Why indeed?

Or perhaps, wanting it open is a manual activity, while the physical movement of the opening door is an automatic activity. Regardless, more design consideration is required to make this a much better and more intuitive user experience.

Is this a Blackjack table? Image from TiPb.

Cliff Kuang, in his Fast Co Design article on The 6 Pillars of Steve Jobs’ Design Philosophy, talks about Jobs “finding simplicity for the future in metaphors from the past”.

They call this Skeuomorph Design where details are introduced to make designs look, sound, and feel familiar. A good example is the sound of the shutter programmed in digital cameras or the Nintendo Wii controller looking like a remote control.

It makes a lot of sense to use skeuomorphism to help bridge a communication gap by making an object’s function more intuitive to the user. This reduces the need of additional design details and hence promoting simplicity. However if used incorrectly, things could look tacky and out of place. So make sure you are inspired by the past instead. Do take note; there is a fine line between tacky and inspired by the past, so be careful!

Image by Martin F. Ramin for The Wall Street Journal

It was reported by the Wall Street Journal that the executives at Heinz spent 3 years developing a new larger ketchup packet that contains 3 times more ketchup than the original.

Some people rip off the corner of the packet with their teeth. Others, while driving, squirt the ketchup directly into their mouth, then add fries. Some forgo fries at the drive-through all together to keep from creating a mess in the car.

After observing these and other “compensating behaviors,” H. J. Heinz Co. says it spent three years developing a better ketchup packet.

As the name promises, “Dip and Squeeze” ketchup can be squeezed out through one end or the lid can be peeled back for dipping. The red, bottle-shaped packets hold three times the ketchup as traditional packets. The new containers are more expensive than the old sleeves, but Heinz hopes customers learn not to grab more than one or two.

To develop the new packet, Heinz staffers sat behind one-way, mirrored glass, watching consumers in 20 fake minivan interiors putting ketchup on fries, burgers, and chicken nuggets.

To try new prototypes himself, Mike Okoroafor, Heinz vice president of global packaging innovation and execution, bought a used minivan, taking it to local McDonald’s and Wendy’s drive-throughs to order fries and apply ketchup in the confined space.

After reading this article, 2 things came to mind.

The first thing was that: it’s about time! I recalled a distinct gnashing of teeth when my overenthusiastic ripping of a ketchup packet caused it to explode all over my t-shirt.

The second thing that came to mind, almost simultaneously with the first, was that this design thinking project took 3 years to complete? I had to reread that paragraph twice just to be sure that I got it right. While I don’t have the full details apart from what was reported in the article, and most of us probably don’t work at Heinz, but don’t you think 3 years seem excessive for a product of this nature?

I’m sure it can be argued that good design takes time to gestate, but a good design team with a strong critical insight should be able to do this, working full time, in less than 1/3 of that time. And that is even a conservative estimate.

However if we consider that this packet was “design by committee”, then things could start to get a little clearer. If this was the case, then I fully applaud the sheer willpower of the design team in seeing the project (and its countless of iterations) to its end.

The longest I’ve ever worked on a project was over a year, operating 6 days a week leading a team of 5 designing a range of 11 products. I was burnt out after that experience. So I can’t begin to imagine what working on a project for 3 years feels like. If design thinking has to even take this long to implement, then it is no wonder businesses are losing faith in the approach.

I would love to hear your thoughts? Also if there is someone who has been close to this project and can share further insights, please do!

Via: Thoughyoushouldseethis

James Higgs writes an interesting article about the inconsistencies of Apple’s aesthetic. In one corner you have Apple’s sublime and minimal industrial design where every corner or radii has been considered.

These devices have become increasingly simple and pared down, even as the power contained in them has increased. There is very little, if anything, extraneous on the Magic Trackpad or the MacBook Air. And of course the iPhones 4 and 4S are radically simple, yet well-constructed masterpieces of industrial design.

Then in the other corner you have a number of craptastic over-styled iOS apps and Mac graphical interfaces such as faux leather on the Calendar App, or Game Center’s green Casino table (with the token flags) etc.

Still fewer have a chuckle when they see the new Address Book app on Mac OS X Lion, or the even more recent Find My Friends iPhone app.

These apps, and many more besides, all stem from a completely different, and I would say opposite aesthetic sensibility than the plain devices they run on.

