Background
Archalist is a curated list of resources for DIYers, Interior Designers, Real Estate agents, architects, and anyone else who likes to make things for their home. It was born out of an obsession I have with not only making lists but loving high-end well designed pieces. As I purchased my home in 2018 I quickly wanted to change many things and renovate it, so I started looking everywhere. I watched so many youtube videos and looked all over the web at MoMA and every other design magazine you could find. By complete chance, I stumbled upon milanote, which is a great visual organizing tool for ideas and products. I began to put all of my ideas for my new home in there including making different boards for each room and then filling it up with all kinds of links from across the internet every single day. Soon I found myself with a long list in my Gmail of each room and trying to reserve my space in milanote for things I really wanted to purchase. But as time went on, and my budget became more realistic, I just kept these lists compiling, including the one I created in notion for my future home.
Putting it all together
So how does one turn this knowledge accessible to everyone else, without making it overwhelming? It turns out that as I started to research all the ideas my friends were pitching me for startups, I stumbled upon serval resource lists and no-code tools like bubble.io, airtable, and softr.io. I was intrigued and started playing around with airtable and softr to build a simple list. I spent several hours filling out the airtable list, first in google sheets then moving it to airtable, with resources from several lists all over the web, which took quite a few hours. And this first solution was actually quite good and where I landed today, but not at first. Initially, I thought it should be a full-fledged bubble app and paid some developers to set it up, but with the complexity and learning curve to maintain it, I felt it was time to go back to the original solution, which included using a softr.io template and airtable to make something simple and fully featured without spending a bunch more money or time in getting to market.
The Purpose
Archalist serves a twofold purpose. One it’s a marketing tool for modology and two, which is the most important it helps others find some cool design resources I’ve found throughout the years. It’s a community-driven tool, so you can suggest new tools you think should be a part of it and even submit feedback about things we could make better. We want to make sure that you can easily and simply access the information you need and want to expose you to commercial-grade products and solutions that you can access to make your designs and ideas even better. There are so many good and well-designed commercial solutions or ones that are intimidating unless you’re a builder, but with a little courage, you can make your design dreams come true.
House of Perspective
Background
In 2015 at a consulting company I previously ran, I came up with an idea called The Dialogues that borrowed from the genius of lunch talks at hyperakt studios. I spent the entire winter break of 2014 in the office late at night, on the weekends, just looking for different ideas and solutions that would set our business apart. One of the many ideas I had was The Dialogues. My original idea was to bring together people and talk about common problems or heavier ideas that people might be afraid to confront through the eyes of someone else. I wanted to frame tough conversations from a different perspective and give insight into marginalized groups or just complicated subjects by doing the things humans do best: tell each other stories. And so we did it for a little while, but it petered out and life moved on.
The Purpose
In today’s world, I believe one of the main things that divide us as just humans is our inability to see things from a different perspective. One perspective is not greater than the other, it’s just simply different and can often highlight commonalities we share, which are often greater than we think. The goal of the house of perspective is to talk highlight our shared humanity and talk about the tough and sometimes complicated things we all face. Not the clickbaity stuff, but true human issues we all face from all sides and share with the world.
The Second Time Around
This time we want to make this accessible to everyone. One of the great things that came from the pandemic was that it showed us that we can all participate no matter where we are in the world as long as we have the internet. So we’ll be making this an interactive podcast for our bigger interviews and want to make it accessible to everyone across the globe. The goal is to collect the information and compile it in a simplified format so anyone can digest it. So be on the lookout for episodes and interviews we’ll try to get to bring that in-person feeling back to anyone across the globe.
Modology Studios (Ethos and Ideology)
The idea
Modology has probably been about 10 years in the making and after a few failed iterations and ideas, we believe we have it this time. The ultimate goal of modology is to create universally designed and sustainable products and solutions for the home, whether that be furniture, home decor, or some gadget you use around the house. We want to build things to last a generation using additive manufacturing if possible and make sure that the product or solution addresses an actual need. Well-made things tend to stick around a lot longer than say an Ikea bookcase.
Our Background
Modology studios is made up of engineers and architects that love to build and design things. This means we know cad and other modeling software and can do some math and make sure solutions are actually feasible. We love to solve problems and often will pontificate about challenges we see in the world and how to solve them. Believe me, if we had the time and money we’d only do passion projects and solve big problems. We’re passionate about what we do and go the extra mile to make sure you get what you need. And we generally care about people, so working with us, means you’re working with a trusted friend and confidant. Your success is truly our success.
