Architecture

Despite the things that I love about our library, what would be the single most used door in the entire building has a sign on it saying please do not use me. This is a problem.

The Hicks center is a reasonably good looking building, it has a somewhat larger than life feel, and yet it fits our campus beautifully. The really incredible thing about the Hicks center, however, is the amount of things we expect it to be able to accomplish, and the success with which it does that.

As it stands currently, architectural design looks more like a diktat, either from the architect or the owner/planner, than a collaborative process involving both parties.

Adverts ahead

"In my opinion, television is the most powerful socializing ad enculturating force in society. It not only entertains us but also instructs us. even when is not trying to do so. Thus, it has usurped the roles formerly played by other actors who used to be dominant figures in the socialization process." When taken with the subsequent point, Berger here makes the case that we are raised by the television, and even more so, by the advertising industry. Personally I cannot think of many industries which have our best interests as a society less in mind, a profoundly disturbing idea.

I think the dominant idea in this chapter was simply that advertising is no longer a superego tuned sales pitch, but a loose association through the subconscious id.

Advertising is far more than simply what it says in this day and age; as a result, thinking about advertising in terms of a rational argument for a course of action or purchase will lead to a failure to connect with the customer, purchases have become fundamentally psychological, therefore it is necessary to understand the consumer in a psychological manner.

Fashion

While it is true that fashion, in many ways, has outgrown it's classification as purely behavioral, the reflective aspects of fashion are strongly rooted in those same aspects of clothing that are most behavioral. A prime example of this is the trend towards brands like Nike and Puma as streetwear, as the labels seemingly portray a level of athleticism, which even when not directly utilitarian, portrays a level of fitness implying sexual fitness, and therefore "immodesty."

Fashion changes partly because technologies change, and as such, the clothing that can be made changes, and because society changes, and puts different requirements on individuals. The pinnacle of formalwear remains, in many ways, as it was over 150 years ago, as the requirements of a formal party have remained virtually unchanged. At the same time however, more informal party wear has manage to evolve on an almost weekly basis. Fashion's ability to either distinguish oneself or hide one amongst the crowds means that as a reflective outlet, the clothing's capacity for rapid social commodification forces the medium to evolve. In short, fashion evolves partly out of a desire to evolve simply for evolution's sake.

Firstly, a garment needs a context- somewhere to be, a tuxedo jacket fails as sportswear, but it does so intentionally. After context the garment should be original, a distinguishing feature or combination of features that give the consumer a reason to purchase it, and thirdly, the originality should, at least in some sense be appealing, either visually, tactilly or mentally in it's very lack of otherwise appeal. A garment should either accomplish something, as with sportswear, or say something.

Simplicity is Higly Overrated

Yes, we want simplicity, but we don’t want to give up any of those cool features. Simplicity is highly overrated.

Norman points out the Korean SUV's and toasters as examples of things being bedazzled with virtually useless features, and contrasts this with the Seimens washing machine which essentially could take care of the entire operation if the designers would only let it. This provides for an effective juxtaposition of "Good design" and "design people will pay for."

Strictly speaking, it isn't my line, but if I were to make the opposing argument, my thesis would simply be "A designer knows his work is done not when there is nothing left to add, but nothing left to take away."

Downtown Eval

Kalamazoo's downtown has potential, and very little else. Burdick street is very nice looking, and inspires a certain air, without overshadowing what businesses are there. Some of the best businesses in Kalamazoo are located on Burdick street, and paramount among them is Gazelle, because it manages to be unique while still providing a product and service that is sorely needed by the public. The street as a whole is composed of earth tone, colored pavers, which lend a modern air to the street, but in a playful way, completely different from the chrome alluminum and plate glass that have become typical of "modern" architecture, and the street acquires an artsy air which elevates the process of shopping for and buying any product from utilitarianism, to an adventure, and something which you don't mind ambling through.

