Open up your mind and say, ahh...

Plenty of carpet manufacturers sell rugs that look like pebbles. Less common? Rugs that are actually made out of pebbles.

Inspired by Eastern beliefs in nature’s calming effect on the home environment, Israeli designer Neora Zigler decided to sew big, chunky pebbles between layers of synthetic fabric to create the aptly named Pebbles Carpet. In photographs, it resembles the sort of soft, cushiony rug you could snap up at your local West Elm. Prance around on it, though, and its rock-hard composition becomes spectacularly (perhaps even painfully?) obvious. “One is forced to walk slowly,” Zigler says, “while fully concentrated and balanced.”

Zigler claims that a “calming and soothing massage experience is achieved while one walks or lays on the carpet.” Having not stepped foot on it firsthand, we can’t attest to that, but we sure like the way it sounds. We just wouldn’t recommend practicing yoga on this thing.

Images courtesy of Neora Zigler; h/t Design Milk

In 2009, the community of Våler, Norway, sustained a severe blow: Their 17th-century church caught fire and burned to the ground. To replace their beloved meetinghouse, the town recently held a competition for a design that would serve as a symbol of renewal. Among the proposals was OOIIO Architecture’s low-lying all-wood structure, whose rooftop doubles as a promenade, providing an open public space with views of the picturesque surroundings.

“OOIIO Architecture designed for Våler a different and new typology of building, trying to solve two problems of the city at the same time,” the Madrid-based firm writes in its brief. “They need a new church, and they don’t have a representative public space, a meeting point where all the inhabitants could meet or immediately associate it to Våler and nowhere else.” It’s a beautiful gesture, making the church accessible and useful to even those residents who don’t attend religious services, in the same way that Snøhetta’s Norwegian National Opera and Ballet house became a public plaza and architectural landmark in Oslo. But there are some practical drawbacks to the plan: Without a draining system, the indented rooftop could become a reservoir of rainwater. And the open chapel, while creating a strong connection to the outdoors, could be unpleasantly chilly during long winter sermons.

That said, a few tweaks could have salvaged the proposal and made for a lovely communal space. Instead, Våler opted for Espen Surnevik’s slightly more traditional structure, whose white façade and pointed naves refer to the original church’s form.

So you want to pen an award-winning novel. Here’s some advice: Write about death. Or love. Or–if you’re feeling really adventurous–homicidal cowboy brothers.

These are some of the plot lines coursing through the longlist for the 2011 Man Booker Prize, one of those prestigious it’s-an-honor-just-to-be-nominated literary prizes. Delayed Gratification, a self-proclaimed “Slow Journalism Magazine,” mapped the themes of every contender in this catchy infographic:

Click to zoom.

Note that death tops the list, featured in all 13 novels, including the winner, The Sense of an Ending, by Julian Barnes. Love comes in a distant second. Fun fact: All the books about love are also about death. So go ahead and write a torrid romance novel. Just make sure it’s a bloody one.

Then you have more obscure themes, such as corruption and theft, biological terrorism, and horniness (in two books about death, but not love, hmmmm!). Cannibalism makes an appearance (in Carol Birch’s Jamrach’s Menagerie) as do “nanny trust issues” (Alison Pick’s Far to Go). The aforementioned homicidal cowboy brothers figure in Patrick DeWitt’s The Sisters Brothers, which also centers on love, death, and corruption and theft. How did that not win?

Explore more at Delayed Gratification. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to write a bodice ripper about horny, thieving, homicidal cowboy twins with a taste for their nanny’s plague-infested human flesh.

The stairs to our company’s fourth-floor loft posed a challenge for the dominatrixes. Many were wearing vertiginous Jimmy Choos and Christian Louboutins, and there was a bit of grumbling by the time they got to the top. I suppose they’re more used to dishing out suffering than enduring it themselves. As they made the trek through our building, they raised hardly an eyebrow from our staffers.

