Strida EVO visits the Smithsonian

This Fall there will be a Red EVO on display at the Cooper-Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum in New York City. Strida Canada West is proud to be loaning one of our Red and Leather Strida EVOs to the museum to be used in a exhibit. The Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum is currently being renovated with the opening scheduled for December 12, 2014.

The exhibit that will feature the Strida Red EVO is the Beautiful User, Beautiful Users, is an exhibition about how designers address human needs and desires. In the mid-twentieth century, Henry Dreyfuss pioneered the methodology of user-centered design, applying the new fields of ergonomics and human factors to consumer products. User-centered design has expanded to address the needs of differently abled users and global populations as well as the design of complex systems and services. Designers today seek to actively engage users in the design process, while users have become an unpredictable creative force in their own right. The exhibition considers a range of design methodologies and practices, from user research to hacking, open source, and the maker culture.

Beautiful Users, installed in Cooper Hewitt’s gracious first-floor Design Process Galleries, will introduce visitors to one of the fundamental changes in design thinking over the past half-century: the shift toward designs based on observations of human anatomy and behavior.

The exhibit will include the original drawings and prototypes from the designer of the Strida, Mark Sanders as well as Strida Canada West’s Red EVO.

With the re-opening of the Cooper-Hewitt Museum there will be a new experience, The Pen. All visitors will be loaned an interactive Pen to collect and create during their visit. Symbolizing and embodying human creativity, the Pen is a key part of every visitor’s experience. With it, they will be able to record their visit, which can be viewed and shared online and supplemented during future visits. Visitors using their Pen will be able to access Strida Canada West’s website. Here is a link to the story behind the realization of the Pen and how it works.

I most likely will not be able to visit this exhibit but some of my many customers in New York City and surrounding area may, if so I would appreciate your comments and photographs.