Here's what we looked at this week: Outside the box thinking: A one-legged camping table. Nodo Inertia Wheels: An ergonomically superior interface design for camera operators. Package design problem? Oshun's electrolyte concentrate resembles boutique cosmetics. From Italy, a robot dog with vacuum legs that sucks up cigarette butt litter. Form follows fancy: Artist/modder AK's deconstructed PC builds. Case study: Disney Research designs an expressive, character-driven robot. FiiO gets user interfaces both right and wrong. These architectural interiors, photographed by Charles Brooks, are ..read more

It's nice to be able to learn which industrial design firm created a ubiquitous object. I've discovered the GoDaddy Poynt Smart Terminal, which you've surely interacted with, was done by ID firm Bould Design. The San-Francisco-based firm is headed up by double-threat Fred Bould (he's both ID and ME). As the firm writes: "The Go Daddy Poynt Smart Terminal is a careful integration of form and function. Two displays, a printer, camera and three payment technologies converge in a flowing, tactile form that artfully reflects the internal component architecture." "The main UI elements are integrat ..read more

In the 1970s and '80s, handheld electronic games became a thing. This will be difficult for the current generation to understand, but each object contained only a single game; these were not consoles with interchangeable media. (Imagine buying a laptop that could only run one application.) This entire category of objects was killed in 1989, when the Nintendo Game Boy came out; it was one object that could play multiple games. Category killer In the 1990s, Dutch designer Jaro Gielens started collecting those obsolete handheld electronic games. He now has more than 900 of them. In addition to p ..read more

In 2008, Australian industrial designer Andrew Smith was at a summer barbecue. Anyone who's eaten outside will recognize what he observed that day: "Our beautifully prepared food was being bombarded at almost every instant by a swarm of pesky flies." Smith subsequently invented this ShooAway, a fly-repellent fan: The battery-powered fan blades are soft and will stop once they touch your hand. You can place the device directly over a plate of food and reach in with no worries. The dots you see on the blades aren't aesthetic: "Our patented Holographmatic Repel Dots work as a spinning fly deter ..read more

As a pragmatist this object shouldn't appeal to me, but good gosh it does. This Round Tissue Box was designed by FDS (Form Design Studio). It loads from the side and is made out of iron. "The cylindrical holder, which floats slightly above the desk, is made of 3.2mm thick iron, a design that contrasts with conventional lightweight tissue boxes. As the emphasis is on the appearance and texture of the product as an interior item rather than on convenience, thick iron and a finish that retains a natural texture are used." "Designed with a different mindset to the universal appeal that is the ..read more

Tactile Craftworks is a leather goods company founded by Sarah Heck and Anna Warren. The two have backgrounds in making theater props, but transitioned to leatherworking. Both lovers of travel, they specialize in producing cartography-inspired leather goods. Among their offerings are these passport wallets: Flasks: For me, their showstoppers are these refillable journals, which take Moleskine inserts: Heck and Warren formed their company in Milwaukee in 2014. By 2016, they began wholesaling, and today they have over 200 retail clients. You can see more of their stuff here ..read more

This is an antique stool I own. My dog Kit liked scratching it when he was a puppy. Kit passed away earlier this year, and I'll never repair the finish. Cat owners with sofas know pet damage well. Cat owner Stephanie Louise showed her kintsugi-style embroidery repair technique on social media: Image: Stephanie Louise Image: Stephanie Louise The technique caught on, as plenty of cat owners have embroidery skills, and for those that don't, pre-made patches are available. Image: mamasflipped Image: mamasflipped For those that want to emulate Louise's manual technique, here's how she does it ..read more

As we've written before, desks don't often come with drawers these days, and designers have compensated by creating new types of storage objects. A case in point is this Salto product, by industrial designer Tilla Goldberg of the Ippolito Fleitz Group: "SALTO is a paper piece of furniture for tidy work tables, which has a tray on the table for a mobile phone and pens, but also for a glass of water or a cup of espresso. The pocket next to the table offers space for plugs, cables and other utensils." It's made of a material called Papyr®, which is described as "a washable vegan paper from ..read more

Have you ever wished you had a couch that needed to be plugged in? This Benjamin Sofa, by furniture brand Rig Studio, features a user-adjustable seat depth. By default it's at 55cm (21.7"), which you can extend to 105cm (41.3"). There's a motorized mechanism inside, and you operate it with a remote control. My question, as always with these types of products, is who do you call when it breaks? (The China-based company doesn't list any repair options on their website.) As you can see above, each section is motorized separately, so there's a fair bit going on inside. The sofa is offered in n ..read more

On, a Swiss sportswear brand, has developed a hi-tech sneaker production method. Their LightSpray technique, developed at their Zurich-based On Lab, starts with a molded midsole connected to a shoe last. These are held by a robot arm while the entire rest of the shoe is basically sprayed onto the last. "Our robot fuses 1.5km of filament in a complex pattern onto a high-performance racing midsole, forming the complete shoe upper in a single, three-minute step. No glues, no seams. Reducing waste and emissions." The company also makes sneakers the conventional way, and they say the LightSpray t ..read more