The design mind On Air blog has a new podcast of an interview with Art Center’s Phil van Allen, Graduate Media Design professor and director of the New Ecology of Things Lab.

Chris Sallquist writes: “Van Allen suggests that innovation not only means meeting customer needs by cultivating ideas, but he translates the activity of innovating to actually inventing things and new medias. Van Allen also stresses that holding an actual tangible object inspires and enables designers to ‘re-think the whole communication process.’”

Check it out: The New Ecology of Things