Skyberries and Voidmelons or Voidberries and Skymelons

On Sunday, I visited the Design Museum in London to see the Designs of the Year 2014 exhibition, which encompassed architecture, digital, fashion, furniture, graphic, product and transport design.

The digital section was what I was most interested in. These were some of the nominees:

Hello Lamp Post- Lamp posts and bins and other street furniture in Bristol that you could converse with by text message.

Lego Calendar - A calendar made of Lego, which you can photograph and then it synchronises with an online calendar.

Oculus Rift - Virtual reality headset.

PEEK (Portable Eye Examination Kit) - Eye examinations using a smart phone.

Touch Board by Bare Conductive. This was a good interactive exhibit, as they had painted keys onto the wall which you could then touch and they would play sounds.

In the Product section:

Clever Caps - bottle caps that you can also use like Lego (and with Lego).

Nest smoke alarm.

I had heard of a number of these before, so I did start wondering if I should look be looking on Kickstarter instead for cool designs, but the Designs of the Year exhibition often has a focus on designs that can help people or are sustainable/ethical. Also, I enjoy looking at the other exhibits, as I am often not aware of new design outside of the digital space.

Some of the exhibits you can try out or even buy (such as the Clever Caps, Bare Conductive paint, etc), but often you can't - It would be great if I could have conversed with a lamp post, became immersed in virtual reality, examined my eyes using a phone, tried out some of the chairs and so on.