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.