Design: Paper cutters
The paper cutter has to be toward the top of my list of favorite office supplies. Really, when I think about it, I would probably place it second behind the noble stapler. Yet my affection for the device that is an accident waiting to happen seems misplaced since I can’t say that I have had a great user experience with it.
Just the other day I was cutting out some screenshots for a design I had printed off. Maybe it’s me, but I get so annoyed trying to line up the cutting blade with whatever I am trying to cut. The grid on the cutting board surface is only usable if you know the measurements of what you’re cutting out of the top of your head. Even if I did know the measurements of one of my designs it would be in pixels rather than inches. Usually I turn to just sort of eyeing where the cut is going to fall based on the visible edge of the cutting board where the paper is not covering it. You can even typically see through the paper enough when cutting a single sheet to see the edge through the paper. Regardless, the finished cut tends to always be slightly off. I have an X-acto knife and straight edge in my cube for when precision is particularly important. This tends to be tedious, though, if you are cutting things out of multiple sheets of paper. All in all, I find any of these routes to be unsatisfactory.
Being able to make a precise straight cut is not much to ask in my opinion. That’s when I got to thinking. What if we could attach a laser to the paper cutter? As long as the light was calibrated to fall precisely where the blade was going to fall, then your cuts would be magic.
Oh yeah, you probably don’t want that laser shooting off into space; but it made for a more fun picture.
Thought: Design rhetoric
Here is a conversation that I have all too frequently. It usually starts with a request that goes something like this.
“The user is asking for this field.”
Me: “Why?”
“They had it in their old system.”
Me: “What do they do with that information?”
“Well, they report on it.”
Me: “Okay, but how does that help them do their job?”
Puzzled look.
I seem to go through this same basic conversation over and over again. Partly this is a tale of saving the users from themselves, but there’s something else to consider. That field in some form may seem innocuous, but it’s going to cause a user distress. The user requesting the field will love you for it, but think about your other users. They are going to see that field and possibly say to themselves:
- I don’t know what that field is for.
- Why don’t I know what that field is for?
- Should we be tracking that information?
- What am I supposed to put in there?
You may be sitting there reading this thinking I am being hyperbolic, but I have seen the anxiety in users’ eyes. I am only trying to caution you. Whether you want to believe it or not, your users trust that you know what’s right for them. As Designers we need to be mindful of every element we introduce else our designs suffer the death by a thousand cuts.
Observation: speaking in metaphors.
What is it about the metaphor that is so attractive to Designers? It almost feels as if a zippy metaphor will save the day when it comes time to justifying your design. Too often, though, a metaphor ends up feeling forced. I constructed this parable (you can pull the metaphors from it) not to long ago to explain why adding more functionality to a piece of software was not as important as improving user experience:
You go to the store and buy an unassembled bookshelf. You get home, grab your tool box, open up the package, and start laying out the pieces. It quickly becomes apparent that you have no idea how to assemble the bookshelf. That’s where we step in an hand you a hammer. You say, ‘But I already had a hammer’. We reply, ‘Yes, but this one’s bigger’.
Does this get the point across? Not really. We could probably cull a decent metaphor out of the ‘bigger hammer’ idea. If anything, this is an implicit argument about why it’s more important to make software intuitive rather than adding more features. However, there are some gaping holes in this narrative. For example, I conveniently ignore the fact that most sensible people would use an instruction manual to put together a bookshelf. Perhaps I could use that fact for my argument. It could go something like this:
When I go to buy a bookshelf, I am not looking for a box of wood, some screws, and an instruction manual. I am looking for a bookshelf.
That, however, talks about user goals rather than about the functionality vs. user experience. We need to be careful about the way we as Designers try to explain/justify (aren’t those really the same) our ideas. Too often the use of a metaphor obfuscates the points we are trying to make. It’s like saying, “I shared my wisdom, now you figure it out”. Drop the oblique metaphors and say what you want to say. As Designers, one of our basic competencies should be the ability to communicate effectively. All the ideas in the world are meaningless if you can’t convey them to your stakeholders.
Thought: iPhone apps
I’m sure this will sound familiar to several of you who know me. It seems that since the release of the iPhone everyone and their dog has an original idea for a new great iPhone app. That is all good and well, but here’s the reality.
Your app has already been done.
It’s okay though, don’t fret. In fact it’s nice that someone went through the initial steps of desiging and marketing your idea. All you need to do is make it better now. I think a great way to be successful as an iPhone app producer would be to take the core of others’ good concepts and redesign them. Whenever I’ve talked to others about this approach, there seems to be an uneasiness about it. I think most Designers would agree that ideas are cheap, it’s the execution that is difficult. Besides if this seems like cheating I’ll let you in on a little secret. We cheat all the time. Trust me, if I need ideas for a design, I start seeing what else is out there.
In the spirit of my post, I will give you my idea for an iPhone app (since the idea alone gets me nothing). By the way, I have no idea whether or not this has actually been developed. I want to map out buildings so that you can find where your colleagues sit or where that conference room off in some corner is. The map could show you a route to get to your desired destination. Of course, this is only relevant for sizable organizations, but I know this would help me where I work.
Thought: motivation paralysis
Let’s face it, I got lazy.
