Archive for the 'Improvement' Category

Mazda 3 evolution, take 1: Sometimes they listen!

Published
by
Nathan Zeldes
on June 20, 2008
in Bad design, Good design and Improvement
. 2 Comments

Recently I replaced my old Mazda 3 with the new model. The two are practically identical - why mess with a good thing? it’s a fine car! - but there are some minor differences, and I’ll be blogging them now and then… they afford us a peek into the design team’s thinking processes.

Here is the trunk door on the previous model. The problem is, it is not spring loaded; to open it you had to press the lock button and then claw it open by trying to pry up the bottom edge, which is a tight fit to the bumper below it (on most cars the door at least has some depression, perhaps for the license plate, where you can grasp it; this door is smooth and lacks any such grab point).

Old Mazda 3 trunk door

Quite annoying, and a lovely bit of poor usability. In fact, I saw one of these cars on the road whose enterprising owner had screwed a handle - from a kitchen drawer, by the looks of it - onto this door!

So here is the same door on the new model. Same door - one key difference: now there is a depression in the bumper to allow you to grasp the door.

New Mazda 3 trunk door

People must have been complaining - and the design team at Mazda had been listening. Better late than never!

Water cooler improvement - just don’t cool!

Published
by
Nathan Zeldes
on June 13, 2008
in Good design and Improvement
. 1 Comment

Many times, a small change in a design makes a product a lot better.

You know the modern version of the office water cooler: a vertical unit that dispenses cold (and in many models, also hot) water into disposable cups. Well, I’ve just seen one that made my day. The unit in the photo, a new model from Tami (a.k.a. Tana Water), has a small but smart addition: the button marked “Room Temp”.

Tami Bar 4 water cooler

What’s the big deal? Well, in most models, you push the button and get ice-cold water. This must be very attractive if you’ve just jumped off a camel at a desert oasis on a scalding summer day; but in most offices, which are air conditioned, you don’t need it to be ice-cold, and some prefer it not to be. Their solution in the past was to either try to add a little boiling water, or to sip slowly. So now Tami have added the Room Temp button - you can get the same clean, filtered water, without the extra cooling. A tiny redesign, leading to a better product.

Polymer banknotes are here!

Published
by
Nathan Zeldes
on June 6, 2008
in Improvement and Odds and Ends
. 0 Comments

Until now, we had paper money, and we had plastic - which meant credit cards. Well, now the distinction is blurred: as of April, Israel joined a growing list of countries that have plastic paper money!

Polymer Banknotes

See the two 20 Shekel banknotes above. The one on the right is the trusty ol’ paper banknote, showing the late Moshe Sharet. The other showed up in April, amazing many citizens and confounding countless vending machines. It is made of a tough polymer, and looks exactly the same except for the transparent window in the star of David at top left - a transparent area that is continuous with the paper itself, a superb anti-forging device. Polymer Banknote detail

There is also a watermark of Mr. Sharet below the star, but in a resolution unheard of in ordinary paper watermarks. This did not scan well, but you can get the idea in the detail from a Romanian polymer note that fell into my hands - note how the transparency feature here is interleaved with opaque lines in the eagle, and see the bearded man in the watermark, visible only because the scanner shone a light through the thickness of the plastic paper.

These Polymer banknotes were originally developed in Australia, and have the advantage - in addition to making forgers miserable - of resisting the severe wear and tear that paper money must endure far better than their predecessors. They are entering service in a lengthening list of countries, and although at first they complained that they are strange to the touch, I already see people getting used to their unaccustomed smooth texture.

Bialetti’s Brikka: only one extra piece!

Published
by
Nathan Zeldes
on April 25, 2008
in Good design and Improvement
. 0 Comments

All coffee lovers know the classic Italian “Machinetta“, or Moka pot, that 3-piece stovetop espresso maker: not a competition to the professional espresso machine of a coffee shop, but good for a fast, concentrated caffeine fix at home. These have been around since their invention in 1933 by Alfonso Bialetti, and we have a number of them at home in various sizes (hint: go for the stainless steel ones, they don’t corrode and last forever if you don’t burn the plastic handle).

But on a trip to Italy we were served by some friends with tiny portions Bialetti Brikka coffeemakerof a much stronger, foamy brew; and upon inquiring how they could produce it at home we were shown the Brikka, the machinetta with the “sbuffo” (the dictionary says “gust of wind; puff“, but a fiery snort sounds more appropriate to convey this word’s feel).

The amazing thing about the Brikka is that it is practically identical to the old Moka, except that it has one additional piece: a heavy steel cup, padded with a rubber gasket, that sits atop the tube from which, through a hole at its top, the hot coffee issues. This means that before the steam in the bottom half can push the water through the coffee powder, it has to achieve a high enough pressure to lift the steel weight; essentially the arrangement you find in a pressure cooker’s regulator valve. Once the correct pressure is reached the valve lifts and the coffee suddenly blasts through in a matter of seconds, accompanied by a loud puffing noise, much stream and bubbling foam. Sbuffo!

Brikka Sbuffo

The photos above capture the moment - mere seconds separate the two.

The Brikka, which Bialetti makes in 2-cup and 4-cup sizes (we’re talking Italian cups - about half a demitasse each), makes far stronger coffee than the Moka, and with some foam to boot. And all by adding one piece to an age-old design!

Brikka mechanism

Note the hole at the top of the tube, exposed with the weight dismantled.

Brikka compared to ordinary Moka

Brikka (right) compared to the open tube in a regular Moka style machine.

What will they think of next, you say? Don’t get me started about Bialetti’s “Mukka Express”, which seems to apply similar ideas to produce Cappuccino in one go (I’m still resisting the temptation to buy one of those).