Our Ethos
We believe everyone is a designer. It’s not just about a degree or special training, it’s about tapping into your most creative self: your inner child. And because we all have the capacity to create we are all designers.
We believe that design should be accessible to everyone. Human nature dictates we create and build around our worldview because we are social beings. Imagine the possibilities if we viewed the world from a more universal perspective. What would products and services look like? How could they make our lives better? That's why we are passionate about universal design.
Ethnography: The Slippery Slope
When it comes to design thinking and all things user research, the goal is to extract as much insight and by extension data out of your interactions with your users. You are seeking to find the deeper meaning behind their thoughts and actions and somehow harness lightning in a bottle that will help you distill their words and actions into bite size golden nuggets for your company or client. Often times that comes at a cost to personal privacy and can lead to bad data and inequality.
In recent years as AI and other large language models have gained traction and exploded onto the scene, several large companies like Open AI and Google find themselves embroiled in lawsuits for trying to extract tons of data without compensating creators or plainly exploiting user data. These instances and events call into question digital marketing and data collection practice, which at their heart are an extension of the goal of ethnographic research. It’s all about walking a mile in someone else's shoes.
At it’s core, ethnography seeks to fundamentally level the playing field and give insight and expose opportunities within certain groups of users or populations, but there is and will always intrinsically exists a level of bias. Bias in and of itself is not the enemy, it is arguably the human condition. We all grow up, are exposed to, and get comfortable with the lives and connections we build because we are human. Ethnography should help us see outside of ourselves to learn a different perspective, but oftentimes the products and services we use are more clearly targeted and built for users a designer may be more familiar or comfortable with or they completely exploit the subjects of the studies.
So how can we use ethnography and design to make things more equitable and accessible to different user groups we all study? I’d argue that universal design principles are probably a good place to start, but in a more tactical sense here are a few tips we think will work.
Pretend you are learning something for the first time
A big predictor of learning something new is how open and responsive you are to the subject. Ask yourself:
- How often am I around users from this group?
- Do I understand what their view of the world is?
- What motivates them?
- Am I afraid to be wrong?
- Am I trying to learn or teach?
With these questions you can begin to really understand and set yourself up for success in dealing with a group of people you may not be comfortable with. Often our discomfort leads us to bias which makes us more comfortable. Being more open can really help you get more authentic results and outcomes.
It’s not about the product or solution
The focus on your research and interactions should be more focused on the group you’re observing. You could develop a new feature that drives more revenue, but providing more value to a user will drive results. The motivation of what the user or group is seeking is more important than the what or how they are solving it. What does this make them feel like? What happens if they can’t do this? How does this impact them? Understanding the motivation of why someone is doing something is key to making sure that you can provide equity to them and by extension truly make sure the users or group is getting a fair deal.
Make sure it benefits the group
How do you want to be treated? A recent video by Mrwhosetheboss, huge tech YouTuber, was very enlightening. Companies at their core are about profit and outcomes, but that often flies in the face of what ethnography and design thinking is all about. The goal of design research is to deliver better outcomes to the user and not just increase profits. There was a time many popular products and solutions were wildly popular because they prioritized their users and made sure they delivered great value, but not that’s not the case. Whether it’s service fragmentation as more and more content streaming services appear, or corporate profits which drive up costs, or mergers and acquisitions that see one company seeking to streamline profits while alienating an existing company’s loyal customer base, it’s become all too common. The golden rule should govern our lives. And if you keep this in mind you’ll always deliver value to the users or group. Why would someone want a worse deal while you make more money? Does that even make sense? If the answer is no, make sure you seek out ways to benefit the users or group. They are the customer and you should be bringing them more value than you are extracting, otherwise prepare for the churn.
Digital ethnography has changed the way we can collect and gain insight into everyone’s life, from the apps we use to the cookies and sophisticated software we develop on a regular basis. The core of ethnography is to understand how and why users or groups are doing what they are doing and add value. You have to make a conscious effort to be equitable and add more than you take. We all have bias and that’s ok, but if you’re doing this treat others how you would want to be treated. If we all walked a mile in someone else’s shoes we could change the world. Be the change you want to see.
