Design

19 Apr 2009 0724H

from “Beijing Modern”

‘‘Too often contemporary Chinese art is rooted in Western traditions,’’ he says. ‘‘Even my education was Western.’’ (Shao’s parents, acclaimed painters, began giving him painting lessons when he was 3.) ‘‘True contemporary Chinese art must evolve from Chinese traditions,’’ he says. ‘‘It must have a Chinese soul.’’
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12 Jan 2009 2317H

Notes on “Designing Design,” by Kenya Hara

Today we have absolutely no means available to realistically imagine the extent of the brutality of the cultural revolution called the Meiji restoration (1867), which managed to transform completely the purely Japanese “Edo Culture” into a Westernized one. However, people in those days probably expended a stupendous amount of energy on information gathering and study [...]

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12 Jan 2009 1913H

In praise of the Pre

Congrats to Matias Duarte, Wes Yun, and the team who worked on making the Palm Pre’s debut such a success. (If you haven’t seen the launch keynote, check it out.) Backtrack a little over 13, 14 months to a conversation I had with Wes and Matias about working for a project that they could not [...]

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06 Jan 2009 0839H

Why Steve Jobs is so important

They use a technique called genius design for high profile products at Apple. At Apple, that means it has attracted the attention of Steve Jobs, who pushes the design to the level of his satisfaction, which can also be a bad thing. Now with this year’s keynote disappearing, not to disparage Ives and all the [...]

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21 Dec 2008 1647H

Do you matter: how great design will make people love your company

(by Robert Brunner and Stewart Emery with Russ Hall: FT Press, 2008.) Examples are too heavy on the Apple fanboy love, when so many others are available, and there is this sense, despite the hard orange cover with its glossy Helvetica type in a trendy slim, vertical format, that this book is actually a rough [...]

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02 Dec 2008 1153H

From Seattle IxDA

Great talk by Daniel Cook about interaction design and games:
Video: Microsoft Office Labs & Engineering Excellence IxDA Event Part I Daniel Cook

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21 Nov 2008 0734H

Big change ahead

When I first started as a designer in this field about 12 years ago, one of the first things I remember wanting to design was the information displays on medical devices. It looks like I will finally get my chance!
After a few grueling months of interviewing and constantly running into jobs being placed on hold, [...]

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21 Oct 2008 1447H

Are carousels abused?

Probably. We talk about carousels but no one properly seems to know what are the appropriate contexts around when to use them.
For those not in the know, carousels are a kind of web user interface widget that essentially displays a subset of a larger set of information in a loop, and typically not only shows [...]

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08 Sep 2008 1150H

E-ink on flexible plastic substrate

The possibilities are intriguing. So what about color e-ink?

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17 Aug 2008 0850H

Effective design problem solving

By way of Noise Between Stations, there’s a line in this work, my emphasis added, by Nigel Cross’s Expertise in Design:
Expert designers appear to be ‘ill-behaved’ problem solvers, especially in terms of the time and attention they spend on defining the problem. However, this seems to be appropriate behaviour, since some studies have suggested that [...]

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