Posts about design
Sunday, March 25th, 2007
Whilst clearing out the attic the other day I found a load of old notebooks full of various doodlings. As often happens when I’m clearing out, I became much more engrossed in the things I was supposed to be clearing out than the clearing out itself.
Flicking through the notebooks I noticed a sketch for a new Open University logo that I drew just before I left in 2003. The Marketing department were beginning to ‘revitalise the brand’ with Wolff Olins, and the whole identity was destined to change. (I know that a brand is about much more than the logo – imagery, ‘voice’, colour, type, layout, experience all work together to create the most successful ones – but the logo is high impact and remains consistent across media.)
I wanted to retain the familiarity of the hole-in-the-shield mark, but soften it a little and make it more approachable than the old corporate look. I tried to use the shield to frame what I believe is at the heart of the OU – people; the transformational effect that open access to learning has on people’s lives and the passion education ignites in its students.
The new OU logo wouldn’t look out of place in this rogue’s gallery
You can make up your own mind as to how successful I was, but I’d ask you to contrast my sketch with the Wolff Olins version. Yes, the University was desperate to appear more modern and shrug off its 1970’s ‘housewife university’ tag, but the result is sterile; a pastiche trying too hard to be cool. They were ahead of the curve with the visuals (anticipating the Web 2.0 look, or possibly ripping off Apple depending on your viewpoint) but being fashionable is a difficult game to play. Too cutting edge and you risk appearing silly when things move on. Just look at ‘Corporate World meet Web 2.0′ on Flickr (originally uploaded by gtmcknight). That’s a joke. Unfortunately for the OU, their ‘revitalised’ logo is for real.
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Thursday, February 15th, 2007
In 1995 Alan Cooper’s About Face coined the phrase ’stopping the proceedings with idiocy’. He was describing the needless dialog boxes that blight our interactions with computers. About Face 3.0 is due this year so I might send my original copy to Microsoft. Why? Windows Updates.
The good thing is that updates happen more-or-less in the background so I don’t have to be troubled by them. No, the trouble starts once the updates are complete.
Up pops the Automatic Updates dialog box. Windows arrogantly assumes it is more important than the diagram I’m drawing or the document I’m writing. My concentration is broken and now I must choose, not whether I want to restart my computer, but when.
I imagine that only the most ardent security nut is going to want to restart immediately – to save all their work, close all their open applications and wait for several minutes until Windows comes back up. Most people would rather get on with what they’re doing oblivious to the inner workings of the operating system. Presumably Restart Later is Microsoft’s concession to the rest of us. But even this choice is illusory; the dialog being dismissed only to reappear later on. What’s the big hurry? I’ve managed just fine without these changes up ’till now. The fact that they’ve been released shouldn’t override what I’m doing. Why not just wait for the computer to be restarted naturally, at the end of the day or whenever it usually happens? Or, even better, engineer the software so that it doesn’t have to be restarted at all.
The computer is a tool, not an end in itself. It’s good that Microsoft takes security seriously, but not at the expense of my work. Excellent interfaces respect the user. They tiptoe, working in the background, presenting things when they’re needed and very rarely interrupting. They don’t blunder straight in, assume they’re the most important thing on the computer and then wrest control away from you. These kinds of dialog boxes are the idiot in your computer talking. Every one that we can remove means the idiot’s voice gets a little quieter. As interface designers its our job to try and silence him.
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Tuesday, December 19th, 2006
Ask any parent with young children what they’d like for Christmas and a bit of peace and quiet will probably come pretty high up the list. The trouble is, toy designers don’t seem to have the same priorities.
Most of the electronic toys I’ve seen use a switch that combines power with volume settings for quiet and loud. When young children turn the toys on their lack of fine motor skills means they invariably push the switch as far as it’ll go … to loud. The designers want the toy to be stimulating and sound is a big part of that experience, but does it have to be so loud? There are other audiences to consider: parents, other children, neighbours etc.
Why not change the positions of the switch to off, loud and quiet? That way when the switch is being pushed by little fingers quiet becomes the most likely position. Or better still, simplify the switch and save money by getting rid of the loud setting altogether. (Children’s hearing develops very rapidly so if you can hear it, your child will be able to too.) Otherwise, for noisy toys in our house this Christmas, batteries won’t be included.
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Thursday, November 23rd, 2006
Adaptive Path: Conversation with Michael Bierut – Part I
It’s a dirty secret that much of what we admire in the design world is a byproduct not of “strategy” but of common sense, taste and luck. Some clients are too unnerved by ambiguity to accept this, and create gargantuan superstructures of bullshit to provide a sense of security. Not only do designers enthusiastically collude in this process, but many have found ways to bill for it.
Design Council: A very modern designer
There’s a dirty secret: that much of it is a God-given talent. As an instructor of design I come across students that don’t need help and others who can’t be helped. It’s an accident that kicks in at conception.’
My feeble attempts at humour aside, I’d certainly question the second ’secret’. Michael’s a graphic designer. It seems to me that there’s an implicit assumption in what he’s saying: graphic design is difficult, but anyone can teach. Michael takes the easy route by placing responsibility for the perceived problems of design education on genetics rather than looking inward. Indeed, you could read this as a public admission of failure by an individual design educator – I can’t stretch those that are good enough, and I can’t help those that aren’t.