Why Universal Design Matters
Universal design is often overlooked and underutilized in many many disciplines. Urban planners and by extension commercial architects are probably more exposed than most, but it’s core principles could make the world easier and better for us all. Universal design is the process of creating products that are accessible to people with a wide range of abilities, disabilities, and other characteristics. In layman's terms, it’s the process of designing things to be more accessible to everyone everywhere especially in terms of physical spaces. But how could those principles apply to
My friend once told me a story and struggle he had being one of the few minority designers at a design firm in Boston while we grabbed bears one day. He told a story of how he often had issues with the automated soap dispensers in the bathrooms because of his darker skin tone. When he described such a simple thing I thought it would be in the best interest to make sure that those are highly sensitive given their placement often, but learning it wasn’t something that had been considered gave me pause. An automated soap dispenser is a pretty ubiquitous item in bathrooms that serve large commercial and entertainment districts worldwide. It brings into question if the existing design could be improved to make it better for all of us.
While a soap dispenser is a simple example it’s indicative of how most design works today whether it’s digital or physical. Most websites and apps are not geared towards individuals who has visual or auditory impairments, which how most of the world accessing information and communicates today, which is scary to think about. Now universal design has seven design principles that are a part of it’s practice:
- Equitable Use.
- Flexibility in Use.
- Simple and Intuitive Use.
- Perceptible Information.
- Tolerance for Error.
- Low Physical Effort.
- Size and Space for Approach and Use.
These seem like very simple and common sense principles, but looking at a number of enterprise apps or even websites this is not something we are used to seeing. Many developers and companies make it harder to do things as the app or service grows instead making it stupid simple. It’s one of the reasons people love Apple’s design because often it’s intuitive and simple and is easier to use. What if everyone designed everything with these principles in mind? What would the world look like? Universal design applied to all design could be an amazing thing and is worth looking into as we embrace new technology and the world becomes more global. Think of ways to apply universal design principles you’re making.
2024 Interior Design Trends and Their Value
Home improvement is a never-ending pursuit to make your living quarters the homeliest it can be. Undertaking interior design upgrades is the most reliable way to achieve the homeliest home. In 2024, you can implement numerous interior design trends in your home.
Depending on the interior design upgrades you adopt, your home’s value can go up or down. Here’s an overview of the top four 2024 interior design trends and how they can affect your home’s value.
Spa-Like Bathrooms and More Bathrooms
You likely spend more time in your bathroom than you are willing to admit. When making interior design upgrades to your home, consider remodeling your bathrooms. You should install new spa-style bathrooms to elevate your bathroom experience. Soon, you will feel like a king or queen whenever you use your bathroom.
Depending on the number of bedrooms you have, consider adding one or two more bathrooms to your home. Having more bathrooms means convenient bathroom access for every one from anywhere in your home, even when hosting many guests. Installing spa-style bathrooms and more bathrooms will increase your home’s value.
Mixed Metal Fixtures and Finishes
Interior designers and homeowners have been incorporating metal fixtures into homes for more than a millennium. In the post-civilization era, royal homes have always had metal fixtures with gold, brass, or bronze finishes. However, in 2024, picking a single type of metal for all the fixtures and finishes in a home is no longer fashionable.
Consider installing various types of metal fixtures and finishes throughout your home. Aim to implement mixed metal fixtures and finishes that look intentional and cohesive rather than accidental. Having mixed metal fixtures and finishes gives your home a more outstanding market appeal, boosting its value.
“Natural” Wood Cabinetry and Accents
According to the National Kitchen & Bath Association’s recent survey, the “natural” wood home interior finish is back in fashion after a short hiatus. The survey revealed that more homeowners and homebuyers prefer “natural” wood cabinetry and accents in a home’s interior over white. The association expects the renewed interest in “natural” wood for interior design to keep gaining popularity for the remainder of the 2020s. When doing your home’s interior design upgrades this 2024, it’s best to go for “natural” wood cabinetry and accents to enhance your property’s value.
Extreme Kitchen Upgrades
The kitchen is the top priority in most home remodeling projects. It often consumes the most significant chunk of the interior upgrade budget as homeowners desire to remodel the space to their specific cooking and eating needs. Unfortunately, most homeowners end up with extreme kitchen upgrades that suit their needs and nobody else’s.