The simplest recommendation that I have for Burdick street and the downtown in general would to be either consolodate, fill up empty storefronts, or even better, some of each. The single biggest drag on Burdick street, and the downtown as a whole are the amount of storefronts that are simply empty. If one were to squeeze the entirety of Burdick street's businesses into the space between climb kalamazoo and the state theater, one would find a far more lively area, simply because the density of interesting shops would be increased that much more. Alternatively, simply making Burdick street an atractive place to set up shop for other retailers could be invluable, either way however, Burdick street needs to eliminate empty storefronts at all costs. Thirdly, and this is almost nitpicking, Burdick street lacks any real advertising, I love the pedestrian signs, but if one were to make the entrance from main street that much more obvious, the action would be greatly rewarded.

I believe that in many ways, kalamazoo has taken Gibbs' advice to heart, but it hardly matters when the space simply lacks presence. Burdick street finds itself caught in the classic catch-22, it tends not to be packed with people, so there is precipitously less vibrancy, less vibrancy yeilds less people, and as a result Burdick street is constantly dead; Burdick could possibly learn something from Lexington avenue in New York, Whyte describes that, "part of Lexington's perverse attraction lies in the sensory experience of its walkways, and narrowness is a feature of them. Somewhere along the line, increasing with can work against a street. Defining a happy medium may be impossible, but it is not a bad goal to keep in mind," this, combined with Whyte's other advice suggests that further sidewalk obstructions could help to revitalize downtown, it is a truism that downtown is very regimented, and rarely do the buildings spill out onto the streets.

The same side of different coins

Whyte and Gibbs begin with identical objectives, make the consumer part with their money, but achieve completely disparate answers. Gibbs envisions a broad avenue only speckeled with people, but which taunts the consumer to try to hold onto their money in it's presence, whereas Whyte sees the street which develops into a living personality as the divine path to consumerdom. Whyte relies on people to make a street blossom, but Gibbs attempts to manipulate the consumer in an individualized fashion. In the end, I far prefer Whyte's accommodation of the shopping experience, over Gibbs' singling out of the shopper. Empty streets and brand names lack the authenticity and personality that I like to feel i'm getting when I part with my money, i want to believe that there is a real connection with anything i purchase, instead of simply a sales pitch.

Our egg case was built under the pretense that a spring shock absorber could soften the impact and islolate the egg from the greatest forces. The egg was placed in a latex balloon basket, and this was then attached to a series of rubber bands and slinkys which were to act as the absorbers of the shock of falling three stories. This Then needed to be suspended off the ground, and assured that the suspension would land the correct side down, to actually optimum achieve shock absorbtion. This was acomplished with a Little Debbie box filled about one fifth with dirt, due to it's squishiness and density. Our container was a protectional failure, as it relied on a best case scenario, and attempted not to cushion the fall of the entire package, but of the egg alone. our cas was, however reasonably proportioned, and if the egg had survived, somewhat reusable, as the egg was simply suspended, and not encased. Check our my partner's blog at http://joebarth.blogspot.com/

In The City

Quite simply, William Whyte's primary point in this chapter is that the more under-designed a street, the better the design. The natural tendency as one is creating a shopping area is to veer towards what would seem to make shopping easy for the consumer, but this attempt is ultimately misguided, shoppers do not want easy, they want interesting.

Whyte's views on street design experience an odd kind of symbiosis with the ideas that Norman expresses in The Design of Everyday Things, particularly 'mapping.' Mapping says that the designer should create structures in such a way that the user need not even think about the use; similarly, Whyte discusses extensively the proper way to design a doorway, and the way that subtle manipulations can change the way that people experience and interact with it. Entranceway design, however, is not the same as door design, doors require mapping, they should coax the user into pushing the correct side, entranceways, however need simply to exist, and if designed correctly, will cause the customer to congregate and eventually, to enter.