We need many more designers and that’s something that can’t be left to chance. Let’s hope that it’s the ability to teach and inspire the next generation that’s not the god-given talent.
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Thursday, November 2nd, 2006
A great example from Google Docs of how errors should be handled. I want to add tags to a document, but I’ve forgotten to select one. Rather than let me go through the process of choosing tags and then telling me something’s wrong, Google puts the problem right up front. And because this is modeless feedback there’s no dialog box to decode or buttons to press so I can get on with putting it right straight away. To err is human; to help you recover as quickly and smoothly as possible is humane, and as interface designers that’s where we want to be.
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Saturday, October 21st, 2006
Well-designed hospitals help patients recover more quickly according to this New York Times article.
A sprinkling of architects and designers around the world are working to greatly change hospitals by humanizing their design, a concept that is slowly gaining influence in Europe and the United States.
The idea is obvious: Build inviting, soothing hospitals, graced with soft lighting, inspiring views, single rooms, curved corridors, relaxing gardens and lots of art, and patients will heal quicker, nurses will remain loyal to their employers and doctors will perform better …
Their research shows, for example, that patients who can see trees instead of cars from their windows recover more quickly …
Actually, this is a concept that’s been gaining influence for over a hundred years. If you ever visit Barcelona, check out Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau. Completed in 1910, this working hospital is the equal of it’s better known architectural neighbour the Sagrada Familia, but is often overlooked. The architect, Lluis Domenech i Montaner, wanted to create an environment that would stimulate patients, helping them recover more quickly. Having visited it, I can say that he definitely succeeded (are any of the hospitals in your area tourist attractions?) In fact he may have been too successful. It’s such a wonderful place that as a patient you can’t imagine ever wanting to leave.
Via 37 Signals. Photo from Mariana Steiner on flickr. See more Sant Pau pictures.
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Friday, July 21st, 2006
I mentioned Word buginess in my previous post. In celebration of that, my copy has now developed a fear of flying. Don’t believe me? It crashes whenever I type the word describing a person who flies an aeroplane. P I L O < crash >.
Humanising software is a good thing, but I think this bug is taking things a little too far.
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Friday, June 30th, 2006
I’ve been trying to move away from using Word for writing my documents for ages. It’s bloated. It’s difficult to do anything other than top down reports. And, if you do attempt anything fancy, it’s buggy as hell! But there are two killer features that ensure no matter how alluring other applications seem, I always come back to Word: live spellchecking and thesaurus. They seem so simple, but I can’t live without them.
Live spellchecking has started to make its way into lots of other products that I would prefer to use. The latest version of InDesign now has the red squiggles. Writely has them (sort of) and so does Semagic (the tool I use for updating this blog). But a thesaurus seems to have gone by the wayside. Perhaps it’s seen as an ‘advanced’ feature. Could be that it’s difficult to implement. Or maybe designers and other such folks don’t need it. That’s wrong. Good software helps you work (and play) better. And if you care about what you say a thesaurus offers you better ways to say it. So developers and interface designers, if your customers are using a product that supports writing they need both, because when you’re working with words, spellchecking is only half the story.
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Wednesday, June 28th, 2006
I really like the Design Eye series. It’s great to see worked examples of the design process and it’s very brave to do these kinds of exercises in public (with the payoff of good marketing for those involved, of course), but I have to say that their latest attempt, restyling the community site Craigslist, isn’t my cup of tea. There’s something homey in that jumbled list of links which just hasn’t translated into the redesign.
Craigslist is about things that matter to people: jobs, houses, politics, personals, but I don’t get that from the new site. It feels too corporate and slick to me; those blues and greys aren’t approachable. (The one area where they do score is Cameron Moll’s mobile-friendly version, but on the small screen it’s more about positioning services than look and feel.) Perhaps it’s time someone did a brand eye for the design guy series because if Craigslist does adopt the proposed redesign San Francisco will never have felt colder.
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Friday, March 10th, 2006
Today my IP phone is annoying me more than usual. Nevermind that every morning I have to log into it (and yes, it’s a different login to my computer’s), or that I have to actively select ‘Login’ even though it’s the only option available, or that I have to tab down from the ‘UserID’ field to enter my password, or that I have to enter yet another password to play my voicemail, or that I have to press ‘1′ every time I want to hear a message (what else would I want to do having just made the 5 key presses required to get into voice mail). No, what’s tipped me over the edge is accidentally clearing my call history.
Returning from lunch I noticed that I’d missed a couple of calls. I selected the ‘Directories’ button to gain access the ‘Directories’ screen, but instead of pressing the ‘Select’ softbutton to view the calls I accidentally brushed its neighbour ‘Clear’. Aaaarghh! Not just the missed calls, but the placed calls and the received calls all gone.
Clear is a destructive function and one that I suspect is used very rarely (except by the super-paranoid). It should be hidden away a few levels down rather than at the top level of the Directories screen. And if it must be shown at this level then it should be separated from the commonly accessed Select button to prevent accidental data loss.
The Missed Calls functionality is great, but the poor selection of commands and buttons pulls it into my consciousness and breaks my flow. It becomes an effort to avoid pressing the wrong button rather than effortlessly performing the right task.
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