Current ideas

An interesting source of recent design ideas is the top-50 entries of the "green gadgets" competition hosted by core77: http://www.core77.com/greenergadgets/.

A few issues to analyse:

1. The huge differences between countries/cultures that are represented in the selection
2. The degree of novelty in the selected ideas
3. The criteria to define the judging panel
4. The (vast) differences between ideas selected by experts and the voting by the general public
5. The range of qualitative variation amongst all entries
6. Foreseable feasibility of selected ideas
7. Presentation materials, choice of representation, language & code of communication
8. Evaluation of selected ideas from a patent or IP viewpoint
9. Classification of selected entries considering the three areas of sustainability: social, economic & environmental
10. Systemic view of selected entries: range of stakeholders, consequences, etc

I reckon such design competitions make an interesting source for masters/honours thesis projects