The two most fundamental elements of a street's design are breadth, and hight. Sidewalks have an optimal size, somewhere between shadowy alleyway and broad avenue, as the former will scare off the potential customer, and the latter will bore them. Height refers to the fact that stores should not remain constrained to the ground floor of a building, and in their vertical expansion, they should coax the eye upward, appearing to extend infinitely upwards due to perspective. The sidewalk should also be a minefield, difficult to traverse, slow moving, and fraught with distractions. All of this difficulty contributes, essentially to the vibrancy of an area, and because vibrancy breeds vibrancy, the street becomes a miasma of energy and consumers willing to incidentally part with their money.

Mall St.

For Robert Gibbs, the "Main Street" is something of an improvised mall, a place that should sell with all the potency of a mall, but still containing the originality and randomness that comes with independent retailers. The result of this is that Gibbs views main street in much the same way that he views the average mall, ideas like average foot-candle lighting, and price-aperture ratio, ideas that although seemingly rigid, make a tremendous amount of logical sense. Gibbs evaluates main street with the eyes, ears, and senses of a consumer, but with the mind of Paco Underhill, and the language of the average shop owner or city planner; in other words, a consumer sees the mall, the shops, the sidewalk, and experiences the street as a whole, whereas Gibbs notices the intracies of the experience, and can properly separate them out in such a way that he can reformulate them for an end result that distills what the shopper actually wants.

Value judgments would seem to be outside the breadth of this course, but the modern consumer would seem to be developing a distaste for being sold to. This means that the mall with it's genericised clothing and foods, holds a draw for the shopper only utilitarianlly, and not as a place that one actively seeks out. While the mall may teach some lessons in how to make customers purchase on the spot, it also reveals lessons in making shopping a chore actively avoided. The death sentence for any downtown or main street should be the inclusion of a Foot Locker, or similarly corporatized shop, for the real value of downtown is that it has something, either in character or content that simply cannot be gotten at the mall.

I think the single biggest contributing factor to making main street a desirable place to be, is having reasons to be there. As above, it is all about creating something that creates a magnet in a non abstract way, and something not provided by the mall.

Pack it up right

In many ways, packaging is both the most fundamental, and most basic part of an advertising campaign, as it is the one piece that you can be assured the consumer will interact with. Like anything else, good packaging is not an excuse for a sub par product, but in some cases, i.e. bottled water, they can in many ways become the product. To a large extent, in conjunction with their scents, I think that packaging is my primary concern when picking out body wash. Frankly, body wash is pretty simple, as a result, a cool package is enough to make me pay the extra thirty cents for the "Red Zone" line over just "High Endurance."

I really hate to do it, but in many ways, I think the Second Generation I-Pod had Iconic packaging, it was bigger than it had to be, but in many ways, that was the point. At the time of the release of the second gen ipod, the ipod was a big thing, it was larger than life, it was somewhat sleek, but most of all, it had swagger, and the dancing silhouettes on the box gave the packaging swagger. Also, the box was designed such that opening it up was something of an event, there was no little tab that pulled out of the cardboard and then stuck out at an odd angle, just two halves that were held together with a cardboard band around the outside.

Usability is an odd topic for packaging, as some packaging is distinct simply because of it' usability (or lack thereof), and yet the Campbell's soup cans are iconic completely separately from their usability. I think that the basic Chap-Stik packaging is completely awesome from a usability perspective. The Chap-Stik packaging is, in many ways a vital part of the product. The idea to package lip balm in a twist up tube makes Chap-Stik seperate from it's initial competition, and the slightly rounded off top means that it fits in your pocket without potentially poking your thigh through your pocket.

Being Paco

Stewart Clarke Fine Furniture and Interior Design is, simply put, a furniture store in downtown Kalamazoo. I knew before even entering the store that I was not the target demographic, as I am in need of neither of the store's subtitles, nor will I be anytime soon. I believe that Stewart Clarke Fine Furniture and Interior Design are essentially catering to mid-upper middle class professionals and younger retired persons.