Such extreme kitchen upgrades can decrease a home’s value. Potential buyers will have to deduct the cost of another kitchen remodel to make the kitchen suitable for them. When doing a kitchen interior design upgrade, avoid going overboard on personalizing the space.
Closing Thoughts
When making interior design upgrade decisions for your home, it’s best to consult an experienced interior design and real estate professional. Their professional input will enable you only to implement interior design upgrades that positively impact your home’s value. Moreover, you will have a more cohesive interior design upgrade for your budget.
Is Additive Manufacturing the Future?
A new set of tools-additive manufacturing (3D printing)-is having a transformative impact on how new products are introduced into the world. Manufacturing companies at the forefront of Industry 4.0 are not only making revolutionary products but also getting them to market faster. They also reduce their environmental impact and move away from older, carbon-intensive manufacturing processes. Already, many companies are looking to use additive manufacturing to identify parts that can be produced more efficiently and sustainably.
Additive manufacturing (AM) technology (also known as 3D printing technology) is a new manufacturing technology developed in the late 1980s. In the "Looking to 2025" report released by the US consulting firm McKinsey in 2013, additive manufacturing technology was included as one of the twelve disruptive technologies that will determine the future economy. Currently, additive manufacturing forming materials include metals, non-metals, composite materials, biological materials, and even life materials. The energy sources of the forming process include lasers, electron beams, special wavelength light sources, arcs, and combinations of the above energy sources. The forming size ranges from micro Nanocomponents to large aerospace structural parts above 10 m, providing huge opportunities for the development of modern manufacturing and the transformation and upgrading of traditional manufacturing. With its powerful personalized manufacturing capabilities, additive manufacturing fully meets the needs of large-scale personalized customization in future society. With its strong support for design innovation, additive manufacturing subverts the traditional design and manufacturing methods of high-end equipment, forming unprecedented new solutions that enable a large number of product concepts has undergo revolutionary changes and support the transformation of my country's manufacturing industry into an innovation-driven development model. Additive manufacturing has gradually developed from prototype manufacturing to direct manufacturing and batch manufacturing, from 3D printing to 4D printing that is variable over time or in the field, from model and mold manufacturing with shape control as the main purpose to both form and performance. The manufacturing of components and assemblies integrating the structure and function of tools; from the manufacturing of one-time formed components to the printing of living organisms; from the manufacturing of micro- and nanoscale functional components to the printing of civil buildings tens of meters in size, etc., As a disruptive manufacturing technology, additive manufacturing has continued to expand its application fields. After nearly 40 years of development, additive manufacturing technology has demonstrated great value and broad application prospects in strategic emerging industries such as aerospace, rail transportation, new energy, new materials, and medical instruments. It is an important development direction of advanced manufacturing. It is an inseparable and important component of intelligent manufacturing. Additive manufacturing technology is a "national weapon" that meets major national needs and supports the development of the national economy. It has become one of the disciplines with the fastest development, the most active technological research, and the highest attention in the world's advanced manufacturing field. The development of independently innovative additive manufacturing technology is the only way for my country to transform from a "manufacturing power" to a "manufacturing power". It is of great significance to building an innovative country, developing the national economy, safeguarding national security, and realizing socialist modernization.
Literally, during the additive manufacturing process, materials are accumulated layer by layer through various means. This is different from the traditional manufacturing process in which a blank is first formed, and then the material is removed using subtractive methods. The biggest advantage of this method, and also the focus of end users, is:
First, it achieves the release of design freedom. Limited by traditional processes, product designs in the past often had to sacrifice some performance or increase assembly complexity. Using the layer-by-layer stacking method of additive manufacturing, some very complex structures are also feasible to be manufactured in one go, which brings huge potential.
Second, it supports on-demand customization. The traditional model of batch manufacturing after mold opening is undoubtedly still the most cost-effective method. However, with the increasingly obvious trend of "multiple varieties and small batches", mold-free manufacturing methods that can support on-demand customization are becoming more and more attractive. Typical cases include extremely generous customized gifts, MINI's customized interior and exterior vehicle accessories, and various customized medical implants. For typical on-demand customized products like the mold itself, additive manufacturing is undoubtedly very advantageous. From making sand molds or wax molds for casting to manufacturing conformal waterways for injection molding or die-casting molds, additive manufacturing methods It has proven their great commercial value.
