Dwell magazine visits the design firm Smart Design and talks to Dan Formosa, and Richard Whitehall about the ‘intersection of Universal Design principals and the limitations of public bathrooms.’ The video presents an insightful yet humorous look into the use of public restrooms. Well worth a watch and if anything will provide a great topic for discussion amongst friends.

Gabriel Biller and Kristy Scovel from the IIT Institute of Design have created an excellent primer for those getting into the field of Ethnography. Their primer provides an overview of the practice, interview tips, as well as anecdotal stories from the field. While it is a little slow at the start, once it gets going, it is both educational and interesting. Definitely a must watch for those getting into the filed of Human Computer Interaction.

Alex Roman has created this beautiful piece that tries to “illustrate architecture art across a photographic point of view”. The entire piece is computer generated and demonstrates a tremendous amount of skill. Alex used 3D Studio Max, Vray, AfterEffects, and Adobe Premiere in its creation. Alex also created the music which was done in Sonar & EWQLSO Gold Pro XP. Simply amazing!

The Puyocon mouse is shown off at SIGGRAPH Asia 2009 by students at the University of Tsukuba. Unlike other mid-air input devices, the Puyocon is meant to be thrown either as an input gesture, or for passing from one to another. With 14 pressure sensors in it, it is able to capture with reasonable detail the movement of the ball. It is a bit difficult to imagine it working well with Powerpoint, it may prove very fun in combination with party games in which people toss it to each other. For more visit the Puyocon website.

Juhan Sonin gives a brief talk at O’Reilly Ignite about creating a practitioner’s guide to UI Design. The fast-paced talk speeds through many great tenets such as “Let Data Scream”, “Repeat Users Rock”, “Bitch Loud and Often”, and many more. For a more detailed look, check out his longer talk given at O’Reilly OScon, and also be sure to check out his ever-expanding website of publicly contributed design tenets.

Luke Wroblewski speaks at Mix ‘09 about the best practices of web form design. Covering everything from flow, layout, error handling, help, buttons, and more… Luke covers everything you need to know to design great web forms. And of course at the end he encourages people to not use forms at all. Overall, Luke presents a great practical guide backed up with lots of research and maintains the audience’s attention with the use of lots of great visual examples of both good and bad form design. Check out his book Web Form Design at Amazon.com.

Doubling up on its bet on tablet PCs, Microsoft is working on the dual-screen Courier booklet. Using both pen and gesture based interaction methods, the technology incorporates many of the interaction models we’ve seen developed over the past 10 years. Most interestingly is the fact that it is the first piece of technology to emphasize the light-weight notebook form factor while utilizing two displays. The potential is imaginative as usual and it will be fun to see where this leads.

In an on-stage interview at the San Diego Ad Club, Alex Bogusky of Crispin Porter + Bogusky provides a behind the scenes look at many of the campaigns his company has worked on and shares some of his thoughts on various aspects of marketing. From Coke suing itself to Volkswagon’s Safe Happens, Alex has been constantly looking for ways to bring authenticity to messaging by “showing”, not “saying”.

Lee Clow and Alex Bogusky discuss the trends in today’s marketing and brand building. Specifically they discuss how integrating today’s culture of gaming is becoming more prominent in advertising and how they have incorporated the use of multiple forms of media to communicate brand messages. Lee Clow had famously worked on Apple’s advertising for years and Alex Bogusky is a rising star who’s worked on campaigns such as the Truth campaign and the Burger King games for the Xbox.

Julian Treasure, author of Sound Business, speaks at TED about how the sound around us play a large role in productivity, shopping behavior, emotions, and many other ways. Once you are inspired by the talk, head on over to birdsongradio.com and get your daily 5 minute dose in.