Stewart Clarke Fine Furniture and Interior Design is located in a somewhat unremarkable stone building, on West Main, just inside of "Downtown," and is hardly even noticeable, save for the fact that the stone it was built with is just a few shades darker than average for downtown Kalamazoo. Inside the store, you immediately notice two things, the smell; a blend of mid-grade textiles and leather, and the music; an unappealing blend of soft rock and late seventies jazz fusion. Once out of the decompression zone you realize that you aren't in a major chain store, as all the details lack the kind of needless revision that can come only from a lengthy series of comities choosing the specific fonts for the price tags. Immediately, the shopper is forced to choose left or right, as a small display and false wall are positioned not fifteen feet from the entrance. The overall architecture of the store actually makes for a rather large center section filled with an amalgamation of half-rooms, and a lot of beige in between. This center part of the store also serves to highlight the "Sale" status of the majority of the items in this area, seriously to the detriment of the store's "status points." The floors, throughout the store are beige carpet, with assorted area rugs, oriental and otherwise. As the shopper leaves the central area, the design of the store improves markedly, as the store becomes a winding series of complete rooms. Each of these rooms has it's own color scheme, including paint and/or wallpaper. When you are completed with the labyrinth of assorted rooms, you arrive at the primary check out area, which is more a room with sparse appointments than it is a counter and cash register.

Overall, Stewart Clarke Fine Furniture and Interior Design seems to be attempting to project a certain kind of upper middle class sophistication, for "thirtysomethings" and older, a fact that can be seen simply from the products they stock. I think that Furniture is actually an extremely interesting vein of retail design, as it is at once the most fake and the most honest sort that I can think of. Furniture is meant to be sat on, meant to be used, but it is also meant simply to be seen, but it is virtually always meant to be seen in the context of like pieces. The end result of this is that throughout the store, there are "rooms" each of which is a very near pantomime of what someones's actual bedroom might look like, only without the dirty underwear on the floor. The rooms, and the customers are both well aware, however, that the rooms are fake, and it's simply how well the rooms are put together that gives it away, almost intentionally. Frankly, it's too complicated to fully investigate in a single blog post.

Consumer mind control

I think the most telling sentence of the entire article was to the effect of, "retailers aren't controlling consumers so much as catering to them." I think that nearly everything else in the article needs to be taken in the context of this idea. The decompression zone and the Invariant Right mean little to nothing if you believe that they are magical, they simply give you the beginnings of a list of things to not do as you design a store, not one thing in the article (except possibly the belt scene) is a guaranteed sell, and I think that's the point, design is about making the process more efficient and more enjoyable, not selling widgets.

I think it would be naivety to say that anybody is unaffected by a store's design, because for the most part, you aren't supposed to notice the design, save for a feeling that you associate inexplicably with the store. At the same time though, I feel that retail design isn't an end so much as a means, coaxing you into picking up the sweater is a far cry from making you buy it.

I think that I will unavoidably now notice the decompression area and the Invariant Right display, as they are so simple, but without the odd feeling of forced action that a cash register in the back of the store brings. The idea and feeling of stores attempting to force an atmosphere has always felt funny to me, and this is only going to make that worse I will be glad to return to my Ski Shop, where the atmosphere has 90% to do with the personnel, and the other 10% is just an almost juveniley designed layout; whenever I ask my boss (the owner of the store) why anything is the way it is, the answer is almost always simply "because it is," or "because we like it that way," or "just because we thought it was cool." What this un-design, aside from basic aesthetics does is put the focus back on the employees, because that is why you are in the shop. Every single thing in our store is available somewhere else, and probably cheaper, the personnel, however are not, and that is really the point now that I think about it.

Web Design That Sucks

1) This article is another great example of understanding the most fundamental thing about all design, making it work for the user. This article once again does a great job of illustrating the difference between what is good for the creator and what is good for the user, an especially good and blatantly example of this is point #7 where Flanders shows one token bad website, and a "revised version."

2)I have to agree with Flanders, Heroin Content is the thing that matters, period, everything else is just details. That being said, the details are certainly important, and they all distill nicely to one simple idea, make the user's experience obvious, anticipate what they want to do, and then make it easy for them to do it.

3)1. Give people a reason to come to your site, more than just simply because Google spit it out as a search result.

