By Peter D. GeldartThe post-WWII years brought a need to house returned veterans and their new families, along with an excitement about new types and forms of housing. Working in the spirit of the age, 35-year-old Ottawa architect James Strutt in 1959 worked with six clients on round houses—a set of designs intended to reduce building costs by using materials most efficiently, while creating modernist, open-plan spaces.  The designs, inspired by the work of Buckminster Fuller and Frank Lloyd Wright, were for single-floor structures in which a curve of rooms and an open living-dining area surround a central hexagonal service core built of concrete block. The whole is topped by a geometrically complex roof, shaped using tongue-and-groove Western Red Cedar to create a hyperbolic paraboloid, or saddle-like shape. Strutt’s own family home of 1956, built according a similar scheme over six weeks for less than survives in the Gatineau Hills, near Ottawa, and is being rehabilitated by the National Capital Commission. Author Peter D. Geldart’s family were the original residents of a Strutt-designed round house. Geldart, who has a background in architecture, gives a thorough overview of the architectural drawings of the six round houses using Strutt’s original hand-drawn materials, now held at the National Archives of Canada. These show variations on the theme, with schemes varying from 1,400 to 2,000 square feet, and extra wings swapped out for carports.  By publishing this material, Geldart hopes to contribute to a contemporary revival of Strutt’s ideas. “Is the concept of a ‘low-cost house of 1,000 sq. ft.’ viable in the 21st century?” he asks. “While the house was built to the standards of the day, it can now be built using modern materials and techniques.”  As appeared in the June 2025 issue of Canadian Architect magazine  The post Book Review: The Round Houses of 1959 Designed by Architect James Strutt appeared first on Canadian Architect. #book #review #round #houses #designed

Tech Wheeled, rugged robot dog built for extreme industrial missions New robot to revolutionize industrial inspection and disaster response Published May 22, 2025 6:00am EDT close Wheeled, rugged robot dog built for extreme industrial missions The machine is designed to inspect industrial sites, respond to disasters, carry out logistics operations and support scientific research. Deep Robotics, a company from China, has unveiled a durable four-legged robot built to operate in extreme environments that humans struggle to traverse. It's called the Lynx M20, and it builds upon the agility of its predecessor, the Lynx robot dog.This versatile machine is designed to handle anything from inspecting industrial sites and responding to disasters to carrying out logistics operations and supporting scientific research. Here’s what you need to know.JOIN THE FREE "CYBERGUY REPORT": GET MY EXPERT TECH TIPS, CRITICAL SECURITY ALERTS AND EXCLUSIVE DEALS, PLUS INSTANT ACCESS TO MY FREE "ULTIMATE SCAM SURVIVAL GUIDE" WHEN YOU SIGN UP! Lynx M20Advanced terrain capabilities set the Lynx M20 apartThe Lynx M20 combines wheels and legs to traverse challenging terrain. It can move at an average speed of 4.5 mph, but in optimal conditions, it can go up to 11 mph. It can also walk and climb obstacles using its independent wheel-locking mechanism. Its impressive traversal makes it able to cross rugged mountain paths, muddy wetlands and urban ruins.The Lynx M20 is also great at navigation and monitoring, with its 96-line lidar system, which gives it 360-degree awareness. It also has a front-facing wide-angle camera capable of livestreaming and bidirectional lighting for venturing into dark environments.AI-powered intelligence for real-world challengesWhat really sets the Lynx M20 apart is its use of advanced artificial intelligence. The robot is equipped with AI motion-control algorithms that allow it to autonomously perceive and adapt to its environment, adjusting its posture and gait to handle everything from rocky trails to debris-strewn ruins.Thanks to reinforcement learning, the Lynx M20 can actually improve its performance over time, learning from experience so that it gets even better at tackling new or unexpected obstacles. This means it's not just following a set of pre-programmed instructions but is actively making decisions and getting smarter with every mission.The robot's dual 96-line lidar sensors and wide-angle cameras feed data into its onboard processors, enabling real-time mapping, omnidirectional obstacle avoidance and autonomous navigation, even in low visibility or completely dark environments.WORLD'S FIRST AI-POWERED INDUSTRIAL SUPER-HUMANOID ROBOT Lynx M20IP66 rated: Built to be toughThe Lynx M20 features IP66 water and dust resistance and operates in temperatures from minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit to 131 degrees Fahrenheit. This toughness makes it suitable for harsh weather conditions. Weighing 72.8 pounds, it can carry up to a 33-pound payload, climb 31.5-inch obstacles and navigate 45-degree inclines. The robot runs for 2.5 to 3 hours per charge with a hot-swap battery system to keep it going longer. Lynx M20The pro variant has advanced featuresThe Lynx M20 also has a Pro version, which includes autonomous charging, SLAM-based positioning and advanced navigation tools. It has more connectivity options, like USB and Gigabit Ethernet, to enhance its functionality.PricingThe price of the Lynx M20 is unknown as Deep Robotics has yet to reveal the details. However, its standard Lynx robodog is estimated to cost around meaning this could cost more.CHINA'S TRON 1 ROBOT HURDLES OVER OBSTACLES LIKE THEY'RE NOTHING Lynx M20What does this mean for you?If you work in industries like construction, energy, logistics or emergency response, the Lynx M20 could be a game changer. Its ability to handle rough terrain, carry heavy loads and operate in extreme weather means you can send it into places that are risky or even impossible for people to reach.Whether it is inspecting power lines after a storm, delivering supplies across a muddy worksite or helping out in disaster zones, this robot is designed to keep your team safer and your operations running smoothly. Its hot-swap battery system also means less downtime, so you can rely on it for long shifts without constant recharging interruptions.Kurt's key takeawaysThe Lynx M20 isn't just any robot. It's a tough, smart machine built to handle some of the hardest jobs out there. By combining wheels and legs, it moves in ways that most robots can't, making it perfect for tricky terrain and tough conditions.We don't know the exact price yet, but judging by what it offers, it's clearly designed for serious work. If you're dealing with challenging environments and need a reliable helper, this robot might just be the partner you've been waiting for.CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APPWhat are your thoughts on how industrial inspection robots like this might transform workplace safety and efficiency? Let us know by writing us at Cyberguy.com/Contact.For more of my tech tips and security alerts, subscribe to my free CyberGuy Report Newsletter by heading to Cyberguy.com/Newsletter.Ask Kurt a question or let us know what stories you'd like us to cover.Follow Kurt on his social channels:Answers to the most-asked CyberGuy questions:New from Kurt:Copyright 2025 CyberGuy.com. All rights reserved. Kurt "CyberGuy" Knutsson is an award-winning tech journalist who has a deep love of technology, gear and gadgets that make life better with his contributions for Fox News & FOX Business beginning mornings on "FOX & Friends." Got a tech question? Get Kurt’s free CyberGuy Newsletter, share your voice, a story idea or comment at CyberGuy.com. #wheeled #rugged #robot #dog #built

Aligning design leadership with business goals is the motion we needed from the startThe Mysterious Life Of UX Designers is a good example how others don’t really understand the value of what we do because we don’t connect to business goals. We should have been connecting to business needs from the start.For way too long we’ve been running user experience teams like they’re some kind of magical creative unicorns that should somehow be immune to business realities.That’s complete nonsense.Our teams need to deliver value, not just pretty pictures or endless research projects with a lot of hand waving. We should be thinking about our teams like a CEO thinks about their business — with clear goals, measurements, and accountability for results.I’ve seen organizations where design was treated as a cost center rather than a strategic advantage, and this happens because we haven’t been willing to demonstrate our value in terms executives actually care about — outcomes and the bottom line.The best UX leaders run their teams like strategic businesses within the larger organization, with a focus on delivering measurable outcomes.A lot of the concepts below are not new — hence the links to resources — we have just chosen to ignore them. We need to leverage what’s proven to work so we can forward as a construct.It’s time we grew up and started treating user experience like the business function it truly is — Here’s how we can get there.Map to Business OutcomesNothing matters more than tying UX work to business outcomes. If you can’t explain how your design improves conversion, reduces support costs, or drives retention, you’re just drawing pretty pictures.Too many user experience teams waste time on work that doesn’t move important metrics. They design in a vacuum, divorced