Category: Good design

Instances of good design

Out of the Box billboard technique

August 31, 2009 / / 1 Comment

Our supermarket provides a large billboard for public use, where people post the usual mix of personal ads of all kinds. So many of them, in fact, that any one ad is likely to get drowned or covered by other ads before the day is out.

Billboard

Ad on access rampSo here’s one person that solved this problem in an original way, providing their ad with a unique chance to register on people’s eyeballs.

I was walking up the ramp at the left in the photo above, which leads to the supermarket’s main doors, and I saw at my feet the ad in the photo, taped right to the metal ramp. It advertises a flat for rent – and no shopper coming that way can fail to notice it. Wayda go!

Bless old style artisan shops…

August 28, 2009 / / 2 Comments

We needed a standing lamp for the living room, and went shopping. We started with some of the larger lighting stores around town, and found a great many lamps, mostly imported from China. Like most manufactured goods today they were inexpensive and looked like they would do the job – for a while. The workmanship was usually shoddy and of course there was nobody to tell that I prefer the on/off switch to be just at this height, and I need a longer electric cord, and would love it if the lampshade were just a bit wider…

After a while we were beginning to consider compromising, but decided to first try Karl Marx. This is a small old style shop in downtown Jerusalem; it has been there forever, and I never entered it, though it did attract my occasional amused glance because of the coincidence of its founder’s name.

Karl Marx lighting shop, Jerusalem

The shop occupied a tiny room crammed so tight with lamps and lampshades that one could barely stand in it (the photo doesn’t begin to convey this). And there we found a lamp we liked, which we could get with any shade we wished, because they’re made to order by the owners; in fact, we were guided courteously through all the possibilities and ordered one decorated to our specification with a frieze in a color and style to match our living room rug. And of course they promised to construct it with the switch where I wanted it, the cord the needed length, and so forth. The quality and workmanship, too, were perfect.

This is one of those old fashioned Mom and Pop businesses that represent the skill and dedication of a lifetime (or more), and produce goods handmade to a standard no longer seen in the mass-produced disposable products that flood the large chains. I should be sad discussing it, because these wonderful shops are fast disappearing; but I’m too delighted in the excellent lamp Messrs. Marx made for us!

A thoughtful little feature in my text editor

July 5, 2009 / / 0 Comments

PFE Editor Print DialogI needed hard copy of a paragraph from a long text document, so I opened it in my trusty old editor (Programmer’s File Editor by Alan Phillips, a powerful freeware editor I use in lieu of the pitifully rudimentary Windows Notepad). I selected the paragraph and opened the Print dialog, recalling that there was an option to only print the selection. The option was there, a radio button sandwiched between those for All and Lines from ___ to ___ . I moved to click it – and realized it was already selected for me.

This is far from a big deal, but I really liked the thoughtfulness that Mr. Phillips had put into this feature. The editor saw I had selected a piece of text; it stood to reason that I wanted to print that text, and not the full document. Features where the computer tries to read the user’s mind can lead at times to unexpected clashes of will, but this one was all goodness.

And compare it to the behavior, in the same situation, of Microsoft Word: you can print a selection, but if you forget to click the radio button you end up sending 50 pages to the printer. Happened to me many times…

History in the making: Google Wave unveiled

May 29, 2009 / / 1 Comment

Google Wave logoAs someone who spent a large chunk of  lifetime working on improving knowledge worker effectiveness, especially around computer mediated communication and  collaboration, I can barely contain my excitement.  I’ve just sat through the lengthy video of yesterday’s unveiling of Google Wave in the I/O developer conference. Not only have the good folks at Google integrated the most central processes of Computer Supported Collaborative Work – Email, IM, Shared document editing, Discussion boards, and more – into a single tool; but they’ve upgraded their underlying paradigms – which had changed very little in decades – into a dynamic, vibrant usage model that takes advantage of the latest Web 2.0 concepts (and then some).

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The video is quite long, as was the demo, but well worth your time to watch. I won’t repeat the details; if you don’t have patience for the video, there are screenshots here and some info here. They include concepts we’ve been waiting to improve on for years (like properly dealing with, and visualizing,  discussion threads) and others I haven’t seen yet (like an intelligent, meaning-sensitive spell checker).

What will be very interesting to behold when this product comes out later this year is how different segments of the user base adapt to the new paradigm. The Social Networking set should be ecstatic, but what will large enterprises do? The new features of Wave could revolutionize their collaboration  effectiveness, so they stand to gain the most, but many large organizations are not known for their agility where new technology (or changes in ingrained cultural paradigms) are involved. Those who do adopt and unleash this power will have a serious competitive advantage, IMHO.

Kudos to the Google team that developed this down under!

A feast of technical illustration

May 9, 2009 / / 0 Comments

A picture is worth a thousand words – when it is a good picture. There is a huge gap in effectiveness between the best and the worst illustrations you see in technical and scientific publications. The trick is to convey the essence of what’s being shown, whether it is a machine, a building or an anatomical detail of some biological specimen, without drowning it in the irrelevant; and it gets trickier when you’re dealing with cutouts and other means of showing inner details of complex systems. Many illustrators never get the hang of it…

But today I accidentally surfed onto the site of Beau and Alan Daniels, producers of “cutaway, ghosted and phantom view illustrations in various styles including: Blueprint, watercolor, photorealistic, pencil, pen and ink, pastels, and black and white line art”… and they have an extensive portfolio there of incredible illustrations spanning technology, science and biology that is truly a feast to the eyes. I simply had to share it with you!

Take a look and enjoy!

Roman technology rocks!

