"It is not just what it looks and feels like. Design is how it works" - Steve Jobs, Apple.

The quote by Steve Jobs is the essence, and partially the title, of a new book by former BusinesWeek reporter Jay Greene.

In a first-person narrative style Jay Greene tells the story of 8 design-led companies and how they have managed to create successful and iconic products by integrating 'Design Thinking' in their DNA. The book is based on case-studies of giants such as Nike and LEGO as well newish start-ups CLIF bar and Ace Hotel.

The concept of Design Thinking is, roughly, the art of understanding your users/customers and to translate their needs into new meaningful and desirable solutions, be it a product, a service or a system. It is a problem-solving and human-centered approach and two Danish companies Bang & Olufsen and LEGO are used as examples of the trouble established companies can run into if they lose sight of their customers in a constantly changing global market. While LEGO has since managed to re-emerge by reevaluating its design process, Bang & Olufsen have been slow to react and is still struggling. Jay Greene argues that in today's competitive market brand may be 'important' but design is 'crucial'.

If you are already familiar with the basic concepts of 'Design Thinking', DESIGN IS HOW IT WORKS may not offer any new perspectives, but if you think design is a field only concerned with style and form, this book will be an eye opener. For further reading, don't miss Tim Brown's recent book Change by Design

• www.jaygreene.com | Design is How it Works

Hip fashion designer Henrik Vibskov has introduced a new knitwear brand in his store in central Copenhagen.

The brand is called Kaffeslabberas and it is produced by a group of grannies with a passion for knitting.

The grannies are based at senior activity centre 'Sløjfen' in Copenhagen and all proceeds from the sales are channeled back to the community center.

Kaffeslabberas is produced in collaboration with Susanne Hoffmann, a Vibskov associate. Their focus is on creating as organic-as-possible, unique knitwear, primarily for kids but also grown-ups.

As if to certify the brand's authenticity, the products are labeled with a portrait of the granny who made it.

Related: Reknit + Net Granny

• Kaffeslabberas on Facebook

SMK, The National Gallery of Denmark, is participating in this year's music event Roskilde Festival 2010 with a series of action-based art works, under the title PingOut with SMK.

SMK invites festivalgoers to play ping-pong on unique tables decorated by young contemporary artists. Furthermore, the first 1000 players will receive a work of art shaped as a sweatband to help them wipe their sweat and tears.

The sweatbands, embroidered with the mysterious text 'I Miss Sol LeWitt', are produced by SMK in limited numbers in collaboration with the artist Nikolaj Recke.

In case you cannot make it to the festival, you can enter an on-line competition for 50 extra sweatbands by joining the project's Facebook page.

• www.smk.dk/pingout-with-smk

Traditionally we don't get to hear or see much about a museum exhibition until it is actually open to the public. However, MoMa is doing things differently with their future exhibition Talk to Me.

Talk to Me - an exhibition on the communication between people and objects - will not be opening before July 24 2011, but already now they've launched an exhibition website, or as they call it, an "online journal".

The idea of the website is to document the curatorial process by sharing findings, considerations, and explorations. At the site, you can see which projects are being evaluated by the curatorial team, and you are also invited to give feedback and even come up with suggestions for the exhibition.

• http://wp.moma.org/talk_to_me

NIKE78 is a project that challenge the function of a pair of NIKE shoes.

78 creatives have received a brand new pair of NIKE shoes and have be asked to challenge their function using 'sport' as an inspiration. After the shoes have been collected, an exhibition showcase is planned for the
London Design Festival 2010 but already now you can see some of the in-progress outcomes at the website's news section.

Nike78 is a project of Paul Jenkins, a final year graphic design student at the London College of Communication.

• http://www.nike78.co.uk

It is time for the Webby Awards again and no matter what you think of events like this, it is a great way of getting updated on new and interesting websites, trends etc. Just visit the site and browse through the different categories and nominees for inspiration.

And if you don't already know it, be sure not to miss - and vote for - POKE's Bakertweet! An intriguing way of using twitter to blend the physical and virtual world.

• http://webby.aol.com

Have you ever wondered just how *hetero* your twitter stream is?

Probably not, but here's a tool that can help you find out.

Howhetero is a web application that can analyze and rate your level of 'heteronormativity' based on words in your tweets. To prove a point, the application is very judgmental and words like "shopping" and "design" will decrease your hetero rating (if you're a boy).

The application was created for the Stockholm Pride event last summer and it has just been nominated for a Webby Award in the Interactive Advertising Category.

• http://www.stockholmpride.org/howhetero

Reknit is a service where you can turn an old sweater into something new.

The service is operated via the web, and all you got to do is to send in an old sweater and Reknit will unravel it and use the materials to create a new item.

Each month has a theme during which sweaters are turned into a certain item such as a glove, a hat, a scart, a laptop case etc. At the website you can vote for next months Reknit theme and you can also see a gallery of previously reknitted items.

Reknit is apparently run by a single person whose mother is doing all the knitting. Consequently, they only accept 30 requests per month.

• www.rekn.it Via Netted

For the past 10-15 years, an anonymous admirer have been sending different items to fashion designer Paul Smith by post.

Items include a a surfboard, a coffee-pot, a skateboard and lots of other things. These objects were never send in a box, they simply had post stamps on them. Quite amazingly, they still arrived at Paul Smith's store in Covent Garden, London.

The objects were recently exhibited at Stockholm Furniture Fair and Designboom has put together a great post with pictures from the exhibition, including some comments from Sir Paul himself.

• www.designboom.com