from what actually matters to the business. This is career suicide in today’s environment where every team needs to justify their existence.When approaching any project, your first question should be: “What business outcome will this improve?” If you don’t have a clear answer, stop everything until you do.The best design leaders start every presentation with a problem in business terms first, then explain how to addresses it. This approach changes how executives perceive your value.Remember that executives don’t care about your amazing journey map — they care about results.Leverage Research to Manage RiskResearch isn’t just about making users happy, it’s about managing business risk. Every design decision represents potential risk, and good research helps mitigate that risk before you commit significant resources to a direction.When you frame research as risk management, executives suddenly get a lot more interested. Nobody wants to launch a product that fails spectacularly in the market.On a panel, I was asked how do I innovate, and I said something along the lines of I don’t believe in innovation, I believe in managing risk. It’s about making the right small bets until you need to make a big bet that’s informed.Evaluative research shows us where the landmines are before we step on them. It’s like having insurance for your product development process.I’ve worked with companies that saved millions by catching major usability and strategic direction issues before launch through simple testing. That’s not a design win — that’s a business win that came through smart risk management.A lot of this is how you frame your research within business terms — don’t say “users didn’t like it.” Say “we identified a risk that could potentially impact our projected revenue by 15% if we launch as planned.”Agile processes are time-boxed way of measuring value and having mileposts along the way. The word “Sprint” creates a sense of urgency, by design.Time Box Projects To Demonstrate ValueI’m a huge believer in time boxing design work, putting names and dates to drive ownership. Nothing focuses the mind quite like a declared deadline and limited resources.This isn’t about rushing — it’s about being realistic about the diminishing economic returns that come with endless refinement.Time is money. By establishing measurement points, we show stakeholders they are getting value for what they are paying for.Parkinson’s Law, which was published in a 1955 issue of The Economist, states that “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion,” and I’ve seen this play out countless times in design projects. Give a resource three weeks, and they’ll deliver in three weeks. Give them three months, and they’ll take three months and the solution might not be substantially better.Good user experience leaders understand when to call a design “good enough” and move on, especially in today’s environment. I’ve found that setting aggressive but achievable time boxes forces teams to focus on solving the core problems rather than endless refinement of edge cases.The real reason there was a drive towards agile processes was this — it’s one big time box exercise. It’s a way of driving measurable value.The real world moves fast, and a pretty good solution shipped today usually beats a perfect solution shipped six months from now. The word “Sprint” creates a sense of urgency, by design.As much as we don’t like to admit this, we aren’t inventing fire. We should design into what we have until there’s a clear decision to do something radically different for business reasons.Design into Your Existing Application, Not Around ItOne of the most expensive mistakes I see UX teams make is constantly trying to reinvent the wheel. Every new feature becomes an excuse to redesign everything from scratch, creating massive development costs and confusing users who have to relearn your interface.Jakob’s Law reminds us that users spend most of their time using other products, so they prefer your site to work the same way as all the other sites they already know, including your own.When you design within and in addition to existing patterns, you’re leveraging the learning users already have, reducing cognitive load and development costs simultaneously.I worked with a team that kept pushing for radical redesigns of their enterprise application that would have cost a lot of money, but what actually moved their metrics was incremental improvements that maintained consistency with what users already understood.Redesigns are expensive and unless they are proven to be dramatically better, they hurt engagement which is money poured down the drain. One of the best examples is Microsoft’s Metro Design Langugage — transformative but too different for users to accept.The best UX teams I know