At Sense Worldwide, a branding consultancy specializing in working with extreme consumers, we’re accustomed to individuals who are a million miles away from that “regular customer.” You know, the ones who sit in focus groups and fills out online surveys. For us, one day, it’s dominatrixes; the next, it’s obsessive compulsives, teddy-bear enthusiasts, prescription-drug addicts, or Nigerian hackers.

We listen to dominatrixes, obsessive compulsives, teddy-bear enthusiasts, drug addicts, and Nigerian hackers.

James, Maria, and Jean-Robert do our recruitment. They’re ridiculously sanguine about hunting down rare and extraordinary people. Today, I asked them to find us the top cocktail mixologists in Seoul, Korea. “No particular age or gender?” was all James asked.We seek out these obsessives, maniacs and eccentrics because they can help us get to big, breakthrough ideas. Some of them can show us how mainstream consumers will behave in a few years. Some of them have extreme needs that no product on the market can meet–so they modify them, or make their own. Some of them reject a whole category. You can learn a lot about mobile phones by talking to a power user. You can learn even more by talking to somebody who’s deliberately never bought one.

Extreme users think differently, work differently. . .

These extreme users have a willingness to experiment that’s far beyond the capacity of any design agency. And because they’re improving the thing that they love, they’re not going to charge you by the hour. We recently worked with some Brazilian transsexuals on hair-removal products, looking at ways of making the process less painful. I can assure you, we had their full attention. Some are still sending us ideas.

…and they listen differently.

When we get extreme users together in a room, we often sit them down with the top design and R&D wizards from our clients. We ask our clients to bring the ideas they could never sell internally, because radical people appreciate radical ideas.

Every good designer has felt the pang of watching a truly revolutionary concept being pulled apart by the passive-aggressive mouth-breathers who make up most focus groups. “This doesn’t taste like cola,” they said about Red Bull. “Executive chairs are made of leather,” they said about Aerons. “Only secretaries have keyboards on their desks,” they said about PCs. All kinds of great ideas, from the Walkman to nacho chips, died in research with average consumers. That’s because regular people don’t like new things much. You know that, you’ve read Blink.

But what Malcolm Gladwell didn’t tell you is that there are people out there who will buy a great new idea. Perhaps they’ll even have it for you. Clubbers loved Red Bull: It helped them rave all night. A 4’11” lady loved the Aeron chair prototype so much that production was delayed until she was happy she could reach the controls.

Finding eccentric consumers is 50% of the challenge.

Of course, you need to find the right eccentrics. Then you have to convince them to help you. If you’re Harley Davidson or Nike (full disclosure: we work for Nike), then finding extreme consumers is easy. Just visit the Marathon des Sables and pick up some ultra-ultra marathon runners, or ride your prototype to the Sturgis bike rally every year.

Great ideas, from the Walkman to nacho chips, died in research with average consumers.

But what if you’re working on something less glamorous? Like, say, a blister-and-sweaty-foot range? Well, then you have to think a bit more creatively. What kind of person spends a lot of the day in uncomfortable shoes but would have a professional interest in keeping their feet immaculate? Before long, your recruitment people are scouring the Internet for soldiers, dominatrixes, and models. (It turns out that dominatrixes are easy to find on the Web. Who knew?)

Believe in the method behind the madness.

At first, it seemed strange for me to take mainstream brands to fringe people. But it works. Kenyan microlenders and global retail bankers can learn a tremendous amount from each other. Health insurers and medical tourists can create services that benefit both of them. Running shoe design has been revolutionized by studying people who have never worn them. Now it seems strange to talk to regular people. What are they going to tell you that you don’t already know?

If you’re going to get ambitious about your next task, don’t go and talk to normal people about it. You’ll only get normal answers. Get out of your comfortable little world and step into a completely alien one. As we say round here, when worlds collide, transformation happens.

Images: zubarev, Ruggiero S., anna karwowska, and photosani via Shutterstock

The National Transportation Safety Board has provided an update of its investigation of the crash of a highly modified North American P-51 aircraft at last year’s National Championship Air Races in Reno. The crash was the worst accident in the history of the air races, killing 10 spectators and the pilot. The NTSB found several places to improve air race safety, including ideas to redesign the course to minimize the risk to spectators.

