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Car design trends, part 2

April 27, 2010 By 6 Comments

form-v-functionThis “cen­ter stack” of dash­board con­trols looks pretty cool. It’s from a Volvo. (I can tell by the typeface.)

Design mis­take? When you’re dri­ving down the road at 75 miles an hour (120 kph), the last thing you want to do is take your eyes off the road long enough to fig­ure out which but­ton you need to push to make the hot air go to your feet rather than at your face.

Take­away? When you’re design­ing that thing — or plan­ning that speech — go for what will serve the user best rather than what causes the biggest wow. (But be sure to leave enough wow in to make it exciting!)

Filed Under: cars, design Tagged With: ,

I’m too practical

September 16, 2009 By 5 Comments

dresser-pix

Some peo­ple are artis­tic. Some peo­ple are prac­ti­cal. Some peo­ple are both. Even though I am an artist (graphic designer) by train­ing and partly by pro­fes­sion, I tend toward the prac­ti­cal side.

So when we vis­ited this home I was struck by the beauty of the famil­ial dis­play on the mas­ter bedroom’s dresser.

My dresser is clut­tered with lit­tle things that have noth­ing to do with beauty — and every­thing to do with life — keys, wal­let, sun­glasses and camera.

What’s on your dresser?

Filed Under: Life Tagged With: ,

Strange delivery

September 15, 2009 By 6 Comments

playaway

I went to our nearby new library recently. I checked out a book in a new form — the “Play­away”. Basi­cally, I am a sucker for new things — and free new things are even better.

These are not for the aver­age con­sumer — they are about $35–40 each. (You can buy the Kin­dle edi­tion of this book for about $10.)

The title? (“Liv­ing Well in a Down Econ­omy” — one of the “Dum­mies” series.) I didn’t lis­ten to the whole thing. There were some inter­est­ing bits about breath­ing right and prepar­ing a resume. (My wife is look­ing for a job). It’s rare that I would have time to lis­ten to a whole book like that, so this for­mat isn’t for me.

I think this is a bad idea. You get a cheap MP3 player with a pre-loaded title. The sound is very poor com­pared to a real MP3 player. Nav­i­ga­tion is sub-standard. (The inter­face “screen” is a tiny LCD readout.)

My rec­om­men­da­tion? Libraries should “lend” MP3 titles of audio books via iTunes that would be playable for a 3-week time period. Then you use your trusted MP3 player and the inter­face you know and (hope­fully) love. For peo­ple with­out an MP3 player? Per­haps Apple could pro­duce a super-durable iPod that libraries could lend out for 3-week increments.

Filed Under: Life Tagged With: ,