understand the difference between innovation that matters and innovation for its own sake. your revolutionary thinking for where it truly adds value.Atomic design is a mental model that creates a shared language designers can align on. That saves money and time in any environment.Create Design Systems as a Shared LanguageDesign systems aren’t just about making things look consistent — they’re about creating massive business efficiency and a shared language that aligns organizations.When every designer reinvents buttons, forms, and navigation patterns from scratch and gives them names that are non-sensical, you’re burning money that could be spent solving actual user problems.As Nathan Curtis wisely put it, “A design system isn’t a project. It’s a product serving products.”When you treat your design system as a product, you’re investing in something that pays dividends across your entire portfolio. It’s the difference between buying assets and renting them over and over again. The organizations that get the most value from their UX teams are those that establish and maintain robust design systems.These systems dramatically reduce design and development time, create consistency for users, and allow teams to focus on solving unique problems rather than redesigning form fields for the hundredth time.The business case is clear — design systems aren’t a luxury, they’re a competitive necessity that scales teams.The problem with the double diamond isn’t the labels, but the size of the diamonds themselves — sometimes the problem is clearly evident, and the solution just has to be worked through.Process with Intent, Not for Process’ SakeA lot of UX processes are just religious dogma that people follow without understanding why. I don’t want a process; I want results.That’s why I call them frameworks, not processes — frameworks can be adapted based on the specific challenge you’re facing. Processes sound like you have to follow every step.For example, the concerns I have with the double diamond or design thinking isn’t the labels, but the size of the steps themselves — sometimes the problem is clearly evident, and the solution just has to be worked through. Your approach should be tailored to the problem you are facing.All design approaches are non-linear and we should act accordingly.I’ve seen teams waste weeks on journey maps that never influenced a single design decision. I’ve watched designers conduct extensive user research when the key insights were obvious after the third interview. Blindly following processes without understanding their purpose is just busy work masquerading as UX.Sometimes you need to skip steps. Sometimes you need to adapt the framework to fit your constraints. The best UX leaders know when to follow the book and when to throw it out the window. Your job isn’t to follow a perfect process — it’s to deliver business value in the most efficient way possible.If your process is getting in the way of outcomes, you have the wrong process.Use and Improve Existing Mental Models —Especially in the Time of AIAs we rush headlong into the AI revolution, we don’t need to reinvent how humans interact with technology.Conversational design leverages mental models people already have— they know how to ask questions and have discussions, and have done so for years with existing applications with Natural Language Processing as an example.These mental models are why chatbots and conversational interfaces feel intuitive despite being relatively new.The most successful AI implementations I’ve seen build on familiar interaction patterns rather than forcing users to learn entirely new ways of working. They understand that users already have well-established mental models about how to get things done and teaching new ones is challenging.Smart teams leverage existing models instead of creating cognitive friction because learning new ones cost money and time. That’s good design.This is about being pragmatic, not lazy. When you tap into existing mental models, you reduce the learning curve for your users, which means faster adoption and less resistance to change. You’re making your AI features feel like a natural extension of what users already know rather than an alien imposition.In any gold rush, the winners won’t be those with the most advanced algorithms, but those who make the technology feel most natural and accessible.Craft Costs Money; Use It WiselyLet’s get real about craft — every pixel you perfect costs the company money. Those extra hours spent on subtle animations, perfect typography, and delightful interactions represent real investment that needs to justify itself in business outcomes.This doesn’t mean we abandon craft, it means we need to be strategic about where we invest.The login screen users see once a month probably doesn’t