Sunday, March 17, 2013

AmoeBAND


The band-aid is a great design and innovative thinking tool and exercise for engineers.  Go down the band-aid aisle at your local drugstore or grocery store.  The conventional band-aid does not cover all wounds well.  A cut on you finger is different than a cut on your thumb.  Consumers have to buy a box full of multiple shaped and sized band-aids.  In a world of "smarts" - the band-aid is also very "dumb."

Entire AmoeBAND.  University students in Taiwan have come up with a design that features cutaways so the hand-aid can be adjusted to fit the location of the wound.  The name comes from the shape-shifting amoeba.

A pH-sensitive cross at the center alerts the wearer if the wound is infected.  Innovation and creativity is making the dumb band-aid smart.

Rethinking the old is always a source of innovation.  A new and better future requires a deep and insightful view of the present and past. 

The Wall Street Journal had a great quote from Peter Heuken, playground designer, in The Engineer of Playground Pizazz over the weekend:

"Creativity is hard work.  Usable ideas require knowledge and a close command of details."

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