The other day I was walking around the city with my friends and after a while they started getting tired and falling behind. One of them held up her hand and made a blinking gesture by opening and closing her fingers to single she was tired. I asked her why she did that and she said “You know when your mac is sleeping and the little light pulses? Thats what I’m doing.”

I found this to be pretty interesting. My friend picked up a behavior from watching a machine. So what is this, life imitating design? We are so affected by our machines that the things they do, we try to imitate.  We as humans naturally try to relate things in our environment. My friend has established a relationship with this product she interacts with everyday which seems odd to the casual observer but I think is just as natural as imitating the behavior of friends, pets, or anything else.

As anyone who’s ever used a BIC lighter knows the child safety lock can be tricky to use if your hands are anything but clean and dry. So I removed the little metal piece so I can use it much more easily.

This got me thinking about other modifications I’ve seen people doing to other objects and the D.I.Y. culture related to it that is growing in popularity. I’m more intrigued by altered objects than I am by the objects themselves. It’s interesting to see how people have taken the time and effort to make something they own more individual and specific to their use patterns. I really like to see people taking an active and involved interest in the things they own and creating an intimate relationship to an object by slightly varying it from everyone else’s.

Here is a short list of some great sources on the subject.

Readymade magazine – ReadyMade is a magazine featuring instructions for making stuff out of simple materials and sometimes trash. Other highlights include the How Did You Get That F*&%ing Awesome Job and the Macgyver challenge every issue to make something out of an abundantly discarded object.

Make Magazine a more indepth D.I.Y. site than readymade with more tech mods and less houseware centered.

Instructables A massive site dedicated D.I.Y. projects with instructions to do just about anything.

Design It Yourself a great book on basic design concepts of design and project ideas