Icon-o-Cast: a podcast by LUNAR

At Lunar, we've been applying the compelling storytelling techniques from comics in our interaction design work. In this episode, Lunar interaction designers Gretchen Anderson and Ron Goldin talk about how comics can be a powerful and surprising tool in the design of complex products and experiences. 

What do you get when you combine 600 inventors and innovators with thousands of people who want to see their work? It's Maker Faire 2009. Join Lunar's Robert Howard, Bob Lane and Jonathan Downing as they roam the faire in search of the new, the cool and the homemade.

What do you get when you combine 600 inventors and innovators with thousands of people who want to see their work? It's Maker Faire 2009. Join Lunar's Robert Howard, Bob Lane and Jonathan Downing as they roam the faire in search of the new, the cool and the homemade.

Fast Company Guest Blogger and Lunar President John Edson talks about the classic chair by Charles Eames

How can design tap into our emotional wiring, stop us in our tracks and create responses in us? An exploration we did at Lunar, loosely based on Don Norman's Emotional Design, looked at how design can make us stop and think, stop and act, and stop and behold. In this episode, Lunar's John Edson, Jeff Smith and Becky Brown talk about this last dimension -- the beauty dimension of "stop and behold" -- and how it turns out to be the most elusive power of design.

In this episode, Icon-o-Cast mom-to-be Lisa Leckie, new mom Gretchen Anderson and experienced mom Sandrine Lebas talk about the decisions new moms make as they struggle with seemingly infinite product choices and apply their personal values to the experience of motherhood.

The architecture and construction world is years ahead of product design in terms of creating understanding, standards, alternative design solutions and the economic arguements for the value of sustainable design. In this Earth Day Special, Lunar's Gretchen Anderson talks with green building expert Elaine Hsieh of KEMA about how building industries have embraced sustainable practices since the first Earth Day.

Computer game design is changing as games become more of a platform for play, creativity and collaboration and not just a challenge of skill and reasoning. Lunar's Gretchen Anderson talks with Mike Khoury, a game designer at Maxis Software and contributor to the hot new game Spore, about changing approaches to designing the gaming experience and some surprising ways Spore's fans have taken the game in new directions.

The world's great museums have attractions that capture the imagination of visitors. The very best museums also design their experiences to connect with visitors in ways that may not always be readily apparent. In this episode, Lisa Dunmeyer, project manager with BBI Engineering, talks with Lunar's Gretchen Anderson and Lisa Leckie about how visitors are connecting with the newly redesigned California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. BBI Engineering of San Francisco served as primary integrator of the audiovisual design within the new Cal Academy.

What makes a great service? How can designers influence the experience customers have with grocery stores, airlines and car rental agencies? Jennifer Bove of Kicker Studio and Ben Fullerton of IDEO talk with Lunar's Gretchen Anderson about service design.

How do we orient creativity in the service of business stakeholders? How does design create benefits for top-line growth and bottom-line profitability? In this Icon-o-Cast episode, Lunar's John Edson chats with innovation guru Larry Keeley of the Doblin Group about the practice of innovation in design, its role in today's economic environment and perspectives on how innovation may have contributed to our current predicaments. Larry is an innovation strategist, professor at the Institute of Design at Illinois Institute of Technology and president of The Doblin Group, an innovation strategy firm based in Chicago.

Lunar's TBA (Think, Behold and Act) project is an exploration into the elemental powers of creative expression. In this Icon-o-Cast episode, Lunar Creative Director Ken Wood (who led the "Think" exploration) discusses with Lunar's Jeff Smith and John Edson a collection of chair concepts that respond to common habits of daily living, generally considered to be bad habits.

The Icon-o-Cast team (John Edson, Gretchen Anderson, Lisa Leckie, Robert Howard and Jeff Smith) celebrate the holidays with thoughts on what makes a great gift. And it's not just wheels!

DEO's Ted Howes presents at the Digging Deeper sustainable design conference held in late July in San Francisco. The evening panel discussion dug deep into the eco-issues designers face everyday to reveal building blocks for sustainable design.

IDEO's Ted Howes presents at the Digging Deeper sustainable design conference held in late July in San Francisco. The evening panel discussion dug deep into the eco-issues designers face everyday to reveal building blocks for sustainable design.