2. Give people a reason to come back, independent ip addresses are good, but they don't end up meaning much if you only see them once.

3. Label things, if it does something, we should be able to tell what it does without clicking it.

4. Put things in the order that visitors want them in, usability trumps visual palatability.

5. Contrast, because it is too easy to fix to screw up, and because people do it anyway.

Know It All

1) Wikipedia is half resource, half social experiment, a fact that in many ways makes it great, and is also in many ways it's obvious Achilles heel. Another point presented by the author is the unevenness with which Wikipedia has been compiled, every top twelve contestant on american idol has an entire page, while not all of Chaucer's Canterbury tales have been completed.

2) In the fourth paragraph, Schiff talks about the fact that "Nothing about high-minded collaboration guarantees accuracy, and open editing invites abuse," and as supporting evidence she cites the constant of "Senators and congressmen ... being caught tampering with their entries; the entire House of Representatives has been banned from Wikipedia several times. (It is not subtle to change Senator Robert Byrd’s age from eighty-eight to a hundred and eighty. It is subtler to sanitize one’s voting record in order to distance oneself from an unpopular President, or to delete broken campaign promises.)" This particular piece of evidence is both funny and enlightening, as it shows an easily understandable and accessible instance of abuse, this seems far more interesting than the case or ideological opponents changing the entries on climate change and healthcare.

3) In a lot of ways, comparing the Encyclopedia Britannica to Wikipedia is unfair to both, as neither has the pretension of beating or even of being the other. It is, in many ways, more useful to compare Wikipedia not to the Encyclopedia Britannica, but to the entire reference and non-fiction sections of the Library of Congress. When put in these terms, Wikipedia is far more easily navigable, and yet less knowledgeable, on a similar range of topics. While the Encyclopedia Britannica strives to create virtual essays for each of the topics it covers, Wikipedia can simply loosely tie a list together with conjunctions and call it an entry in progress, so even though error rates are very similar, the quality and readability of the two are virtually incomparable. Wikipedia is good for finding about a topic, the Encyclopedia Britannica is better for understanding a topic.

a potential stub in need of help

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alberto_Savinio

Presentation

I think that the author's three essential points are actually somewhat obvious ideas, understand what your saying, why your saying it, and say it well.

In the case of our coming presentation, this means being interesting and attempting to take a different tactic while presenting as well as properly understanding the material. The most important bit is always to understand the material better than you are required to make the audience understand it.

Presenting and product design share a lot of common ground, both require a clear idea of the end goal and of the issues that surround achieving that end goal. Furthermore, the designing a presentation is similar to designing a product, because both require a measure of confidence, in presenting, and in designing a product boldly and not fearfully. Similarly, both products and presentations should be simple to understand and to explain, "the elevator test" works for both designs and ideas.

I think that the world of industrial and urban design are very interesting, as well as simply the area of consumer product design even if we are constantly covering it.

Emotional Design II

"To the practitioner of human-centered design, serving customers means relieving them of frustration, of confusion, of a sense of helplessness. Make them feel in control and empowered. To the clever salesperson, just the reverse is true. If people don't really know what they want, then what is the best way to satisfy their needs? In the case of human-centered design, it is to provide them with the tools to explore by themselves, to try this and that, to empower themselves to success. To the sales staff, this is an opportunity to present themselves as rescuers 'in-shining-armor'"

I like this passage, because it explores the idea of purpose driven design, and of examining what you wish to accomplish as you design a product, this makes the case that "diesel" is not badly designed, simply that it accomplishes something different than what you think it should.

I think that of the three terms Norman uses, only 'Behavioral' could really be improved upon. Behavioral is somewhat cryptic, and as a result, 'interactive' might be a better term, but otherwise, Norman's terms make perfect sense once you understand them.

When a designer sets out to create a product, he should, ideally, begin with behavioral design, because the use of a product will largely dictate the importance of the other two factors. A watch for instance can be many things, and fall squarely into any of the three types of design, but the same watch is unlikely to fulfill all three adequately, in fact the designer of a watch will likely have a very good idea which of the three is paramount before they even begin the meat of the design process; the designer of the Casio G-Shock, for example, should have no uncertainty as to the fact that his product will have virtually no visceral or reflective value, and that it will be purchased solely for it's behavioral ability.