Third, reduce the total cost of the supply chain. Additive manufacturing is changing the way products are MRO (Maintenance Repair Operating). Under traditional manufacturing methods, to improve the response speed to after-sales service needs, companies in the supply chain have to carry huge spare parts inventories. Using additive manufacturing technology, parts can be quickly repaired or even remanufactured, thereby helping manufacturing companies shorten spare parts delivery times and reduce inventory costs. In the current environment of rising international trade protectionism, some multinational companies have even begun to explore the use of additive manufacturing to avoid the logistics and tariff costs of physical import and export.
In the next ten years, 1 billion new people will enter the consumer class, and consumer demand will increase by US$30 trillion, with most of the growth coming from fragmented emerging economies; this will lead to a shift in the focus of global manufacturing, resulting in a global Dramatically accelerate demand and cargo transportation. We are also moving from an era of economic liberalization to one in which some countries may play an active role in protectionist trends. The nature of globalization is changing, directly affecting supply chains. The combined effect of these forces means our industry needs to find more creative and efficient ways to design, manufacture, and realize new products to meet demand responsibly. Achieving this smartly and sustainably requires a new supply chain approach, as well as new technologies to enable it.
The sustainability benefits of additive manufacturing
We are also in an unprecedented time in history, experiencing a wave of industrial and information innovation thanks to technologies that did not exist just a few years ago. Industry 4.0 technologies, such as robotics, artificial intelligence, machine learning, autonomous driving, virtual reality, etc., are beginning to have a huge impact on mainstream businesses. Additive manufacturing belongs on the list above. Once a futuristic vision, 3D printing has now become an important alternative to traditional manufacturing processes for various companies, making supply chains more environmentally friendly. We now have the tools to enable unprecedented design outcomes and approaches to meet increased consumption. In terms of sustainability, additive manufacturing typically brings four benefits:
1. More efficient product design
Essentially, additive manufacturing results in product designs that use less material. There are several examples. The first example is advanced digital design tools that enable new design features, such as lattice structures that create tremendous strength with less material. Second, now, thanks to additive manufacturing, multiple parts can often be combined into one, which means less overall material is used to make the product.
2. More efficient manufacturing process
Most traditional manufacturing techniques are subtractive, meaning cutting a piece of material or producing and filling an injection mold. This creates waste, some of which can be reused, but some of which cannot. Regardless, even if materials are recycled, they must be reprocessed. Additive processes, on the other hand, involve no molds and no sculpting waste. Great progress has also been made in the ability to reuse leftover materials. For example, an HP device can reuse as much as 80% of excess powder. As an industry, we have high hopes for sustainable innovation in materials.
3. More efficient supply chain
Traditionally, supply chains have used three modes of logistics: ground, air, and sea. Additive manufacturing creates a fourth, more efficient way: the cloud. In this case, the cloud is replacing physical storage with virtual warehouses. The ability to print on demand, rather than producing large quantities of parts or products at once and then storing them, plays a role in reducing obsolescence costs. Soon, companies will digitally upload part designs and print them on demand across a global network closest to the point of consumption, reducing reliance on carbon-heavy shipping methods. As additive manufacturing facilities will be replicated across the globe, it is possible to envision a world where the integration of digital logistics and physical logistics defines the supply chain of the future.
4. Accelerate innovation and time to market
Finally, because additive manufacturing allows for rapid iteration of ideas without the prototyping constraints of traditional manufacturing methods, companies can bring products to market faster, respond more quickly to human needs, and use materials, processes, and people more efficiently.
Looking ahead to the future of environmentally friendly manufacturing
Through these Industry 4.0 innovations, we can soon rise to the challenge of creating a better, more efficient, and greener industry for future generations. A handful of progressive Fortune 100 companies have begun to lead the way by converting parts of their supply chains to additive manufacturing to create products that perform better, reduce their carbon impact, and become more flexible overall. There is still much work to be done to address today's environmental and global challenges, but the prospects and potential are endless. Suppose more leaders and engineers come together to learn and understand new tools and bring them into business in meaningful ways. In that case, we have the opportunity to create a step change in efficiency across the manufacturing economy.
