There is a story to tell in every project I create.
Frank and Angela Bathroom is a classic example. Dealing with my clients wish list and knowing what they like is what makes a project exciting and fun, and part of a good design of course.
I think I’m really good at dealing with my clients in a patience way. I love it.
Here is a very Traditional Bathroom Design. Shows a good example of the kinds of people Angela and Frank are. Their beautiful house nested in the hills of San Mateo have all the makings of an old house. And this bathroom had to be specially design to fit their style and home decor.
Frank and Angela wanted the Carrera marble look and custom built cabinets. They wanted a built-in stereo system to be remotely controlled with the iPhone. All the gadgets included for an amazing shower experience.
I measured Frank so that the jets would hit exactly where his soar points in the body.
The process of design was easy with them.
The 3D movie was start of the project. (see below)
Amparo del Rio Design Blog
Design Ideas and Inspiration
Monday, October 21, 2019
There is a story to tell in every project I create.
Beautiful Cars, A source of Inspiration
The Many SOURCE OF INSPIRATION
Often use beautiful cars for inspiration, when choosing colors for whatever I’m designing. FOR EXAMPLE: I created a kitchen using these colors. The cabinet doors where a rich beige color, with black homed granite for the countertop. And of course, stainless steel appliances where a nice combination to the look-and -feel of the modern and cozy kitchen. A deep fruit bowl in yellow was placed in the middle of the counter top.
Color is relative when putting all the finishes together. Most people today want to stay very safe by choosing mutted colors.
Designing a New Kitchen
Design a kitchen probably is the most fun and complex design project I have encounter.
There are so many details to make a kitchen like this one.
I was lucky to design this beautiful kitchen and master bathroom, kids bathroom two years ago for my client in Lafayette. Working with them was fun and rewarding.
A few details... The lighting was a challenge because of the vaulted ceiling.
Steps I took to do it:
1. Measuring the space and creating a proposed floor plan approved by client was the first task.
2. Creating a 3D drawing in Sketch-Up for them the visualize how the kitchen will look like.
3. Create elevations and details drawings for the contractor to built it.
4. Materials Selections, included cabinets, and finishes.
5. Getting permits.
6. Finding a contractor that you trust and will built the proposed design is a challenging thing.
7. Getting the construction going and finally building the kitchen was a job.
Sunday, July 28, 2019
Being Original
Being Original
"To be original, seek your inspiration from unexpected sources.
Footwear Designer Kobi Levi, Tel Aviv. creative approach to shoe styles is amazing to me. The Bicycle sandal — bicycle-chair heal, a Union Jack T-strap.
Another good example: When designing a dress, do not look at other dresses. Instead, look at the world around you for true inspiration. Inspired by Paris Eiffel Tower, fashion designer Jean-Paul Gaultier dresses. (the DeYoung 2012 exposition, photo by Amparo)
I could find millions of examples that show inspiration from art around us.
Thursday, January 17, 2019
Kitchens As A Focal Point in Your House.
Kitchens As A Focal Point in Your House.
The kitchen as the center of our homes in no longer in news. We know that is the way everyone wants the house plans to be.
The kitchen, The room where we live. As a result, kitchens have to be carefully planned for food preparation, TV viewing, gathering place for the family and friends, and entertaining.
All my kitchen remodeling jobs are about opening up the kitchen and making the living/family room all connected. As a designer. I love to comply. Because I know what a family needs. Having my own children and making the hub of the family gathering was the key.
I always tell people. Is not the amount of space you have, but how you use it, and the way you arrange it.
When I design a kitchen, I learn as much as possible, how the homeowner cooks in the kitchen and their everyday habits are important in my design. . Some people bake a lot, some people entertain a lot. Its different with everyone. I like to ask a lot of questions. So much of good design is about putting myself in the clients shoes. And asking myself, if it was my house what would I do.
In the old days, most houses where designed to have little compartments. Many walls separated the family spaces. As you can see the before floor plan of the kitchen and the master bathroom.
I love to update spaces, and make them so much more efficient and beautiful.
The kitchen as the center of our homes in no longer in news. We know that is the way everyone wants the house plans to be.
The kitchen, The room where we live. As a result, kitchens have to be carefully planned for food preparation, TV viewing, gathering place for the family and friends, and entertaining.
All my kitchen remodeling jobs are about opening up the kitchen and making the living/family room all connected. As a designer. I love to comply. Because I know what a family needs. Having my own children and making the hub of the family gathering was the key.
I always tell people. Is not the amount of space you have, but how you use it, and the way you arrange it.