Emotional Design

1) What do you feel were the author's key points in this chapter?

Design and engineering are not interchangeable ideas, the job 0f a designer encompasses
far more than that of an engineer. This is because an engineer simply attempts to solve a problem,
whereas a designer is attempting to hit a moving target, appeal to a constantly fluxuating
demographic, while creating a product that still accomplishes the aforementioned task, as the real
ultimate goal of any product is to sell itself.

2)How does this chapter compare to the earlier writing (The Design of Everyday Things) by the same author?

Where The Design of Everyday Things was very logistic, and followed the shortest possible
path to a completed product, Emotional Design gets into all the funny bits that make design more
a one dimensional skill; in many ways, Emotional Design is about creating products that we love,
and The Design of everyday things is about creating products that do what they are supposed to
do.

3)Give examples, from your own experience, of 1)something that succeeds as Visceral Design, 2) something that succeeds as Behavioral Design, and 3)a Reflective Design success? What do you thing makes each thing successful?

In many ways, I feel that the iPod succeeds here in many ways, yet i feel compelled not to
mention it for fear of being struck down by the mighty hand of the rest of the class, as a result, i will instead invoke the Ford GT of about 4 years ago, the first time I saw the car was during a
Super Bowl ad, and the involuntary reaction I experienced was akin to lust. I recently bought a
very ugly sweatshirt, this sweatshirt alternates red and black squares in a checkerboard pattern,
kind of, the point is the sweatshirt is terribly ugly, but I love it anyway, as the entire inside is lined with inch and a half long faux fur, that is my entire story. I work at a ski shop, but we dont really think of ourselves as a normal ski shop. We think of ourselves as something better than the average ski buying experience. The way we sell skis is the way that Diesel sells Jeans, only we don't have to make you disoriented, as unless you are an expert, the ski industry is disorienting enough on its own. A lot of ski shops have little blurbs next to every single ski to tell you an utterly useless pittance of information about the particular ski, we don't. We want you to talk to us, and we want to put you on the right skis, in fact it's virtually impossible to get skis from us without talking to us about who you are as a skier, where you ski, what your best ski day ever was; we don't sell skis, we sell the future experience of using the right skis on a powder day (I should mention, I was a long time customer before I was an employee).

Fri sep 25

1) Select a breif passage from Chapter 1 of The Design of Everyday Things and post it, also explain why it is interesting.

"(On the affordances of different train shelter materials,) Glass is for seeing through, and for breaking. Wood is normally used for solidity, opacity, support, or carving. Flat, porous, smooth surfaces are for writing on. So wood is also for writing on." I find this passage interesting, as it addresses, in a very analytical way the psychology of interactions with materials, something that to me, seems so obvious that it seems novel not to have thought of it before.

2)Norman's book was first published in 1988 and it still influences designers today. Why do you think this book continues to be influential 20 years later?

The influence of this book is tied, not to the objects that it talks about, but to the ideas that they embody; ideas that have no expiration date. If a concept is as relevant and as ill understood as it was years ago, then it stands to reason that an answer will we equally as well valued as it was years ago.

3) Based on this chapter, what factors would you include on a checklist for evaluating the design of a product?

I think this question is more complicated than it initially lets on, as I brought up in class on Wendsday, not all products/objects are interacted with in quite the same way, some products are active ones in which you often interact with the object in such a way that intelegently designed supplementary actions can be a boon, but most objects are interacted with in a far more passive way, the door handle for example, is not an object that you would often spend a period of time learning, you simply expect it to work in an obvious way. I think the differentiation between these two classes of objects is relevant not because it changes the checklist of what is important in a product, but for how it changes what is most important in a product. Both classes of objects can be seen in a typical car, the steering wheel, accelerator and brakes all are very active controls, and not necessarily intuitive unless you have driven a car before, but because they are all very simple to interact with, at least in a very rudimentary sense, they are very easy to learn. You would not be particularly happy, however, if the air conditioning control or stereo in your car were similarly obtuse initially. These are both instances of passive controls, the user simply wants them to do what they ought to, and as a result, there is much greater pressure on the designer to take visibility, mapping and natural design into account as they design the air conditioning control. The steering wheel however, need not necessarily have good mapping or visibility, as the designer can expect that the user will spend a reasonable amount of time learning the basic controls of the automobile.

