Book Reading #18: Design of Everyday Things

Chapter 6

Summary:

He talks about the natural evolution of design and the forces that work against it. Much of the forces that work against it have to do with the increasing complexity of the objects we use on a daily basis. Another negative force to continue is the amount of time a craftsman or artisan has to bring an object from conception to market; these days, business moves fast and successful designs must adapt to move fast, as well.

One good example of the evolution of the design process is the typewriter. A main consideration in the design of these items was the layout of the keyboard. Many versions were tried in the beginning. A good deal of these early designs laid out the keys in alphabetical order. The prevalent design we use today is the Qwerty arrangement developed by Sholes in the 1870s. This arrangement of the letters came about because of practical considerations. In the alphabetical arrangement, the keys would often jam when the typist was typing rapidly due to the ordering of the mechanical arms. Today there is a slightly more optimal solution in the Dvorak keyboard; however, the gains are not great enough to overcome millions of people having to relearn to type using this alternate arrangement.

He points out, as well, that there are a number of key areas in which designs go astray. This includes things such as the designers putting aesthetics first, not being the typical users of the end product, and not having their clients as users of the product.

Sometimes, the design audience are a special subset of the population, as well. This requires them to create special versions of common items and some of the complexity involved with this may be opaque until they actually begin the design process.

Additionally, there are two temptations that designers may fall to at their own peril. One of these is feature creep. The other has to do with falling in love with their design and the complexity entailed therein. These can lead to missed ship dates and difficulty in using the end products.

Discussion:

Naturally design products have a certain quaint charm to them. I do not often buy many, but you can find such things. They are prevalent in sections of Pennsylvania and other locations where the population of Amish people is greater. I tend to stick to mass produced items that are practical for my every day solutions.

One other thing that really struck me in this chapter was the topic of feature creep. This is something the computer software developers the industry over are often guilty of and can be the point of many problems. Take, for example, the game Duke Nukem Forever. It was started at the end of the 1990s. Time after time when it was displayed, it looked great and was going to be a wonderful game to play. However, George Brussard was never satisfied with it. He wanted it to be the ultimate FPS shooter game of all time, and just good enough wasn't good enough for him. Every time a better technology came out, they had to make sure to top it. Unfortunately, with this and all the additional features that were continuously added, the game never came to be a reality. It wasn't until another local company, Gearbox Software, came along and took charge of the project that it came to be a reality. Looking forward to playing that one, guys!