Interesting Snippets

Apple’s products say, “You can’t do that because we think it would suck.” Microsoft’s products say, “We’ll let you try to do anything on anything if you really want to, even if it sucks.” People who dislike Apple’s approach or whose requirements are incompatible with it will always exist in great numbers, and the Surface is for them. It’ll probably sell well, especially if Microsoft can expand their retail presence quickly. But it’s not for me at all. Not even for testing, experimenting, or curiosity. It feels too much like using a Windows PC, which was exactly Microsoft’s intention, and it will appeal to people who want that. But that’s a world I fled 8 years ago with no intention of returning.

We’re generally faster learners than our technology, as long as we are given something that can be easily approached and mastered. We’re more plastic and malleable – what we do changes our brains – so the ‘wily’ technology (and it’s designers) will sieze upon this and use it… All of which leaves me wondering whether we are working towards Artificial Empathy, rather than Artificial Intelligence in the things we are designing…

Colourlovers makes the art of creating colors and patterns come alive, even for non-designers like me, who’d never had the urge to “create” a color in a world where there are already millions of them. No matter how intimidated by design you are, you can quickly find yourself creating colors, pallattes, patterns, and shapes on Colourlovers and start looking at design in a completely different way. Imagine what people with actual talent can do with these tools… Nearly 1.5 million registered users have shared more than five million colors, two million palettes, two million patterns, and nearly 160,000 templates.

One of the really tough questions to answer in relation to any technology is: When do you make something easy and when do you make it hard? This problem is perhaps most obvious in the realm of game design, since people get bored by games that are too easy and get frustrated by games that are too hard. …
But this problem occurs in other technological arenas too. Consider typography… A well-designed text, with a highly legible typeface and appropriate spacing, places a considerably lighter cognitive burden on us than a badly designed page. …
Reading a page done right is like sliding on the ice: we just flow right along. …
However, as Kahneman also points out, flowing right along isn’t always the best recipe for understanding

A friend of mine who works on Air Traffic Controller apparatus told me that they often rely on dot matrix printers that print text documents when aircraft are approaching. These printers emit a very specific noise (remember that?) and when they have been replaced by a new one controllers complained that they lack this sound to make their decisions…

Other companies fail to do things because they’ve overlooked potential openings or are cutting corners to save money; under Jobs, however, every spurned opportunity is a conscious, measured statement. It’s why the pundits who give Apple products poor reviews for not including industry-standard components — for instance, the iMac’s lack of a floppy drive — just aren’t getting it: Apple products are as defined by what they’re missing as much as by what they contain.

In public spaces, in offices, in our homes. iPads and iPad-killers are going to be sitting around our living rooms, next to our desks, next our beds. And we’ll soon want more on there than our picture libraries Ken Burnsing slowly away to themselves. But we’re going to want less than most designers are inclined to design. We’ll need a restful, slow, quiet sort of information/entertainment design. Stuff that’s happy not to be looked at that much. That’ll be interesting.