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.

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.

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.

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.

Waving hands about to try on clothing at a store? This is how Cisco ushers out their vision for the future of shopping. Overall it just seems pretty far fetched that the main innovation in the experience shown is that of their new business router. On the other hand, Microsoft Xbox’s Project Natal may in fact be the technology that leads to such a customer experience. All in all, such an experience would be much better suited for home shopping. The primary benefit of in-store shopping really is the hands on touchy feely aspects… not the fact that they have mirrors.

10/GUI, a project by R. Clayton Miller, demonstrates a proposed means of interacting with a desktop computer via a touch interface. Stepping out of the box of traditional approaches to designing peripheral devices, Clayton takes a leap forward in not only designing the hardware aspects but also rethinking the software aspects of the computer for use with the device. Overall the idea is intriguing and inspires further thought on touch interfaces for the desktop.

In an effort to change people’s behavior to promote earth friendly and healthy activities, Volkswagen has come up with several fun and clever ideas. For instance to reduce litter, a trash big with sound effects triggered by placing trash into the bin, collected nearly twice as much trash as a near by bin. In another experiment, when using sound effects on stairs, 66% more people than normal chose the stairs over the escalator. View more videos at: TheFunTheory.com

ABC’s Nightline goes behind the scenes at Zappos to see why they have become the leading example in customer satisfaction and expose the company’s enviable corporate culture. By making investments in company moral, and customer satisfaction, their long-term vision has returned huge dividends. Zappos offers newly trained workers $2000 to quit and gives customers 365 days to return purchases with free shipping both ways. CEO Tony Hsieh has kept the call centers based in the US and says their number one focus is building the company’s culture. Whether they teach the practice in business schools or not, the proof is in the pudding. Also check out Zappos’ 10 Core Values.

Noah Zerkin, Augmented Reality Enthusiast, designed and developed the Zerkin Glove, a retrofitted paintball glove to enable computer input of the body’s motions. The sub-$300 DIY project incorporates flex sensors into the glove and arm band to enable control of augmented reality environments. Noah is currently working to develop kits to sell them commercially. Check out more videos of Noah here.