Hasta La Ideas

1. Grandpa the Pixel Painter Hal Lasko, who now goes by Grandpa, is a 97-year-old former typographer whose medium of choice is Microsoft Paint. Lasko lost most of his eyesight due to macular degeneration but discovered that the computer program could magnify images…

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Our friends at frog design recently released a short documentary on Industrial Design in the Modern World, a kind of iterative manifesto (the consultancy’s first but certainly not their last), featuring several key players of the design team. We had a chance to catch up with Creative Director Jonas Damon on the broader message of the piece, as well as his thoughts on user experience and a possible revision to Dieter Rams’ canonical principles of design.

Core77: Can you elaborate on the points you touch on in the opening monologue? Specifically, to what degree do ‘traditional’ (or outdated) forms and materials embody value or character? For example, I recently came across an iPod speaker in which the dock opens like a cassette tape deck, which evoked a certain nostalgic charm despite being rather impractical (it was difficult to see the screen behind the plastic).

Jonas Damon: The opening monologue is about the physical constraints that have guided forms in the past vs. forms today, and the opportunities that arise from the absence of these constraints. ‘Honesty’ in design is a widely admired quality, and in the past that honesty was expressed by skillfully sculpting with and around a given product’s physical conditions, rather than just hiding or disguising these. So when products were more mechanical, they had a more imposing DNA that informed their character; their mechanics largely defined their identities. Many product types came preconditioned with an iconic, unmistakable silhouette.

Today, most products in the consumer electronics space can be made with a rectangular circuit board, a rectangular screen, and a rectangular housing. Therefore, the natural expression of these products today is limited to a rectangle—not really a unique identity. Expression of character becomes more nuanced and malleable. With that newfound freedom, we have to be more sensitive, judicious and inventive. These days, ‘honesty’ is more complex and difficult to design for, as it’s about the intangible aspects of the brand the product embodies.

Traditional forms and materials have cultural value because of their iconic, built-in character. The starting point for many contemporary consumer electronics forms is generic and sterile, so historical forms are often tapped to artificially trigger our memory-based emotions. It’s been a popular fallback that we may be a little tired of these days, but on occasion its been well executed, and even that can have merit.

Of course, the ‘flat black rectangle’ effect also implies a shift from traditional form-follows-function I.D. to a broader, UX-centric approach to design (i.e. some argue that Apple’s focus on iOS7 is simply a sign that they’ve shifted from hardware innovation to the UX/software experience). What is the relationship between hardware and UX?

Hardware is an integral part of UX. A true “user experience” is multi-sensory: when you engage with something, don’t you see, feel, hear, maybe even smell that which you are engaging with? (I’m not sure why anybody refers to solely screen-based interactions as “UX”; that notion is outdated) As an Industrial Designer, I am a designer of User Experience. ID has gotten richer since we’ve started considering “living technology” as a material. By “living technology,” I mean those elements that bring objects to life, that make them animate and tie them to other parts of the world around us: sensors, screens, haptics, connectivity, software, etc. By claiming these elements as part of our domain (or by tightly embedding their respective expert designers/engineers in our teams), we are able to create holistic designs that are greater than the sums of their parts.

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The folks at IDEO New York have come up with a short video about “embracing ambiguity,” a parable about three designers navigating the foggy seas. Not only is it a charmingly crafty affirmation on resourcefulness and perseverance, it features a small dog in a sailor cap. Watch:

The video is precisely the kind of diversion that the Economist might cite in their brief profile of the esteemed design consultancy. A recent Schumpeter column ambiguously embraced IDEO’s approach to both “designing things that you can touch” and, increasingly, “re-engineering services.”

There are three main elements to IDEO’s “design thinking.” The first is “lots of different eyes.” It employs people from wildly different backgrounds—surgeons and anthropologists as well as engineers and designers—and lumps them into multidisciplinary teams. The second is to look at problems from the consumer’s point of view: for example, conducting detailed interviews with patients about their daily pill-taking routines and how they feel about them. IDEO likes to focus on the outliers rather than the typical customers—people who have demanding medical regimes or who constantly forget to take their tablets—on the assumption that this produces more useful results.

The third element is making everything tangible. The company produces mock-ups of its products and processes, to see how people react to them “in the wild.” The London office, in newly trendy Clerkenwell, contains an old-fashioned woodworking room and a newfangled 3D printer. There is much talk of “thinking with your hands” and “rapid prototyping.”

The article does raise the topic of ‘design imperialism,’ but concludes with measured optimism about the future of service design—read it here.

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For better or for worse, we’ve grown a bit skeptical about the ever-popular making/manufacturing videos that seem to be par for the course for any remotely heritage brand / artisanal crafting concern / handmade thing these days. Which is not to say that there aren’t good ones out there: as a recently-launched series of short fims entitled “The Makers of Things” beautifully captures the spirit of making without compromising the integrity of its subject matter—not least because these fellows have been at it for decades longer than most, offering an intimate picture of what a “lifetime of making things looks like.”

No. 1: The Scoiety

Filmmaker Anne Hollowday has spent the past year producing the series of four short films documenting the work of the remarkable Society for Model and Experimental Engineers (SMEE). “Their common tools and methods mask a huge array of interests and skills, from experimental tinkerers to woodworkers and librarians, all brought together under the roof of their South London headquarters.”

Established in the UK in 1898 by Percival Marshall, the Society has survived two world wars as well as the introduction of technology barely dreamed about at the beginning of the 20th century. It now has hundreds of members from across the world, all united by their passion for making and creating.

No. 2: The Problem Solver

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This week New York City saw the trial launch of Street Charge, a series of tree-like structures sprouting up in public spaces. And as the name suggests, they charge your phone, providing several different types of male connector. Observers will note that there’s no effective way to wire these things, parked as they are in the middle of public plazas; that’s why there’s solar panels up top, sucking down glorious free juice from the sun.

Here’s the thing: Every news organization is of course calling them “AT&T Street Charge,” as they are the ones sponsoring the objects, and many are reporting that the project was initially inspired by Hurricane Sandy and its attendant widespread power loss. But while AT&T’s corporate muscle helped realize StreetCharge, it is of course an unsung industrial design firm who first came up with the idea—well before Sandy—and who has been toiling away behind the scenes to make the design work, in partnership with solar technology company Goal Zero.

The Street Charge concept was born in the Brooklyn offices of design firm Pensa, back in early 2012. In this episode of Core77 TV, we get the inside story of Street Charge from Mark Prommel, Pensa Partner and Design Director.

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