Yves Bahar: Creating Objects that Tell Stories: www.TED.com

Yves begins his speech by talking about how when he started out in design he was initially instructed to design form the outside only, just tocreate ugly objects into good looking ones. But he says that he did not want to do this, just be a stylist. He started out in another direction by creating his own work, and designing for the human experience and not just to stylise objects.

He explores the design and production of products that are basded on the human experience and values. He sends the message that as designers we need to design for a more positive relationship between humans, products, work, and everything around us. The production of objects that are based on values can be to do with sustainability, environmental issues, low power consumption, function and perhapse beauty.

Yves goes into quite a lot of detail about one of his product designs which is the jawbone, the jawbone is a bluetooth headset thats is designed with beauty in mind. He says that humans put countless of hours and lots of money into how the products that go near their face look, they have to be beautiful, one example he gives of this is the sunglasses that people wear. He then says why do bluetooth headsets have to be ugly, where the design is just to hide the interior. The jawbone is designed to be many things, aesthetically pleasing and tecghnologically sound. The technology inside is able to detect when the user is talking by feeling thier skin move, and when this happens the headset is able to cut outside sound out of the ear piece. But at the sma time one of the big needs is for the overall product to look good, so designers and engineers worked side by side constantly changing designs so that everything worked.

He also talkes about one endevour that is very interesting, it is theOne Laptop Per Child (OLPC) scheme where Yves was directly involved in the designing of the computer. This was a design directed at the value that all should be open to have an education, and itodays society computers aren one of the main tools for eductation. The computers were given to children in third world countries in africa and mos notably Nigeria and Mongolia (asia). It was designed for kids but was not to be used as a toy. The Design was from the inside out not just slapping on an exterior. He also talkes about how hard it was to try to get the computers manufactured and not have others try and change the design, they stayed to the original designs.

Yves finishes with saying if companies can work with values, then if everyone works together then maybe we can change the world.