[snip]

They are an expression of purest kitsch, sentimentality, and ornamentation for its own sake. In Milan Kundera’s brilliant defintion, kitsch is “the absolute denial of shit”. These are Disney-like apps, sinister in their mendacity.

The newly popular word for this type of design is “skeuomorphism”. Strictly speaking it means retaining design features from earlier designs when those features previously had a specific reason for being that way, but do not any longer. A good example would be iPad synthesizer apps that include “knobs” that you can “turn”, or “cables” that you can “plug in”.

No one but Apple knows if this was an intentional tug on what our minds are familiar with, or a sign that there is no centralize style guide or creative direction at Apple. We can, however, learn a few things from this.

Firstly you don’t have to be perfect to be considered the best. Next you also don’t have to be perfect to be loved by everyone. And finally you only have to be perfect where it counts, so make your decisions and pick your battles.

John Gruber, from Daring Fireball, tells it like it is. For example, his thought on people wishing for larger 4-inch iPhone screens:

Apple decided on the optimal size for an iPhone display back in 2006. If they thought 4-inches was better, overall, as the one true size for the iPhone display, then the original iPhone would have had a 4-inch display.

I agree. Jony Ive probably had a bunch of iPhone foam models with different sizes and the model with the 3.5-inch screen probably felt the best in Steve Job’s hand.

John also shares some good insights on how and when we can expect a new iPhone form factor:

Apple isn’t going to make a new form factor just for the sake of newness itself — they make changes only if the changes make things decidedly better. Thinner, stronger, smaller, more efficient. If they don’t have a new design that brings about such adjectives, they’re going to stick with what they have.

[snip]

Apple is a company of patterns and cycles. These product cycles keep the machine functioning at a steady pace. They broke one pattern with the iPhone 4S: all previous iPhones were released in June. But they’ve added a new one: a two-year cycle that starts with a new form factor (3G/4) followed a year later by a new phone with the same form factor but significantly improved internals (3GS/4S). If next year’s phone is named “iPhone 5”, then I’ll expect a lookalike iPhone 5S in 2013.

John’s comments mirrors my own thoughts in my earlier article on mobile phone brands copying iPhones. I never really expected the new iPhone to have a change in its form factor. However when I called it the new phone the iPhone 5, what I missed was that Apple only changes the number when the form factor changes such as how the iPad evolved to iPad 2.

Finally, I like to say that Siri intrigues me. Is it strange that I keep on wondering how she looks like for real? Is she even a she? Function wise, I’m excited. Since it can do speech to text, it looks like it can help me with a faster blogging workflow. But I’ll hold off my judgment until I get a chance to play around with it. How about you? What are your thoughts on the new iPhone 4S?

If you can’t see the video above, please click on this link.

Check out this great little video, by Aaron Trinder, on how designers or creative people work within a space and how this may impact how we design desks in the future. Some food for thought?

Suitably inspired, I though I might also share my space at home with you. It’s mid way between clean and cluttered. I’m a working pile kind of person as you can see with the stacks of mail, books I’m reading and a sketchbook etc. on the right. Up top (not in the picture) we have two shelves of books. I’ve got a broadband modem, jacked into my laptops for maximum speed, seated next to a bank of power plugs. I’ve also got a bag of munchies for my late night cravings. Yes it’s 12.13am here.

Via: Herman Miller.

If you can’t see the video above, please click on this link.

Insert expletives of awe here!

Finally, you can now sketch on real paper, with a real writing instrument, and get your artwork converted seamlessly into an Illustrator or Photoshop format. Here take my money…

On the flip side, here is a brand that is willing to do some major re-thinking of their product range in a bid to innovate and grow. Even if it means potentially making some of their product, like their drawing tablets, obsolete. That takes guts.

Here is another thought. They have kept traditional sketching on paper alive, especially in this iPad dominated era, by evolving it into something the enjoys the strengths of both the digital and analog worlds.

Via: @Madebyanonymous

Amid Moradganjeh, a Masters student at the Umeå Institute of Design, dropped me an email with a link to his thesis project done in collaboration with Microsoft. Rimino, is a next generation mobile device interface concept that wants to be intuitive, prioritizes human needs, and focuses on enhancing the human experience.

Project Rimino redefines mobile experience through human factors research and design thinking. Informed by human experience, the project is guided by both observational and experimental design research methods.

The Rimino concept is an E-paper mobile device with a user interface inspired by print posters. Historically, as technology has progressed, devices have become more conspicuous. Rimino challenges this trend and presents the alternative: technology that is more integrated and more sensitive to the human experience.

