DesignAday

Reusable Blades

Everyone knows the old ploy: give away the razor; make a killing on the blades. They’ve done it with inkjet printers and any number of other products that require consumables. A slight twist to this is selling an expensive product that also requires consumables. Take vacuum cleaners, for instance. All vacuums used to require bags, but now canister vacuums are all the rage. Of course, they’ve added all kinds of air filters to the vacuums that fill with dust over time and must be replaced. The Dyson vacuums have a couple filters in them, but they’ve done something really smart and consumer-friendly. The filters can be washed in the sink. You just rinse them out, let them dry, and put them back in. Sure, the Dyson is expensive, but it has no recurring costs.

Map of the Design Landscape Through Recent History

I’d like to feature the work of one of my graduate students. I gave an assignment in which each student was to design a map of the design landscape depicting major disciplines, organizations, educational institutions, firms, luminaries, and methods. They didn’t necessarily have to include all of this information, nor were they limited to it. Forrest Conroy incorporated everything just mentioned, and then added conferences, related companies, and example products. He mapped everything over time, showing relationships between them. The resulting chart is a beautiful piece of work.

Forrest used three major categories: communications in yellow, which is equivalent to Graphic Design, interactions + activities in blue, which includes Interaction Design, Information Architecture, and Service Design, and products in red, which is basically Industrial Design. You can watch these intertwine as digital products like computers and mobile phones incorporate hardware and software design.

Lines track the careers of prominent designers along the horizontal axis of time, while vertical lines make connections between people, organizations, and methods.

Insets on the right-hand side list all NASAD approved design programs.

A litl More

After my brief post last week about the litl, I was contacted by James Gardner, litl’s VP of marketing. He pointed me to a post on Pentagram’s site and to a video on YouTube. As I was hoping, they painted a picture of very thoughtful design and filled in a lot more detail. In fact, as it turns out, they had an all-star cast working on this thing. Lisa Strausfeld lead Pentagram’s team in the design of the GUI, and Pentagram was also responsible for the visual identity, designed by Abbott Miller. The logo, business cards, and packaging are all exquisite.

The UI has the polish one would expect from Apple. Animated transitions bring a natural flow to state changes. The dial that is used for serial navigation in “easel” mode is repeated on the remote. They designed several channels that deliver specific information from the internet, like the weather, as well as a number of “widgets” like a clock or a feed reader. Visual treatments clearly distinguish between widgets, channels, and standard webpages. Arrangement of these items is automated much like the rearranging of photographs in iPhoto. It hooks up to your hi-def television with an HDMI cable to play movies or show photos. And, if you have more than one in the house, they can be set up to share things with each other.

Also working on the project were Cooper, Fort Franklin, and Fuseproject, although I don’t know what their contributions were. Fuseproject was also behind the OLPC XO laptop, so I’m betting they worked on the industrial design.

The video is pretty awful—lot’s of “um-uh” and fumbling around, but the product shows off well. They should really put together a professional video demonstration of the UI. I think they have a lot to be proud of. This could be a very successful product, although I’m curious to see if they’ve hit a low-enough price point. At $699 or $1,398 for a two-pack, it seems a bit much for something without local storage.

In the Details: Canister Dump

I’ve had a Fantom vacuum for over 10 years. It was a well-designed product, and we definitely got our money’s worth out of it. A circuit board went bad and the beater stopped turning. Fantom went out of business several years ago, so I decided repairing it wouldn’t be a good option. My in-laws decided they would give us a new vacuum as an early Christmas gift, so my wife and her mother went shopping on Monday. They came home with a Dyson.

When I got home from work, Susie excitedly showed me how to empty the canister. The Fantom had a canister, which was a huge improvement over dealing with bags, but the Dyson takes it a step further. Where you had to rotate the Fantom’s canister and pull the lid off, the Dyson has a lever that opens the bottom of the canister. You just hold it over the trash can, pull the lever, shake it a little, and then close it again.

Once again, thoughtful design resulted in small details leading to the sale of a more expensive product. There are other features that set this model apart for her, but I’ll leave those for future posts.

Nook

The ebook reader product space just got interesting with last week’s release of the Nook form Barnes & Noble. It is very close to the Kindle in size with the same E Ink display. A majority of the features found on the Kindle are mirrored on the Nook, including wireless connectivity for book purchases and subscription downloads. Where they differ significantly is in their user interfaces.

While they both place buttons for page turning on both sides of the screen, this is as far as the similarity goes. The bottom third of the Kindle’s face is given over to a physical keyboard—row upon row of tiny buttons. The Nook, on the other hand, sports a 3.5 inch color touchscreen. This screen is used for navigation, providing access to the various functions of the device, and browsing of your library in a coverflow-esque fashion (although not as fluid). It also provides the means by which you can highlight content, bookmark pages, and make annotations. This is what I was most curious about. How do they provide a touch UI in that small space that affords these complex interactions without direct manipulation, and presumably text entry. Unfortunately, they don’t demonstrate any of this in the screenshots or videos on the site. It’s almost as if they purposefully didn’t show it, perhaps to hide a kludgey interaction.

From what I’ve seen, the Nook seems more elegant than the Kindle, but I’ve never had the opportunity to try either one. And this is one instance in which having brick and mortar may provide an advantage. According to the website, you can try the Nook in the physical stores. I may have to pop in the next time I see a Barnes & Noble in my vicinity.

