“A design isn’t finished when there’s nothing more to add; it’s finished when there’s nothing left to take out.”
July 4, 2010
Bill Buxton and design
by Ujjal Pathak
May 23, 2010
Bad design
by Ujjal PathakA few days ago, I bought a $100 Ikea chest kit of four drawers. As I was cautiously assembling the parts while browsing through the instruction manual, I realized that a few hinges and screws were missing. I checked the wrapping material, the room floor etc. but I couldn’t find them anywhere. I started to blame myself for “accidentally losing” certain important parts of the chest. Frustrated at myself, I then did a detailed sweep of my room. Still no luck. In the end, I somehow managed to make the chest stand on its feet and operational. But the fact of the matter is: those hinges and screws were not even included in the package in the first place! But there I was blaming and getting pissed-off at myself.
When a users blames him/her-self when a product under-delivers or misbehaves, then the real fault lies with the product, not the user. It’s a badly designed product to begin with!
May 14, 2010
Everyday good design that gets unnoticed
by Ujjal PathakI recently bought a “bathroom” digital weighing scale from Target to weigh my two massive upright wheeled suitcases that were filled with clothes etc. to the brim as I was preparing for my flight to San Jose. I was worried about crossing the 50 lb limit requirement per bag as my suitcases were extremely heavy. While trying to weigh them on the scale, I noticed how they each entirely dwarfed the scale’s surface thereby leaving no space for checking the final readout. Luckily, unlike other digital or analog scales, this scale kept on displaying the final measurement for a few extra seconds thus allowing me to peacefully take my suitcase off the scale and see the final reading. This is a good designed scale in my book.
May 5, 2010
The steam iron
by Ujjal PathakThe steam iron is the most hated of all appliances. No matter how many design trade-offs are made, you just can’t make steam iron fundamentally any better for people. Even the Jonathan Ives of the world would fail to make it better and more likeable. The fact is: people simply hate ironing.
Anthony Mello once said, “we see things not as they are, but as we are.” What this means for us PMs, designers, entrepreneurs etc. is that people are more important than things. Anthropology is more important than technology.