To make a big impact at the conference, we are going to put 3 of the outdoor game protoypes as our main attraction giving participants the opportunity to play and interact with them! They are definitely going to have fun!

While Adrian and Matt K are working hard on the technology bit of the game at our studio………….

Ta Taaaaaa!!!

Here I am at Nicholas Alexander workshop!! ( check out the outfit! ) Adil’s good friend Nick was kind enough to let me work in his space! Thank you very much Nick!

Yes, I am in charge of the physical bit of the game prototype so I am here to make 3 boxes that I’ve designed for this occasion!!

This is CNC machine cutting MDF sheets in perfect sizes and shapes! It’s a crazy one! Crashed so many times!

Though when it does it’s job…it does well! Look how neat the speaker holes are!! Charlotte suggested me to drill this by hand!! 480 holes come on!!

CNC machine goes mad!!!! Told you it’s crazy….

Alex is helping me glue the panels together. Biscuits inside the panels add a lot of strength to the structure.

Work those clamps!!

Blowing dirt out from the holes. Makes ‘POP’ sound when dirt comes out Satisfying sensation!

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This is pretty much what they will look like!

These boxes are big enough for me to fit in!! I am about to put shelves in!

Voilà! Shelf in!

We are putting PC and speakers on these shelves.

Final details. I am drilling a big circular hole on the back panel for power cable.

This drilling machine is quite scary…..

Back panels on!

Finished!! All that’s left to do is paint green strips!

They’ve made a short film to explain it all. Seems like it’s worth following #ampleic. I love the idea of the web being a ‘how not an it’.

via KK

However, her trip abroad has opened up an opportunity here for a ‘product designer+’.

‘+’ because we need someone with all the product design craft skills but I think we’re looking for something more too. Though we’re not sure exactly what yet, we have a general idea to split the role into three bits.

1/3 = product designer – research, sketching, rendering, 3D, modelling etc – the individual has got to have a grounding in the basics of product design. We run a multi-disciplinary studio, and we love multi-disciplinary people, but they have to have a core competency. I like to think of it has having a ‘centre of gravity’. It’s all well and good being interested in a lot of things, but there has to be a ‘centre of gravity’ around which everything else rotates.

1/3 = writer / social reporter – we’re looking to share the work of the studio through several development blogs. It’s an experiment really, and probably antithetical to every IP lawyer’s advice and it probably doesn’t make very good business sense to give away secrets, but with a couple of project we’re working on, we feel there is learning to be had in documenting the process of innovation, so we’re looking for someone to help us do this. Clearly, they’ll need to be articulate, confident in writing about design and design processes, but not be too abstract / ethereal / wanky.

1/3 = surprise us. The last bit we are leaving open for the right candidate to push us forward in a direction we haven’t prescribed. They could be skilled in service design. in interaction design. in electronics. in sustainability. whatever excites them. we want to be inspired and challenged by the people who work here, so we’re creating room for them to define the role a little bit. There’ll still be the basic tasks that will need to be done (i.e. product design and writing) but we’re leaving a little room to play too.

We’re interviewing now and through at least the first few weeks of March. Send your cv, blog links, portfolio to hello [at] sidekickstudios [dot] net

Phone. Plus Adil on the phone (#1)

Charlotte frolicking behind a door

Adil on the phone (#2)

Adrian’s measuring stance

One of those exposed walls

Yuki attempts to escape

Charlotte manning the tape

There’s a lot of stuff we want to have in the new Sidekick studio: a tinker desk, a communal Walton’s family style table, an old fashioned theatre style red velvet curtain, our typewriter Otto and the latest addition as of this morning, a juke box.  All this, without consideration to actual members of staff (who I now know need approximately 85cm space at a desk to sit comfortably).  Each of these objects of curiosity (that’s just the staff) for our new office has a square footage that must be taken into consideration and I find myself struggling with spatial awareness and my ability to visualize cubic volume.  So over the last few weeks I have got into the habit of measuring things just so I know how big they are: tables, chairs, door ways, toilets, sinks, work surfaces, book shelves, fridges, anything I can think of… It’s really addictive.

And there’s so much out there to measure.

Yuki and Adrian support my addiction at the local pastie shop.

The ‘doors’ that line the walls of the clinic do not open, and ‘ordinary’ parts of the walls open up into new spaces.

The consultation rooms are entered by sliding the bookshelves sideways.

The door at the end of the hallway opens onto a window; the amount of light in the hallway is controlled by opening and closing the door.

Rather than getting patients back to a ‘zero’, a neutral starting place, the traditional model for mental health care, the clinic aims to provide patients with something extra: a further richness in their daily lives that they did not have before starting treatment.

My first instinct when I saw it was that it felt like a huge artistic indulgence. And maybe a bit patronising too.

But on reflection, what our work on FRED has shown, that it’s too easy to generalise about mental health conditions. People suffering from paranoia aren’t the same. All self-harmers don’t exhibit the same features. One individual might display a variety of disorders, in a short or long period of time. We felt with our work that the service would be more useful for some illnesses than others, but the truth is that it is more useful for some individuals than others, and anything else is a generalisation.

Which brings us back to Clinic Akasaka. As long as patients are made aware that this isn’t a ‘real’ space, but something to explore and interact with, I’m sure it’s perfectly fine. It just depends on what the purpose of the intervention is and the shared understanding between patient and professional.

Having said that, the carpet is a bit crazy.

via Dezeen