Toner Moaner Part 2

So, I’ve been using my printer for a couple months since it started telling me to replace all three color toner cartridges. I wrote about that back in September. Last night, I was trying to print out two pages of black text, and the printer refused to print, displaying an error message stating that all three cartridges were “end of life”. A quick search turned up a number of discussion forums with the instructions on how to circumvent this premature money grab on the part of Brother.

There are little windows on the sides of the cartridges through which you can see the toner. Apparently, the printer has some kind of optical mechanism for testing the amount of toner left. Of course, once the toner gets below a certain level, it no longer detects it, even though there is still some in there. According to the instructions, placing electrical tape over these windows causes the printer to think there is still toner in the cartridge. That doesn’t make much sense to me, as the chances of all three cartridges reporting empty at exactly the same time are highly unlikely.

I didn’t test that procedure, as there were also instructions on how to access a special menu via the console that lets you reset the life of each toner cartridge. This worked just fine, and I was finally able to print my pages. We’ll see how much farther I get before printed pages actually start showing signs of low toner.

Courier

Perhaps I’m just jaded, but I can’t get excited over the two videos Gizmodo has put up demonstrating Microsoft’s Courier concept. First of all, Gizmodo is treating it as if it is a unique, unforeseen vision for a tablet computer. What exactly makes it so innovative? Is it the folding, two-page form factor? I don’t think so. Last year saw Negroponte’s announcement of the second-generation OLPC XO: the XO-2.

And there was the Canovo that made the rounds in 2007.

Then, of course, we’ve seen the dual screen eReaders by ASUS (2009) and iRiver (2007).

Well, then, is it the stylus? Surely not—we’ve had tablets and PDAs for years that have those. The iPhone was revolutionary for doing away with the stylus. Okay, could it be the multi-touch? Obviously not, as we’ve seen that in the iPhone, Surface, and any number of other demonstrations. And the combination of the two is already available in tablets such as Panasonic’s Toughbooks.

I’ve ruled out the form factor and input methods, so it isn’t the device itself or the technology behind it. Is the user interface especially innovative? There are some interesting ideas in it. Using the spine as a place to tuck things that you want to move from one page to another is a clever implementation of cut and paste, but beyond that, I don’t see any interaction patterns that I haven’t seen before. Quite frankly, I don’t find the scenarios to be very compelling. The UI has that “visionary concept” quality to it that suggests it hasn’t been fleshed out much beyond the script. The handwriting recognition is flawless, the screens show only the controls that provide access to the features showcased, and complex actions, such as selecting and copying a graphic and two columns of a 3-column table, are accomplished with a single touch of a finger.

Yes, it’s an interesting concept, and yes, there is value in creating such visionary explorations. However, I’ve seen far too many of these that don’t result in anything other than inspiration (not to say there is anything wrong with that), and Microsoft in particular has a horrible track record of delivering innovative products. Please pardon me for some uncharacteristic pessimism. I’m not going to take a deep breath, let alone hold it.

This Side Up

I noticed this sheet of paper tacked to the wall just above a Xerox color Phaser printer in our office. Obviously, somebody was trying to print on letterhead and needed to know which way to put it in the printer to get the correct orientation. They marked the top-left and bottom-right corners, and the side of the page that was facing up, when they put it in either the manual feed tray or the drawer. As you can see, it printed out upside down.

The inset is a photo of the icons on the manual feed tray meant to communicate the necessary orientation. The envelope icon is understandable. I can’t say the same for the page. It shows content on the side facing up and content on the side facing down and says “2nd Side”. Just looking at the icon, I have no idea what side should be facing up, and there is no indication whatsoever as to which end should go in first.

This really isn’t a difficult problem to solve. I don’t understand why so many printers and copiers communicate so poorly.

Toner Moaner

I’ve only been the owner of a laser printer for less than a year, and while I’ve used plenty of them at work, and at school before that, I’ve never been responsible for the consumables. I was surprised when all of the color cartridges in my Brother color laser reported that they were low at exactly the same time. This seemed highly unlikely to me, and I haven’t printed all that much in color anyway. I headed to Amazon to see about ordering new cartridges and noticed that every review pointed out that the toner “level” is completely based on the number of pages printed, regardless of the actual amount of toner left in the cartridge. Everyone suggested rotating a dial on the side of each cartridge backwards to reset the print count.

This is an extremely non-useful feature. Perhaps this is the way all laser printers work, but that would surprise me. I expect the color cartridges to last well over a year, considering my low print volume.

Brother, do you want a satisfied customer? Don’t tell me to order hundreds of dollars worth of product when I don’t need it.

Assaulted by Batteries

When is rechargeable battery technology going to catch up? Why should I have to worry about how long a battery is left on its charger, or worry about fully cycling the battery, or worry about draining it completely? I could handle it if they all worked the same way, but of course they don’t. It seems that every device I get has slightly different requirements for getting the best life out of its battery. Here are the instructions for the batteries for my Neuton mower:

• A Battery may last much longer if you charge it as soon as it starts to lose power and not let it completely discharge. You should not try to coax a little more power out of your Battery. Recharge the Battery as soon as possible after each use twenty-four (24) to seventy-two (72) hours and remove it from the Charger.
• Avoid leaving the Battery on the Charger for a period of more than a week.
• Charge the Battery for twenty-four (24) to seventy-two (72) hours prior to storage and then every one (1) to two (2) months; and then again prior to the first seasons use.  Be sure to remove the Charger from the Battery after charging.

Other batteries, such as the ones for my Black & Decker screw driver, can be left on the charger indefinitely. Apple claims that their laptop batteries will last longer if you run them down all the way occasionally. How am I supposed to keep all of them straight?