Design Sojourn | Strategic Industrial Design Blog

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Some times fiddling and hopping in between jobs or projects, or at night the moment I close my eyes to sleep, I get a massive brain wave! This often gets me out of bed and sketching! So I asked myself:

What happens to the “old reliable electronic heroes” that faithfully supported you time after time in the past, after cast them away for newer electronic kid on the block?

Concept 1
My first concept is about a set of consumer electronics that reuses old USB memory drives. This also allows you to use your old memory drives as vessels to manage your intangible digital media. I sure all you gee…sorry technophiles, would have a drawer full of old thumb drives of small capacities doing nothing.

With out further adieu here is a proposal for a new life for all your outdated USB drives and the objects that combine it all together.

What if you had MP3 Players that allows you to use all your old USB drives that you cast aside for more powerful ones? How about the good old 128MB or 256MB drives? These memory sizes really make good sizes for listening to e-books or pod casts. Even when you head out for a jog, unless you are a marathon runner, you probably won’t need more than 10-15 songs at any one time.

(Above) A silicone head that fits the top of any USB drive. This is a simple no frills MP3 or media player, the track forward and back is just a simple “cocking” of the ear phone jack. Very simple with great haptic feedback.

(Above) The stretchy silicone gives it protection and a means to anchor it to any USB drive size.

(Below) What about a voice recorder that also uses the old USB drives? Voice recording formats are often small and of lower quality, so you could even dig out your 64MB memory drives. Here you have another head option for a USB drive. This time its a simple microphone that records what you say and saves it into the memory stick.

(Below) Here you have a USB “tree” and portable USB “hard drive” where you plug in all your old memory drives into a series or set and the software is smart enough to see is as one drive that is the “sum of all the parts” added up together.

Concept 2
My second concept is probably some kind of laptop or desktop computer that will allow you to plug in any combination of old CPUs, RAM chips and HARD drives. Again this system could add up all the sum of parts into one powerful machine. Great for 3rd world countries don’t you think? Hmm I’m still figuring out the shape for this, but imagine what a computer like this could do for all of us?

Ok brain splurge complete, and if anyone is interested to explore this ideas further, or would like to collaborate with me to take any of this concepts to the next level, please do not hesitate to contact me at dt [at] designsojourn [dot] com. Oh also comments please, the more the merrier!