Many in the aviation and air racing community feared last September’s crash would mean an end to the premier event in air racing. But the NTSB recommendations are for ways to improve safety, rather than shutting down the event.

“We are not here to put a stop to air racing,” said NTSB Chairman Deborah A.P. Hersman in a statement. “We are here to make it safer.”

While air racing was a very popular spectator sport in the early days of aviation, peaking in the 1930s when hundreds of thousands of spectators attended races, interest in recent decades has been largely limited to aviation aficionados. The air races in Reno date back to 1964, and today stand as the only major race of the year.

The NTSB recommendations include course design, the affects of g-forces on pilots and the design and inspection of the highly modified airplanes that make up the bulk of the aircraft racing in Reno.

The Galloping Ghost, the P-51 that crashed last year, included substantial modifications including removing more than three feet from each wing and changes to the flight controls. The modifications resulted in the World War II era fighter aircraft achieving speeds well over 500 miles per hour.

A diagram shows the external changes made to the Galloping Ghost in a quest for speed. Both wingspan and tailspan were reduced.

One of the changes the NTSB would like to see is more flying time and/or testing time of the pilot and airplanes before race day.

“Our investigation revealed that this pilot, in this airplane, had never flown at this speed, on this course,” Chairman Hersman said.

This poses a big challenge for a sport where much of the work is done by teams of volunteers and crew in the weeks and months leading up to the races each September. Often teams are trying out final improvements as race week progresses, protecting the vintage V-12 Rolls Royce engines originally designed for around 1,500 horsepower, but now producing more than 3,500 horsepower. Steve Hinton Jr., the youngest ever winner in Reno told Wired in 2010 that maintenance on the old airplanes is “easily a few hundred hours per flight hour.”

The crash investigation is ongoing, but the NTSB said initial findings indicate the Galloping Ghost was flying at over 530 miles per hour when it experienced an “upset” that eventually led to it crashing into a spectator area. The upset and subsequent maneuvers exceeded the aircraft accelerometer’s 9-g limit.

The accelerometer data combined with photos suggest the pilot lost consciousness following the unanticipated high g maneuver. Seconds later, the trim tab located on the tail of the airplane broke away, aggravating an already out of control airplane.

Many of the modifications made to the vintage aircraft to prepare them for air racing include changes to the controls such as the elevator where the broken trim tab was located. The modifications and changes were noted in the Galloping Ghosts’ logbook, and the airplane was flown after the various changes in order to gain approval from the Federal Aviation Administration. But the NTSB notes it is unlikely that thorough flight testing at speeds experienced during the air races was performed. And the NTSB adds that there is little if any engineering evaluation done for the modifications.

The aircraft that compete at the air races in Reno are categorized as “experimental,” allowing pilots and crew to change them significantly from their original design. The same type of engineering isn’t required for an airplane company producing a new type of airplane. The NTSB said in its initial recommendations that aircraft participating in the National Champion Air Races should undergo more rigorous evaluations because of the proximity to spectators.

An outline of the roughly eight mile oval used by the unlimited class air racers at Reno. The accident began as the Galloping Ghost was banking around pylon 8.

Other recommendations included making changes to the large oval flown by the fastest aircraft such as the P-51s and other World War II fighters to minimize maneuvering close to spectators.

The organization also suggests g-tolerance training for air race pilots, something that is common for military pilots as well as many aerobatic pilots that perform in airshows. This type of training prepares pilots for high g-force maneuvers and teaches them how to handle such circumstances while minimizing the chance of losing consciousness. The NTSB also wants the air races to look into the feasibility of using “g-suits” such as those warn by modern fighter pilots. These suits squeeze the legs and torso during high-g maneuvers to maintain enough blood in the brain so the pilot does not pass out.

More details from the investigation can be found here.

 Images: NTSB