deserve the same level of craft as the core workflow they use every day.I’ve worked with designers who fought for weeks to perfect details that users never noticed, while ignoring fundamental usability issues that were costing the company customers. The best designers I know have a keen sense of where craft translates to business value and where it’s just self-indulgence.Good UX leaders understand how to allocate their craft budget where it matters most to impact the bottom line. They pick their battles carefully and invest their craft where it delivers the most impact for users and for the business.Running UX Like a BusinessAt the end of the day, running your UX team like a business means taking accountability for results, not just activities. It means speaking the language of the organization and showing how design drives business outcomes. It means being strategic about where you invest your limited resources for maximum impact.The most successful UX leaders I’ve worked with don’t hide behind buzzwords or mystify their process — They’re clear about the value they deliver, ruthless about prioritization, and focused on metrics that matter to the business.They understand that UX isn’t a special snowflake that exists outside normal business considerations — it’s a critical business function that needs to demonstrate ROI.If you want your team to get the respect, budget, and influence it deserves, start running it like the CEO of a business, not like the head of an art department.The days of UX getting a pass on business accountability are over, and that’s actually a good thing for all of us.Running UX as a businesswas originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story. #running #business #like #should #have

LEGO releases most of its new sets on the first of each month. But some sets can’t be contained in such a tidy way. Some sets come out whenever they darn well please. Today sees the release of three new sets that are all pretty cool, with a Mario Kart set leading the pack. Let’s take a look at the LEGO sets releasing on May 15.LEGO Mario Kart: Mario & Standard KartLEGO Mario Kart: Mario & Standard KartThe coolest new release this month for IGN readers has to be this Mario Kart LEGO set. It’s aimed at the 18+ age group, which means it’s a somewhat advanced build and is intended for display rather than play. It’s a great-looking take on Mario Kart, and it comes out just a few weeks before millions of Nintendo diehards will be trying out Mario Kart Worldfor the first time when the Switch 2 launches. Check out our We Build LEGO Mario Kart feature to see exactly what goes into building this set for Nintendo fans.LEGO Icons Shuttle Carrier AircraftLEGO Icons Shuttle Carrier Aircraftat LEGO StoreThere's been no shortage of space-themed LEGO sets over the years. The latest entry lets you build the Boeing 747 and NASA Space Shuttle Enterprise. It’s also one of the many LEGO sets for adults and is intended to be displayed on a desk or shelf. It would make a good gift for the space science fan in your life.LEGO Art: Keith Haring – Dancing FiguresLEGO Art: Keith Haring – Dancing Figuresat LEGO StoreAlso out May 15 is a set depicting the iconic dancing figures made famous by artist Keith Haring. You build five colorful, boldly outlined dancing figures that you can hang on a wall or set on stands to display on a shelf.LEGO Mario Kart Spiny Shell - LEGO Insiders Rewards CenterLEGO Super Mario: Mario Kart - Spiny ShellSee it at LEGO StoreLEGO Insidersaccrue Insiders points when they make purchases at the LEGO Store. If you’ve racked up 2,500 LEGO Insiders points, you can exchange them in the LEGO Insiders Rewards Center for LEGO Super Mario: Mario Kart - Spiny Shell. It’s a buildable re-creation of the dreaded Blue Shell power-up from the Mario Kart series. Note that you actually exchange your points for a promo code that adds the shell set to your next purchase at the LEGO Store. In other words, you have to make a purchase to redeem it.New LEGO Gifts With PurchaseLEGO Up-Scaled Baby AstronautSee it at LEGO StoreLEGO Mini Ninja Combo MechSee it at LEGO StoreWhile supplies last, if you spend or more at the LEGO Store, you’ll get the Up-Scaled Baby Astronaut. The buildable not-so-mini-figure goes along with the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft set discussed above.And if you spend or more on Ninjago-themed sets, you’ll get a Mini Ninja Combo Mech setfor free. In other news, preorders are up for LEGO Pixar Luxo Jr., the lovable, leaping lamp from the Pixar logo. And if you're looking for more new sets, check out all the biggest LEGO sets of May 2025.Chris Reed is a commerce editor and deals expert for IGN. He also runs IGN's board game and LEGO coverage. You can follow him on Bluesky. #lego #mario #kart #more #new