10 Commandments of Good Design
From Dieter Rams (via Vitsœ)
1. Innovative
2. Useful
3. Aesthetic
4. Self-explanatory
5. Unobtrusive
6. Honest
7. Durable
8. Thorough
9. Environmentally-friendly
10. As little design as possible
July 29, 2008
September 19, 2007
Why Mini's Have the Speedo in the Center of the Dash
Ever wonder why Mini's have their speedometer in the center of the dashboard?
"During the painting of the shell, a rod was inserted straight through the car allowing the shell to be spun round as it was painted.The speedometer was originally put in the middle of the dashboard, cleverly covering the hole where the pole went."
From A Design Classic by James Dyson.
September 15, 2007
Making the Simple Complex
Seth Godin muses today about having an alarm clock that would have a "weekend" switch so it wouldn't go off on the weekend, letting you sleep in.
Why complicate the simple alarm clock? You don't want the alarm on the weekend? Turn it off. But if you really need this, it already exists.
I'd post a link to the product detail on Emerson's site, unfortunately their entire site is in Flash so you can't directly link to anything.
September 11, 2007
Scher Shares Templates
Branding in a box. Well, sort of.
Graphic design guru Paula Scher worked with HP to allow you to create your own identity templates via her template collections website.
Not bad for small businesses getting started that need something clean. The Building a Brand Identity video is nice too. There's more Paula for your pleasure this month over at Monocle as well.
September 09, 2007
Fashionably Late Adopter
Just picked up a 4GB iPhone for $299. Ha! Apparently there are some cranky early adopters out there. 
From a post over on Dave Farber's list
"Nobody forced anyone to buy an iPhone. The hype was immense, and only a little of the hype actually came from Apple. The buyers weren't buying a phone, they were buying status and the envy of others. Every buyer got the opportunity to show off their new toy, brag. The iPhone provided a high quality narcissistic supply. Now that the price has been sullied and the status is gone you can hear the sound of egos deflating as that brief bubble of exclusivity popped. The dealer cut the price of their junk."
via Bigpicture
July 11, 2007
Terminally Ugly
Condé Nast Portfolio reports this week on the venerable Bloomberg Terminal Design
"...people who rely on Bloomberg’s data terminals have to deal with an interface that’s a throwback to MS-DOS."
However, Bruce Nussbaum at BusinessWeek named the Antenna Designed terminal one of the Best Product Designs back in 2004, quoting:
"It has a dual-screen display plus a keyboard with a fingerprint scanner for access to proprietary analytic software, customized keys and speakers, and a microphone for 'squawking.'"
Not much commentary on the application interface screens themselves, other than the terminal is a "dual-screen", however most traders these days have 3 or 4-screen (or more) setups.
"...company executives see the Bloomberg terminal’s unique presentation as a status symbol and a selling point."
“We have to be religiously consistent” to satisfy users who become attached to terminal’s look and feel, says Bloomberg chief executive Lex Fenwick. “You can see a Bloomberg from a mile away.”
This is true. You do need to tread carefully when fiddling with interfaces that customers have made part of their routines. Nobody wants a "who moved my cheese?" incident, yet if you want to attract new mice to your mousetrap, you need to continually innovate.
Is there potential here for a new player in the terminal game with an eye for better interface design?
"The competition—terminals from Thomson and Reuters (which Thomson just agreed to buy)—isn’t any prettier to look at. So Bloomberg isn’t looking to do a major overhaul of its terminals’ graphic design anytime soon."
Three top design firms, IDEO, thehappycorp and Ziba Design tried their hand at redesigning the Bloomberg interface. IDEO's clean, white background approach is my pick.