When I design a kitchen, I learn as much as possible, how the homeowner cooks in the kitchen and their everyday habits are important in my design. . Some people bake a lot, some people entertain a lot. Its different with everyone. I like to ask a lot of questions. So much of good design is about putting myself in the clients shoes. And asking myself, if it was my house what would I do.
In the old days, most houses where designed to have little compartments. Many walls separated the family spaces. As you can see the before floor plan of the kitchen and the master bathroom.
I love to update spaces, and make them so much more efficient and beautiful.
Monday, July 28, 2014
Friday, January 10, 2014
Innovation vs. Invention. What is the Difference?
In today’s global economy, there is a constant drumbeat to come up
with something “new.” But you don’t need to invent something entirely
new to be successful. Invention is wonderful, but you can be very
successful if you focus on innovating on something that already exists
rather than inventing something entirely new.
What is important here is to separate invention and innovation. Take a look at Apple’s ubiquitous iPhone, for example. Apple took a stagnant product category - the mobile phone—and completely rethought how it could be used. They took an existing product category and existing technologies, but still somehow reshaped modern society. Apple’s innovations in design and user interface sparked a tech revolution.
Innovation is really what drives economic growth. This is a theory of Joseph Schumpeter, who was a professor at Harvard University. Schumpeter was one of the 20th century’s major economists. He said that innovation was the product of new combinations, and he proposed five combination patterns: 1) the production of a new good; 2) the introduction of a new method of production; 3) the development of a new market; 4) the acquisition of a new source of supply of raw materials; and 5) the emergence of a new organization of any industry. The advent of the Internet has created yet another platform for new services to be created through the combination of new things in complex ways.
In the end, innovation does not need to mean inventions like induced pluripotent stem cells or anything else. The emergence of new discoveries is absolutely a good thing, but even without inventions, a country or company can still come out ahead. After all, Japan didn’t invent the car or the TV, but it certainly innovated on them and built world-leading companies and economies.
What do you think are some of the most important innovations this century?
Photo: jobstribute / Flickr
What is important here is to separate invention and innovation. Take a look at Apple’s ubiquitous iPhone, for example. Apple took a stagnant product category - the mobile phone—and completely rethought how it could be used. They took an existing product category and existing technologies, but still somehow reshaped modern society. Apple’s innovations in design and user interface sparked a tech revolution.
Innovation is really what drives economic growth. This is a theory of Joseph Schumpeter, who was a professor at Harvard University. Schumpeter was one of the 20th century’s major economists. He said that innovation was the product of new combinations, and he proposed five combination patterns: 1) the production of a new good; 2) the introduction of a new method of production; 3) the development of a new market; 4) the acquisition of a new source of supply of raw materials; and 5) the emergence of a new organization of any industry. The advent of the Internet has created yet another platform for new services to be created through the combination of new things in complex ways.
In the end, innovation does not need to mean inventions like induced pluripotent stem cells or anything else. The emergence of new discoveries is absolutely a good thing, but even without inventions, a country or company can still come out ahead. After all, Japan didn’t invent the car or the TV, but it certainly innovated on them and built world-leading companies and economies.
What do you think are some of the most important innovations this century?
Photo: jobstribute / Flickr
Wednesday, December 4, 2013
Design Comes in a Package
"I always thought everything we design comes in a package".
A magazine for example is a package of many pages, having similar looks, like a brother and sister. A website is also a package of pages that contained in a url. A kitchen is a package of cabinets and appliances where everything looks good and goes together perfectly. Design is about finding the right solutions so that everything fits nicely together.
Make new promo image is a box, containing some of my publishing work and my recent work as a kitchen and bath designer. I will refine it later... But could not wait to show and tell... Amparo Del Rio Design
A magazine for example is a package of many pages, having similar looks, like a brother and sister. A website is also a package of pages that contained in a url. A kitchen is a package of cabinets and appliances where everything looks good and goes together perfectly. Design is about finding the right solutions so that everything fits nicely together.
Make new promo image is a box, containing some of my publishing work and my recent work as a kitchen and bath designer. I will refine it later... But could not wait to show and tell... Amparo Del Rio Design
Tuesday, August 6, 2013
Sunday, August 4, 2013
Looking at the Past
Looking Past the Horse
Finding space for meaningful innovation
There
comes a point in discussions about innovation where someone trots out
that Henry Ford quote: “If I’d asked customers what they wanted, they
would have said, ‘a faster horse.’” It’s become a staple of the
designer’s quote library, a handy defense against skeptical clients who
question our iron-clad intuition. And let’s be honest, every time we say
it, we feel a little better about ourselves. We’re not like those
cowering luddites standing in the tracks as the innovation train rolls
through.
