their skills in art, fashion and engineering to perform their outlandish experiments in “electronic textiles.” There’s a whole catalog of stretchy samplers and woolen warblers on their website, fsp.fm. A felted sensor...