October 18, 2008

Design by committee

 This blogger has moved!

I want to invite you to my new gig over at Rift Labs. We are devloping Open Source Hardware for photographers.

Come join us if you are into UX, design or photography at some level.

Visit Rift Labs

 

Bjørn Rybakken has a take on design-by-committee in his excellent new book Formsans og Design. Enjoy:

 Rybakken1

Rybakken2

Rybakken3

Rybakken4

Unfortunately the book is only available in Norwegian, I'm not aware of plans to publish it in english. (The shaky translation of the illustration is mine).

Oct 18, 2008 8:28:45 PM | Apple

7 Comments

Gill Wildman

Brilliant!

Posted by: Gill Wildman | November 21, 2008 at 12:37

baakanit

Companies have come to realize that the a neat design of the hardware matters. Apple have changed many people way of thinking, now it is common to see an HP printer with a smooth white cover, when before it used to be only gray.

P.D. I Like this blog a lot, have been reading it for a few days.

The topics about, fragmentation and navigation have help me a lot.

I have a question regarding developing applications for the mobile web, I haven't been able to get a clear answer for it.

What additional security precautions will companies have to take when they develop content specifically for the web?

I would love answer if that isn't asking for too much.

Posted by: baakanit | November 19, 2008 at 16:47

phone man

still i like the first i-pod design
http://bestnewphones.blogspot.com

Posted by: phone man | November 19, 2008 at 12:38

Francis Djabri

In a similar vein, watch what happens to the venerable Stop sign once the committees get their claws into it :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwqPYeTSYng

Posted by: Francis Djabri | October 24, 2008 at 23:46

Franz Harmer

Now put it in a custom protective casing with Hello Kittys on it and it looks great again! What's the problem? ;-)

Posted by: Franz Harmer | October 23, 2008 at 07:15

ken

Marco, that's the WHOLE POINT ! this is an example of what shouldn't happen (but sadly happens everywhere in the industry)

Posted by: ken | October 20, 2008 at 07:37

Marco Laspe

Nice Post.
One question though.
Is this a example for wrong or right use of the technique? 'Cause the SoundPro looks shitty and has a lot of stuff nobody needs
Regards,
Marco

Posted by: Marco Laspe | October 19, 2008 at 11:53

The comments to this entry are closed.

NEXT POST
Mobile software with an attitude This blogger has moved! I want to invite you to my new gig over at Rift Labs. We are devloping Open Source Hardware for photographers. Come join us if you are into UX, design or photography at some level. Visit Rift Labs It’s really hard to create polite software for mobile phones. What purpose does your software have? Is it to enhance productivity, empower users, move stuff from the inbox to the outbox? Is it to keep its owner informed and up to date on the latest news? Is it to maintain a Bluetooth connection between the phone and the laptop? Should your software be upbeat and helpful, should it be efficient and toned down, or should it simply be invisible and out of the way? Software has a predominant manner of representing themselves to the user. Programs whose appearance and behaviour conflict with their purpose will seem jarring and inappropriate, like a clown at a wedding, to quote Alan Cooper. (I have quoted liberally from the iPhone Human Interface Guidelines and especially from Alan Coopers book About Face throughout this post. Both are necessary reading.) Application posture Cooper describes three application postures: Sovereign posture programs takes over the entire...
PREVIOUS POST
One-Two-Many This blogger has moved! I want to invite you to my new gig over at Rift Labs. We are devloping Open Source Hardware for photographers. Come join us if you are into UX, design or photography at some level. Visit Rift Labs There is a common misconception that, because humans have ten fingers, they have the innate ability of counting to ten. People generally fancy that, if a child was raised by wolves, he would come to the idea of counting just by looking at his hands. (_) Counting is not intuitive to humans, it is a learned skill. Or to be more specific, the human brain seems to naturally count objects as "one", "two", and "many". Our numbering system and number words emerged fairly late in the evolution of human society and was due to "socioeconomic factors" (Fancy word. But I for one believe it was the tax man.) Counting is by no means important for our survival. In fact, entire societies has come and gone without having pretty basic math skills like the ability to count to more than 3, understand abstract numbers or the concept of zero. Our brains has a pretty vague sense of numbers. Looking...

Morten Hjerde

Founder at Rift Labs. http://about.me/morten

Search

Recent Comments