I've been thinking about the process of creating things. Whether
they are graphics for a website, or interaction: like the iPod
Touch-man, I want one of those!, or designing everyday things like
jar openers. Recently, working through
Designing Interactions has brought this to mind a lot. They
talk about the design of the first mouse and some of the first
computers. Great book so far.
I also finished
iWoz last night and, while this is his autobiography, he gets
into a lot of design and process and "how we made it" kinds of
things. He talks about designing the floppy disk drive for the
Apple II, for instance. That drove out of the user need: before
this, cassettes (like the things that you make a mix tape with)
were used and they were slow. When they first saw a disk drive,
they decided that they must have one of those for the Apple. So he
starts picking apart the disk drive and looking at the schematic
diagrams and the chips being used. The process of the design and
the process of making things is fascinating to me.
This is probably why, when I was in SFO last month, their display of
designed things caught my attention. I think it was one of the
computers that first caught my attention. I didn't snap a picture
of it, but I did snap a picture of a few displays that I found
interesting:
Design can be a long process
I think that some of the abstract computer software is hard to
design partly because it is so abstruse. However, here is a simple
object: a toothbrush. And they made dozens of different models to
try to get it right.
This probably also highlights something you can't see here:
testing in design. I'd guess that they tested those designs. That
is something that comes up regularly with the Xerox PARC in
Designing Interactions: measuring different options.
Design can be short
This little device opens jars. It's got grippy teeth to grab the
lid and a grippy handle with which to turn. And there aren't a lot
of these kinds of devices (by comparison to toothbrushes) and yet
how many versions are there? 54. I'm pretty sure #s
3-5 are the same in varying degrees of assembly, but I'll say #3
and #4 are different and call it 4 version. And if you look the
difference between version #1 and #5 is really very little. Maybe
there is more to this process that we didn't see but, from my
experience, sometimes you just get it nearly right, fresh out of
the gate.
Don't build faster horses
I can hear the back-room design discussion on this one: "It'll
be great: people won't have to learn to use something new. They
already know how to use it."
"If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have
said a faster horse." - Henry Ford What his customers ultimately
wanted, obviously was a big, ugly, gas-guzzling truck
car.
I think this one can be tricky: you want to design what your
customers/users want, but at the same time, they are limited by the
lens with which they perceived the world. You, as a
designer/imaginer, are often working to blow open boxes of
constraint. That is why you can come up with new ideas.
You aren't re-inventing the wheel
This is several variations on the mouse. The mouse has been
invented and re-invented a few times. I'm not sure when these
models were created: I'd guess within the last 5-10 years
(scrollwheel, orange color, laptop mouse). So the mouse had been
approximately 15 years old by this time.
But the biggest thing here is the hubris of the "vision":
Just in case the text is too blurry: "Purpose: To help business
travelers find a comfortable and effective new way to interact with
their laptop computer."
Comfort and effectiveness are valuable goals for certain. To
make a more comfortable mouse and a more effective one: certainly
good designs goals. But it says "a comfortable way" not "a more
comfortable way" - as though they were inventing the laptop mouse.
And it says a "new way." That mouse doesn't look that new.
I'm really not criticizing the team on this one. It looks like a
good mouse. But is it really a paradigm shift? I don't think so.
But I don't think a paradigm shift was needed. It looks like the
cord is hidden (for easy storage) and the design is fairly flat
(assumption: for easy storage in a bag). Those are good things to
do.
I'm taking away from this: sometimes I don't need to re-invent
the wheel: the wheel is OK. I can, however, make it better. I
should be happy to improve a good thing; to stand on the shoulders
of giants. And my project purposes and design goals should echo
that.