Rimino basically solves one of the biggest problems we have using touch screen devices today, and that is not being able to see what is happening under our finger. With the Rimino, we tap the back of the device instead. While some of his ideas are not entirely new (especially when taken separately), the device ends up being a collection of interesting interface solutions that includes using the corner of the device as a writing tool, and the use of a flexible soft body as a way of entering commands.

Despite the technology still being at least 5-10 years ahead of us, the video of the persona and scenario story is nevertheless pretty cool. For more information on the Rimino and Amid’s extensive design process, check out Rimino.com.

EDIT: On hindsight, and after reading the boat loads of information on the Rimino site, I found that the project looked less like a research thesis and more like a design project, abet an in-depth and extensive one. As mentioned earlier, I did not see a lot of original thought, but instead a collection of ideas that was nothing really new. Data collection and testing seemed anecdotal at best, but the process was well thought out.

If this was then a pure design exercise emphasizing a designer’s critical insight, I wonder if the design of the physical phone could have been done better. There were at times in the video that I though the screen was going to peel of like a sticker (which it probably was!). But let’s not be too harsh, it is clear that the focus of Admid’s thesis was on the interface design; he was in Umeå’s Interaction Design Program after all.

The Vol portable speaker designed by Hironao Tsuboi is a work of beautiful precision crafted electronics that will appeal to any designer (or non-designer) music aficionado that grew up during the era of turntables and hi-fi. Made of aluminum and reminiscent of car radio volume dials, the speaker turns on with a twist and then continues to rotate as a volume control.

My favorite part is the bottom housing that epitomizes “form follows function”. The portable speaker runs on a lithium ion battery that is recharged via a mini USB slot, and has a microphone jack that accepts your latest tunes.

Via: designboom.

Six months ago I called the consumer electronics (CE) industry ugly after they launched a plethora of computing tablets to compete with the iPad. I’m happy to say that my faith is slowly being restored by not one, but two CE industry stalwarts.

Both have similar backgrounds. They once enjoyed market leadership, but have since fallen out of favor. Their businesses struggle in the red against a competition that is stealing boatloads of their market share. They have Design in the DNA, but it was lost and now rediscovered as they looked to design and innovation as a means to resurrect their brand from the ashes. They are Sony and Motorola, and I believe they will shine again.

Sony Vaio Z

The brand new Sony Vaio Z is what I would call the next archetype evolution between a desktop and a laptop. This “ultraportable” boast a carbon-fiber chassis, 13.1″ 1600×900 screen that runs on a 2.7GHz Intel Core i7 processor, 256GB SSD, and 8GB RAM. It uses a “sheet battery” that allows the Vaio Z to run for up to 7 hours. (Sorry, I got carried away with the specs! )

Before you scream MacBook Air COPY, take a look at their Power Media Dock attachment that boosts the computing power of the Vaio Z with an AMD Radeon 6650M GPU with 1GB of dedicated memory connected with Sony’s own Thunderbolt type technology called “Light Peak”.

So instead of building a MBA copy, it looks like they are creating a hardware modular ecosystem that may allow them to carve a new computing paradigm for themselves. Is this the start of modular computing or modular product design? I can also imagine a range of add-ons that could include faster CPUs, snap on HDD for additional storage and even displays. Oh my, many computing concepts of 10 years past are rushing back to greet us!

Motorola Atrix

Here is another interesting proposition that made me look twice. When the Motorola Artix smoothly slots into it’s revolutionary Lapdock, the Lapdock automatically fires-up to allow you to continue your mobile activities on a bigger screen. This is not an entirely new idea, but it was unexpected in this era of tablets. Together with the Lapdock, the Artix is basically an archetype that allows for users to bypass the need for tablets.

Not only that, when you have phones that are as powerful as computers, why would you need to own both? I’m sure many of you will dive into the software details and the things you can do with the Lapdock, but if you consider again the long term computing potential of mobile phones the possibilities become endless. Best of all Motorola just has to leverage on their strengths in mobile communications and the way forward is starting to become clear.

———-

I’m actually really excited to see the CE industry do something they have not done in a long time, and that is to think, design and innovate ahead of the competition. Hopefully, the general sickness of “follow the leader” can now finally come to an end, well unless it is a strategic competitive advantage to follow the leader. Now please excuse me while I go and try to get my hands on one of those gadgets!