The Design of Everyday Things

1) What do you think the author's key points in this chapter were?

In the opening chapter of The Design of Everyday Things, Donald Norman explores the idea that objects should not just be easy to use, but obvious to use, and that they should give the operator subtle hints as to how to interact with the object. This idea is expressed eloquently in the example of the German charter bus, and the way that the driver describes the layout of the controls, "Everything is exactly where it ought to be."

2)Think of a specific object that you have had difficulty using. How did design contribute to making it difficult to use? Does the usability problem arise from one of the principles that Norman discusses in this chapter?

My first Mp3 player was a Panasonic Shockwave, and it was the embodiment of everything that a computer device shouldn't be, it was relatively large for the amount of storage it had, lacking in ergonomics, and above all difficult to navigate. The device was not designed so much as a purpose-built computer, but as a CD Walkman only with a small flash drive in place of an optical disk drive. Even with a capacity of only 256mb, this still made for an incredibly unwieldy system, having exactly the same control panel as a CD player, an extremely rudimentary options menu, and no song directory at all, forcing the user to select songs by panning through them individually, which was only slightly annoying until you realized that that meant waiting for the songs to load individually, meaning that after hopping through about 2.5 albums worth of songs to get to the one you were looking for, the AA batteries that you had just inserted, would die of the exertion caused by looking for your music. Suffice it to say, I was unhappy with my hundred and thirty dollar piece of plastic junk.

3) How did the designers of the iPod address the principle that Norman discusses here?

By contrast, the iPod was built with a flair for minimalism, and yet the iPod managed to be simple to use as well, because the interface allowed for the selection of songs as opposed to the incremental skipping of songs, and because the controls were not meant to be learned, so mush as simply understood. The "Click Wheel" is the ultimate example of this, nowhere does the click wheel say go this way for down, and this way for up, it simply entreats the user to turn it, because that is the obvious thing to do with it, and upon turning the wheel, the operator comes to find that it works in exactly the way that one would expect it to, in fact, i many ways the operator knows before they even touch the device what it will do.

The perfect thing

1) What elements of the design process does this article illustrate?

This article displays the way that an idea progresses from simply a vague concept, to a usable product, through Styrofoam and non functional models, to individual component models, to prototype usable models.

2)What factors would you use to evaluate a perfect thing?

Simplicity of design, of use, and of purpose. To say that anything is "perfect" is somewhat naive, but the ipod was the distillation of everything that a digital music player could be, and nothing more, the genius of the ipod is the simple lack of multifunctionality, it accomplishes a task in the most elementary way possible, Occam's Razor at it's finest.

3) Whether you own an iPod or not, you probably have some opinions of the is product. What do you feel are its strengths and weaknesses?

The iPod is, in many ways the exact oppisite of the iPhone. The genius of the iPod was the fact that it was a digital music player that fit into your life in an appropriate way and did it's job effectively and innocuously, in a smooth, clean package. The iPhone on the otherhand is essetially an electronic swiss army knife, and as a result fails to make obvious why exactly it is a must own product, as opposed to simply an expansion upon the cell phone as we know it.

Hello out there

I frankly could not be more excited to be here at K.

I have been a Hardcore Cross coutry for the last four years, as well as a band geek; in college however, I will simply be a hardcore recreational runner, and still a band geek.

I was drawn to the Design Intelegence seminar simply because it seemed interesting, and unlike anything I had ever studied before. My hope for the class, is simply to learn something new, about something that we constanly overlook.