The Microbial Home Probe consists of a domestic ecosystem that challenges conventional design solutions to energy, cleaning, food preservation, lighting, human waste and healthy lifestyle.
http://www.design.philips.com/about/design/designportfolio/design_futures/des...
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"Conversational Capital: how to create stuff people love to talk about" by Bertrand Cesvet, Tony Babinski, Eric Alper and Sid Lee describes their approach to designing successful brands. Since people are social storytellers, a product experience that is worthy of telling as one's own authentic story creates brand capital in the form of meaningful and influential conversations. The authors suggest eight engines of conversational capital:
1) Myths are the narratives that become part of the fabric of consumption because they provide clues to the fundamental meaning of the consumption. 2) Rituals are an essential part of how human beings create and formalise meaning, and their presence marks out an experience as rich in meaning. 3) Exclusive Product Offering is about allowing consumers to create an experience that asserts and actualises their individuality; to feel and be unique. 4) Relevant Sensorial Oddity is about challenging the senses with something extraordinary, marking an experience as unique. 5) Icons are signs and symbols that demarcate a consumption experience from any other. 6) Tribalism is about the power of a brand experience to inspire the association of like-minded people. 7) Endorsement is about how the meaning and intensity of a brand experience leads to credible people organically endorsing it. 8) Continuity is a correspondence over time between what is promised, what people expect, and what is actually delivered. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversational_Capital
A fantastic book which hopefully every Human Centred Designer has read over their summer holiday is the multi-award winning "Through the Language Glass: why the world looks different in other languages". Guy Deutscher's highly enjoyable exposition calls into question some of our most basic assumptions regarding how language affects the way we see the world. Besides being a 2010 editor's choice of the New York Times and a 2010 book-of-the-year of Economist, Spectator and Financial Times, this enjoyable read now also counts Stephen Fry among its fans and boasts a short listing for science-book-of-the-year of The Royal Society.
http://sites.google.com/site/guydeutscher/through-the-language-glass