LCD Monitor adjustment blues

Published
by
Nathan Zeldes
on April 16, 2008
in Bad design, Design history and Improvement
. 0 Comments

So we’ve made the move to flat computer screens, which have many advantages over their bulky CRT ancestors; but the vendors pulled a fast one on us when it comes to the controls for adjusting the screen’s image.OSD on Samsung SyncMaster 913N monitor

In the good ol’days, every monitor had at least two round knobs, one for contrast, one for brightness. This is as good as it gets from a human engineering perspective. You just twiddle the knobs back and forth until your eyes tell your brain to tell your fingers to stop right there. Today, we have instead an On-screen Display (OSD), which some vendors tout as a good thing; in reality it is slow, unfriendly and confusing. The idea is that you use a line of pushbuttons the navigate a hierarchy of menus just to get to the function you need, and then you need to click a good deal more to effect the adjustment. To make sure this is easy, the buttons are often labeled by cryptic symbols in near-invisible relief (as in the photo below, of my Samsung SyncMaster 913N); and the logic they use, though simple, is far from intuitive. This may be justified - indeed inevitable - for accessing the numerous advanced functions that did not exist in the CRT days; but couldn’t they have left alone those more basic controls?

That’s progress for you (sigh)…

Control buttons on Samsung SyncMaster 913N monitor

So, what can we do about this? Adding analog controls is not realistic on these super-integrated monitors. The only thing left, which actually removes much of the confusion, is to do what the vendor should have done - mark the controls with visible labels, as I’ve done:

Labbeled Control buttons on Samsung SyncMaster 913N monitor

Artsy design is not enough!

Published
by
Nathan Zeldes
on April 14, 2008
in Bad design and Improvement
. 0 Comments

The trendy-looking kitchen tool in the photo, made by Koziol, is called “Mia” for some reason. Its purpose is to test Pasta: the frilly head is surprisingly adept at scooping (and holding) a few pieces of short Pasta (penne, fusilli, etc) out of the boiling water; and you use the hook at the other end to fish a strand of spaghetti. Then you can bite them to see if they’re underdone or just right (that is, “Al Dente”, not overcooked and mushy!) And the ring may be for measuring one-serving batches of uncooked spaghetti.

Koziol Mia pasta scoop

A useful little tool, addressing a real need - catching pasta in boiling water with a fork or spoon can be quite vexing. And it has a lovely zoomorphic design, like all of Koziol’s humorous, artsy kitchenware. It even has two depressions for eyes…

BUT… as it came from the store, it had one major design flaw: the deep scoop of the “head” catches not only fusilli, but also a spoonful of boiling water, which can all too easily spill on your hand as you try to grab your tasty catch. As a fishing net analogue, it has no holes!

Koziol Mia pasta scoop improved

So, what can we do about this? Sometimes, what an industrial designer messes up, we can fix by ourselves. I used a fine drill to deepen the eyes until they punched through, making excellent drainage holes without destroying Mia’s funny face.

Fighting back against shrieking car alarms

Published
by
Nathan Zeldes
on March 14, 2008
in Bad design and Improvement
. 1 Comment

A particularly heinous bit of bad product design are ear-shattering car alarms.

The underlying thought was good, I’m sure: let’s make the car raise an unholy racket when someone messes with it, and we’ll put a stop to car theft! Of course, this failed miserably, both because of high false alarm rates and because in the case of a true alert most bystanders will prefer to mind their own business rather than confront a possibly violent thief. In fact the New York City Police Department claims that car alarms actually contribute to making the crime problem worse; and every urban dweller is familiar with their harm to quality of life in the city (for more data, see this report).

Now, car alarms come in many forms, and not all are harmful to our sanity; there are silent alternatives that will alert the owner wirelessly without raising a ruckus; there are immobilizer devices that can prevent theft in various ways; and so on. But many manufacturers still use the useless, maddening audible alarms, and a few design ones that will not shut themselves down after a minute or two - the designers of these deserve to be drawn and quartered…

So, what can we do about this? As a society we can certainly do much, if only we’d try (Terroncito has some interesting thoughts on this). I can tell you what I did. I used to have a car with a particularly nervous alarm, which got in the habit of treating my neighbors to minute-long blasts a few times a week. I tried to have it fixed, but to no avail. So I called my insurance agent, whose policy insisted I have this option in the car. I told him either the alarm goes, or his customer goes. Guess what - the insurance company wouldn’t budge, but the agent, after some diligent search, found another who was willing to accept a silent immobilizer. End of problem.

Remember: you can, and should, refuse to be told by some insurance company to torture your neighbors!

Invisible buttonware

Published
by
Nathan Zeldes
on March 1, 2008
in Bad design and Improvement
. 0 Comments

One evening a neighbor knocks on my door. She just got a new cellular phone, and she has a basic question: which key does she press to accept an incoming call?

Now this lady is not a youngster, but she’s used cellphones before; surely she must know that you press the key with the green handset image? Well, yes, she knows, but she can’t figure out which key that is. I think, Huh??? … But then I look at her instrument, and I see what she means. What used to be an image of a handset has degenerated into a tiny thin squiggle, similar to other tiny thin squiggles on some other keys. And yes, perhaps she could discern that this squiggle is a bit greenish, especially if she had a magnifier…

Cellular phone key comparison

The problem is all too visible in the left photo, which is of my own Nokia 6230i: the four keys at the top have identical looking thin marks, and the colors of the bottom two, though red and green, are very hard to discern at a glance (which is the way they should be discerned; especially when you’re driving with the phone in a hands-free cradle). Compare this to the other photo, from a different model. That’s what good human engineering should provide!

So, what can we do about this? If you work at a cellphone manufacturer, by all means have a word or two with your design department… I don’t, so all I could do was fix my own problem. Here is what I did to my Nokia. Problem solved.

Nokia cellphone with stickers