Fast-forward a hundred years or so,
and we have Steve Jobs, apparently the modern incarnation of Henry
Ford’s self-assured genius. As the story goes, he ignored the customers,
descending from the stormy heights of WWDC to bequeath his
divinely-inscribed tablet (multi-touch, of course) to the teeming
masses. Or something.
In both cases, there’s a
pervasive misunderstanding about the origins of great ideas—a
misunderstanding that has worsened the class warfare between the
“creatives” and “everyone else”, and stood in the way of more frequent
creative breakthroughs. It’s time to set the record straight.
Horses & Cars
Let’s
start with Henry Ford. If he had asked his customers what they wanted,
they would have asked for a faster horse, because they knew they had a
problem that a horse seemed to solve (transportation), and they could
only think in terms of what they already knew (a horse, but faster). Did
Ford really ignore his customers? Not really. He just understood their
underlying need better than they did. He realized that what they really
needed was not a horse per se, but convenient, affordable
transportation. So he threw out the assumptions, reframed the problem at
a deeper level, and found a way to bring an emerging product category
to the masses.
It’s not that he didn’t pay attention to the customers, but that he paid more attention to the customers than they paid to themselves.
While
we’re at it, there’s no reason why a car has to be the ultimate answer
to personal transportation now, any more than a horse was the ultimate
answer then. And one day, a future innovator will ask the important
question: what’s the underlying need for transportation in today’s
society? And why should it be a car?
Apple & Magic
What about Steve Jobs? I think he was
a genius in a sense, or at least a rare businessman who got a few
important things right and had the guts to build everything around them.
But I think the image of Jobs as genius (or evil genius, if you prefer)
misses the point.
Apple Creative Services director Tim Brennan once used this graphic to explain Apple’s creative process:
That’s
not helping anything. Selling the idea that Apple’s products are just
“magic” might be good marketing, but it’s mostly nonsense.
Take
the iPad, for example. The iPad wasn’t “magic” so much as it was the
logical (and inspired) outcome of human-centered computer interface
design. Computers, as we have come to know them, have too many steps in
between what you want to do and actually doing it: desire → mouse
movement → on-screen button → button click → result. Most of those steps
are workarounds to deal with the limitations of technology. But few
people stop and think about that interaction carefully enough to realize
it’s built on assumptions that aren’t timeless. The iPad just took
advantage of emerging technology to remove those in-between steps, and
package it in an intuitive, affordable package. We never needed
a mouse, except as a crutch. Tap what you want. That’s it. Of course
it’s the future. And someday, someone will challenge the notion of
needing a tablet at all, dig beneath another layer of human needs, and
invent a new product category.
I think people actually did want
a new tablet product category (like the iPad), but they didn’t know it
yet, because they didn’t understand their unfulfilled, underlying needs
that made their previous way of using a computer incomplete. Apple
tapped into that unarticulated desire, unified the hardware, software,
and developer community, and the market confirmed it. Innovation is much
more than the idea—you still need everything that goes into turning
that idea into a viable technology and business. But it’s the insights
into deeper human needs that set the stage for the breakthrough.
Jobs
once said, “It’s not the customer’s job to know what they want.”
Perhaps a less catchy, but more precise, way of putting it: don’t always
take a customer’s request at face value; work hard to thoroughly
understand their experiences and values that led them to conclude their
request is the solution. It’s often their way of expressing a need that
we haven’t yet understood well enough. Usually, customer requests are the clue, not the answer.
As Sohrab Vossoughi points out, there’s a reason Apple “doesn’t listen to their customers”; they are the customers. They already understood the experience from the inside, and made something they knew they would love.
The Real Question
The
decisions of great designers are certainly based on intuition,but
they’re not magic, or even purely subjective. Design choices can be
traced back to observable human needs, and explained.
So
should we listen to what customers want, or not? Should we trust that
“the customer is always right” and do what they say? Dismiss them? Or
compromise, and try to make everyone (no one) happy? Wrong question. A
better one is: what do they really need, and how might this be a clue?
Neither Ford nor Jobs ignored their customers. They just understood their underlying needs better than the customers did.
Whether
they can articulate it or not, what customers really want is the answer
to their underlying problems, and it’s the designer’s job to uncover
those problems with empathy, careful observation, and patient listening.
We have to look past the horse and challenge the assumptions until we
find the underlying needs—and design for those.
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