i just had a nice conversation about electrolux design lab 2008 with suzanne who has been managing electrolux’s annual design lab, which is a student design competition. this year’s theme is designing home appliances for internet generation. i am told that there were hundreds of high quality entries this year. belonging to the target user group myself for the submitted design concepts, i will serve the event as one of the 4 jury members.

having organized a lot of workshops & small-scale community design competitions as part of my research projects myself, i will be quite curious to know entrants’ thinking process that motivated ideas. Nokia Open Studios, which were organized so far as community design competition in Dharavi, Favela Jacarezinho, and Camp Buduburam were an immensely meaningful learning journey for me as an individual - apart from them being a good research guidance to understand the local culture and living.



unlike nokia open studios which encouraged entrants to design an ideal mobile phone for themeselves, i will have to put myself into the position of the target user in this event, which is a very unusual experience for me. perhaps i can compensate for the lack of my role as a researcher by interviewing the electrolux team about their experience in managing the design lab when i get a chance.

june 20th was the interesting day! thanks to russell, i got a 3-min talk slot in exchange for the ticket to the event. the day was full of inspiring and interesting talks, thanks to all speakers and participants who made the day shine bright. some video clips seem to be available through the Guardian, if you want to taste the flavour of the day. personally i was glad to get a chance to push myself to poke at some old piles of photos i randomly collected on toilets for the past couple of years.



why am i interested in toilets? my banal explanation is that toilets are the mirrors of culture with their prominence for everyone’s life in the society. the design of toilets can be a powerful element in providing anyone’s happiness, a sense of wellbeing, or even a feeling of small everyday achievement.

i am always shy about putting any work related slideshow on my weblog but as this is my hobby - the slideset from the day is downloadable in this page for anyone who’s interested in the topic & promises not to get offended by any part of the content. it’s a powerpoint file with brief explanation on each slide found in the ‘notes’ window.

download: small smalltalk on toilets (powerpoint, 2.2mb)