Design Archives - Phonesnews.com

October 22, 2025

Charts can be social artifacts that communicate more than just data

The degree to which someone trusts the information depicted in a chart can depend on their assumptions about who made the data visualization, according to a pair of studies by MIT researchers.

For instance, if someone infers that a graph about a controversial topic like gun violence was produced by an organization they feel is in opposition with their beliefs or political views, they may discredit the information or dismiss the visualization all together.

The researchers found that even the clearest visualizations often communicate more than the data they explicitly depict, and can elicit strong judgments from viewers about the social contexts, identities, and characteristics of those who made the chart.

Readers make these assessments about the social context of a visualization primarily from its design features, like the color palette or the way information is arranged, rather than the underlying data. Often, these inferences are unintended by the designers.

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October 18, 2025

New software designs eco-friendly clothing that can reassemble into new items

It’s hard to keep up with the ever-changing trends of the fashion world. What’s “in” one minute is often out of style the next season, potentially causing you to re-evaluate your wardrobe.

Staying current with the latest fashion styles can be wasteful and expensive, though. Roughly 92 million tons of textile waste are produced annually, including the clothes we discard when they go out of style or no longer fit. But what if we could simply reassemble our clothes into whatever outfits we wanted, adapting to trends and the ways our bodies change?

A team of researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and Adobe are attempting to bring eco-friendly, versatile garments to life. Their new “Refashion” software system breaks down fashion design into modules — essentially, smaller building blocks — by allowing users to draw, plan,

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September 13, 2025

MIT software tool turns everyday objects into animated, eye-catching displays

Whether you’re an artist, advertising specialist, or just looking to spruce up your home, turning everyday objects into dynamic displays is a great way to make them more visually engaging. For example, you could turn a kids’ book into a handheld cartoon of sorts, making the reading experience more immersive and memorable for a child.

But now, thanks to MIT researchers, it’s also possible to make dynamic displays without using electronics, using barrier-grid animations (or scanimations), which use printed materials instead. This visual trick involves sliding a patterned sheet across an image to create the illusion of a moving image. The secret of barrier-grid animations lies in its name: An overlay called a barrier (or grid) often resembling a picket fence moves across, rotates around, or tilts toward an image to reveal frames in an animated sequence. That underlying picture is a combination of each still,

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September 5, 2025

A greener way to 3D print stronger stuff

3D printing has come a long way since its invention in 1983 by Chuck Hull, who pioneered stereolithography, a technique that solidifies liquid resin into solid objects using ultraviolet lasers. Over the decades, 3D printers have evolved from experimental curiosities into tools capable of producing everything from custom prosthetics to complex food designs, architectural models, and even functioning human organs.

But as the technology matures, its environmental footprint has become increasingly difficult to set aside. The vast majority of consumer and industrial 3D printing still relies on petroleum-based plastic filament. And while “greener” alternatives made from biodegradable or recycled materials exist, they come with a serious trade-off: they’re often not as strong. These eco-friendly filaments tend to become brittle under stress, making them ill-suited for structural applications or load-bearing parts — exactly where strength matters most.

This trade-off between sustainability and mechanical performance prompted researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and the Hasso Plattner Institute to ask: Is it possible to build objects that are mostly eco-friendly,

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July 9, 2025

AI shapes autonomous underwater “gliders”

Marine scientists have long marveled at how animals like fish and seals swim so efficiently despite having different shapes. Their bodies are optimized for efficient, hydrodynamic aquatic navigation so they can exert minimal energy when traveling long distances.

Autonomous vehicles can drift through the ocean in a similar way, collecting data about vast underwater environments. However, the shapes of these gliding machines are less diverse than what we find in marine life — go-to designs often resemble tubes or torpedoes, since they’re fairly hydrodynamic as well. Plus, testing new builds requires lots of real-world trial-and-error.

Researchers from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and the University of Wisconsin at Madison propose that AI could help us explore uncharted glider designs more conveniently. Their method uses machine learning to test different 3D designs in a physics simulator, then molds them into more hydrodynamic shapes. The resulting model can be fabricated via a 3D printer using significantly less energy than hand-made ones.

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July 8, 2025

Xbox Design Lab Has Now Been ‘Temporarily On Hold’ For Six Months

A strange situation.

We’ve seen an increasing number of people asking about the status of Xbox Design Lab over the past few weeks, and that’s no surprise considering the service has been mostly unavailable for the past six months.

For those who aren’t aware, Xbox Design Lab allows you to create your very own custom Xbox controller, but this part of the service has been “temporarily on hold” since January while Xbox switches to a new payment platform.

Read the full article on purexbox.com

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June 27, 2025

Using generative AI to help robots jump higher and land safely

Diffusion models like OpenAI’s DALL-E are becoming increasingly useful in helping brainstorm new designs. Humans can prompt these systems to generate an image, create a video, or refine a blueprint, and come back with ideas they hadn’t considered before.

But did you know that generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) models are also making headway in creating working robots? Recent diffusion-based approaches have generated structures and the systems that control them from scratch. With or without a user’s input, these models can make new designs and then evaluate them in simulation before they’re fabricated.

A new approach from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) applies this generative know-how toward improving humans’ robotic designs. Users can draft a 3D model of a robot and specify which parts they’d like to see a diffusion model modify, providing its dimensions beforehand. GenAI then brainstorms the optimal shape for these areas and tests its ideas in simulation.

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