April 6, 2009 / / 2 Comments

Yesterday I went to the annual conference of the Israeli Society for History and Philosophy of Science, an eclectic event if ever I saw one. Lectures covered such diverse issues as the possible role of quantum effects in neuronal microtubules in creating consciousness (yes, Penrose’s conjecture); blog writing as a therapeutic tool for adolescents with social and emotional problems; the development of the Theremin; and a lot besides. It was so much fun that I joined the society then and there!

A Maltese GalleyBut to the subject of this blog: there was a lecture by Yossi Eliav about The evolution of engineering literacy as seen in Venetian manuscripts about shipbuilding from the 15th century. This mouthful was actually very interesting; but at some point I asked a question about older ships and I was treated to the following insight: these Venetians had large rowing ships (right), galleys, carrying over 100 rowers, which were produced in large numbers and used extensively for centuries; so did the Romans, Carthaginians and Greeks 20 centuries earlier. But the Roman and Greek galleys – triremes, with 3 rows of rowers – were of a completely different, and far superior, construction!

The medieval and early modern ships were built from the inside out: first the keel and ribs were built, and then planks were nailed to this skeleton from the outside. The ancient trireme was built from the outside in: first the shell was built from planks connected to each other with mortise and tenon joints; then the inner skeleton was added as reinforcement. This meant that the trireme had a solid hull that could withstand shearing forces, which the Venetian galleys could not. In addition, the precision of the Greek and Roman work was such that the hull was practically watertight even without caulking!

The picture below shows this amazing technique in detail.
These ancients could sure build!

Trireme hull construction

Photo credits:
Maltese galley: Myriam Thyes, via Wikimedia Commons.
Trireme construction: Eric Gaba, via Wikimedia Commons.

Those conservative business cards…

March 24, 2009 / / 0 Comments

Business cards have been around for a long time – very long, if you count visiting cards – so we should not be surprised if they tend to have an innate inertia to them. Still, business has changed so much in recent years – isn’t it time that the cards paid attention?

I was scanning a batch of business cards I got in a conference recently when I noticed an interesting fact: they may come in many designs and colors, but 90% of cards will have the contact information in the following order:

Physical address
Phone number
Fax number
Mobile number
Email address
Web site URL (if any)

Now this is interesting, because it has two attributes:

  1. It follows the approximate historical order the various technologies appeared in (first we had office buildings, then telephones, then faxes, etc.)
  2. It gives the items in reverse order in terms of usefulness, the least useful at the top: in today’s virtual, mobile, global world, we would most often use email to reach people, or a cellphone if they have one; faxes are not yet gone but may soon be, and physical addresses are only of marginal use in a “work anywhere” culture.

I had a friend, a master blogger and geek, who once said if he had his way he’d simply put on his card his name and “Google me!” – now that’s modern thinking for you! The closest you get to this are Moo minicards, those miniature cards that barely have room for a name, job role and email address.

Now that I noticed this I checked my own new card that I made after leaving Intel – and guess what, I had it almost right in terms of descending importance:

Name
Web site URL
Email address
Physical address
Mobile number (the only phone I use)
Fax number

Only the physical address stayed higher than it should be…

IVR woes: good idea – poor execution

March 16, 2009 / / 2 Comments

I was trying to reach the customer service of a company just now. There I was, listening to the endless music of an IVR system, punctuated by the usual happy reminders that I am oh-so-appreciated by them and they’ll get to me real soon (liars!), when something happened. The recording declared that they were very busy so if I could leave my name and number they’ll get back to me. No option to keep waiting.

To their credit, the next step was done professionally – the IVR had me state my name, then key in my phone number, then confirm it when it read it back to me – so I have good reason to believe they will really get back to me. Which is actually better than the silly music. So giving me this way out is a good idea.

The bad part is, if they knew they were busy (and, assuming it’s a FIFO queue, they had the necessary information – my place in line – as soon as they picked up my call) – why wait for long minutes of stupid music before switching to the leave-your-name-and-number routine? They’re giving the customer the combined worst of both solutions!

Standardization of charge indicators (Not!)

March 13, 2009 / / 0 Comments

These days we all have at least half a dozen gadgets whose batteries require charging, and they each come with their own charger (incompatible with all the others, of course). Now, I won’t push for standardizing the chargers – can’t aim that high – but here is a more modest goal: can we please standardize the status indicator LEDs on them?

Nikon camera battery chargers

Here are two chargers that came with my two Nikon cameras, the old point and shoot and the newer DSLR. No, they are not interchangeable, even though the batteries are both Li-Ion and of the same voltage. Both have a LED indicator that blinks during charging and stops blinking when done; however, in one it stays lit when there’s no battery inserted, and in the other it stays unlit.

Nikon D40 battery charger closeupBut the bigger problem is remembering what’s what when you come back later and the light is stable. You see, in these, this means charge complete; but in my cordless shaver it means that it isn’t; there, blinking indicates a full charge. Different vendor, and they probably just flip a coin at design time…

My own solution was documenting it all on a post-it note stuck near these chargers; but then Nikon must have realized that this is an issue, because in the later camera – my D40 DSLR – they labeled the charger itself to remove any doubt. Good move!

The considerate envelope

February 9, 2009 / / 0 Comments

I was interviewed recently by the Columbia Journalism Review for an issue they were putting together about Information Overload, and as promised was then mailed the hardcopy magazine in a manila envelope.

I was heartened to see the stamp in the photo on the envelope.
Stamp on envelope from CJR

Obviously this did not apply in my case – The entire issue was of interest to me, so the page number was not filled in – but I love the idea. Telling the recipient where to look in something mailed to them is a key concept of good email etiquette that I’ve been teaching for years: if you send someone a presentation with 70 slides (which, alas, many do in the corporate world) at least add in the email body “Check slides 45-47, they contain info related to your project”. The CJR uses hardcopy, but they evidently apply the same concept there. Good thinking!

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