I started this thing blog posting regularly. Then I had a few things come up, a trip back, moving across town, the holidays, etc. In some ways I feel that I would have kept up with this better had I never established any goals for how this site should go. First, I limited the scope of the posts to design-related material. What the hell does that even mean? Second, I told myself that I would make x number of posts regarding subjects a, b, and c, every month. That leads me to this question: Do goals really inherently drive people? The goals I made for this site had no real payoff. It’s the difference between saying ‘I want to do x’ and ‘I want to do x because it will bring me long-term success (or what have you).’ Basically what I’m getting at is that I am not going to worry about it going forward. If I don’t publish anything for a couple months, then I don’t. This will serve as an outlet for whatever I want to rant about. Chances are it will be about Design (I still don’t know what that means but as a Designer I will take the approach of ‘you’ll know it when you see it’), but I am not going to hold myself to it either.
For those of you that have read and responded to my posts, thanks. I hope you continue to read.
Sidenote: I always look at my posts and wonder if I have written enough, as if there was a length necessary to make a post worthwhile.
Thought: Bathroom design
As I admitted earlier, I am a bit fixated on the generally poor design of bathrooms. The way I see it, there are some basic expectations people have that when met will lead to a positive user experience. Today I am going to touch upon the first basic expectation.
Sanitary
The bathroom needs to not only be clean, but it needs to promote sanitary practice through some smart design decisions. For example, I often see that public bathroom doors have pull handles on the inside of the door. This makes the user pull on the door handle to leave the restroom. I can only speak for men’s rooms, but it is common to see a guy use the bathroom and then proceed to leave without washing his hands. Now I have to touch that handle. This in turn leads to another problem.
Users with the foresight to realize that the handle is not necessarily clean, will take a paper towel to grab it. Often, the wastebasket is not close enough to the door to throw away the paper towel. When this happens, you will inevitably see a small pile of discarded paper towels on the floor near the door.
Here’s another suggestion and thankfully this is not as common a problem, ditch the bar soap. I do not want to touch the same bar of soap that has someone else’s nastiness on it. This goes for peoples’ homes as well. I’m sorry. I may be your friend, but I do not want to share your bar soap with you. Also, please provide a hand towel. I rather not have to wipe my hands on my jeans.
I’m going to leave it at that for now. Otherwise, you gusy will think I’m a bit OCD about things.
Thought: Scented hand soap
First, I have to apologize for the delay between postings. There has been some travel madness as well as moving madness.
I spent a good portion of the last week traveling back and forth between Indiana and South Carolina. As a result of all this time on the road, I ended up eating out several times a time. Typically when I get to a restaurant, one of the first things I do is go and wash my hands. This is especially true if I have been traveling. I don’t know what it is about traveling that makes you feel extra grimey. Has anyone else noticed this? Anyway, I end up going through my normal hand washing routine at some stop along the way. While washing my hands I noticed that the soap had a somewhat disagreeable smell, but there was no other option for cleaning up. I suppose I could have asked the wait staff for a lemon and washed up with a lemon and some salt (which makes for a nice bath scrub by the way). I go back to my table and shortly thereafter my food arrives. I had ordered a sandwich. Here is where the problem arises. Now every time I go to take a bite of my sandwich, I get the smell and taste of that horrible chemical scrub. What were they thinking? Eating out is all about the user experience, but somehow restaurants rarely seem to get it right. I love eating out but I am hardly ever pleased. Maybe what I really love is punishing myself.
Meta observation: The bathroom seems to be the location of many of my observations, some of which I have yet to write about. Maybe I need to be a bathroom designer. Anyone need some advice on such a matter?
Design: For the lonley traveler
I have spent a good amount of time traveling alone. On one hand, I find it very freeing. There is no planning, scheduling or accommodating other people. On the other hand, it can be a bit lonesome. My travels alone have inspired the following concept.
The idea is that a person traveling alone can sign up for a service that allows you to find other lonely travelers with similar interests. Before I explain the concept, I want to let it be known that this design was intended for use on an iPhone. So here it goes. You sign up for an account. Rather than having to fill out another personal profile, you point the ‘Lonely Traveler’ to other social networking services that you have accounts with. From these accounts, it aggregates your interests. A person should also be able to supplement their pulled interests with new ones to be entered in to the system. When signed in to our account, the “Lonely Traveler” matches your location with other account holders’ locations and subsequently informs you of those with shared interests. Based on shared interests, the system searches your local area to make suggestions about where you can meet up with other lonely travelers.
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I hope I’ve explained this concept well. If not, feel free to drop me a message (nquaglia at gmail dot com)
Design: Futureboy Academy logo
In an attempt to bolster my graphic design skills I have agreed to take on some freelance design work gratis for the Futureboy Academy. Below is the logo I have created. I will be designing a series of promotional posters as well.
Observation: High chair repurposed
The other day I was out to dinner with my wife. As we were sitting there, a couple with a young baby was being seated next to us. The couple asked their server for a high chair. Upon obtaining the high chair, the couple proceeded to flip it upside down so that the larger base was in the air and somewhat cockeyed. Here is a sketch to illustrate what this looked like. The chair on the left is your right-side-up sketch with the one on the right being the situation present in this story.
They then nestled the baby basket (I’m not sure what you call this thing, but it looks like a seat for a baby with a handle on it) on top of the upside-down chair. It was obvious that the ‘baby basket’ wouldn’t have fit if the chair was in its normal position. The whole time, however, I was worried that the thing would fall over and the baby would go tumbling. I voiced to my wife that the whole situation looked rather precarious. To my surprise, she said (having worked in several restaurants over the years) that this was a normal thing for people to do.
Here’s the point, as you may have guessed. Why aren’t these things designed with this use in mind if it is common practice for people to use them this way? I love when people repurpose items, but it also screams to me a need that is not being fulfilled.