Posts Tagged ‘Design’
Demystifying Design: An Argument for Simplicity
What is design? It's art and commerce, fashion and environment. It's industrial and digital, graphic and experiential.
What is design? It begins with ideas--ideas based in purpose. It requires a plan or a process. It yields innovation, invention or creation. It is successful if it elicits response--attention, desire, interaction or purchase.
Design is as much a process as it is an end product. The process should be simple.
After all my years in...
A Car that Puts the Blind in the Driver's Seat
The thought of having blind drivers on the road seems like a disaster waiting to happen, but the Blind Driver Challenge team at Virginia Tech's Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory aims to safely put the blind in control of steering wheels. The team's retrofitted buggy, which has been tested by blind volunteers on a closed course at Virginia Tech, uses a voice command interface, laser range finders, and other sensory technology to guide drivers in the...
Frog Design's Latest: A Postcard App for iPhone
Postcard Express lets you send geotagged e-postcards everywhere you go with your iPhone.
Postcards are sweet, but they also kind of suck: If you're like us, you buy a ton and never send most of them, because of the hassle of trying to find a stamp and post office from wherever you are. Frog Design has created a far more elegant solution for iPhone users. Postcard Express, an iPhone app, lets you...
Why Ugly Sells
A while back, I was standing in a checkout line at a drug store, passing the time by wondering who would ever buy the ugliest clock I'd ever seen, on display at the front of the store. It wasn't a regular sort of ugly. It was nuclear ugly. Sliced from some unsuspecting tree trunk that never hurt anybody, the heavily shellacked face of the clock preserved pictures of red roses and drippy script type that...Design Is Too Important to Be Left to the Thinkers
Recently, at a conference reception (think wine and cubes of cheese), a well-known and influential member of the academic community said to me: "Design strategy is far too important to be left to designers." What a pile of crap, I think. I am pissed, but in a moment of cowardice, I sip my wine, chew my pepper jack, and slink off to lighter conversation. If only I were able to channel Clint Eastwood at...
Do You Obey Design Rules?
A new book upholds—and subverts—51 common catchphrases for design.
We like to think design is a field of unfettered creativity—an industry that abhors the proverbial box. In actuality it sags under an abundance of rules: Less is more. God is in the details. A good copy is better than a bad original. When in doubt, leave it out. Good design is when it's finished…and so on.
A new book entitled Never...
A Sink That Doubles as a Dishwasher
German designers Wach just unveiled a product concept that any small-apartment denizen will love: A sink that doubles as a dish washer. The piece is part of a show of work by young German designers, called DMY Berlin. The so-called Colo system is exceedingly simple: After a meal, you load a tray with dirty dishes, then you plop that down into the sink. Above the sink there's a hood which can then be...An Insight Into Google’s Design Decisions
Recently, Google announced a significant update to its Search function: the Options panel. Although - for the most part - it’s only a different way to display some old features, changes such as this one can have a profound impact on the most important service on the web today.
Design-wise, though, it doesn’t look like much. The new pane on the left side looks simple and logical; almost as...
Facebook Inches Towards Real-Time
We apparently can’t get our social information fast enough. In fact, it almost seems like a race for who can get information out the fastest. Twitter updates are lightning fast, even occasionally breaking the news before the major outlets, and FriendFeed’s interface now updates in real-time. And today, Facebook has jumped back into the real-time race by implementing live updates within the Facebook home page.
As you might recall,...
Trent Reznor From Nine Inch Nails Weighs In On Smartphone OS's
Trent Reznor, of Nine Inch Nails fame, just got his band's app rejected from the iPhone App Store. Surprising? Not so much because if you've been following iPhone app news over at our sister-site The iPhone Blog you would know that Apple has a completely inane app approval process that sometimes reject applications that are perfectly worthy and approve applications that are inane themselves.