unpressable buttons

Apple's Flipping Logo

2012-05-24T08:18:00.001-07:00

Apple used to place its logo on its laptops so that it's right-side up when the user looks at the closed laptop, but upside when open and seen by others - and then it changed. For a company with such a reputation for design and usability perfection, how could a binary choice (literally) flip? Joe Moreno reports why it happened: it was originally oriented to help users know which end of the laptop to open - a laserlike focus on usability. But they eventually realized that users will only make that mistake once or twice, and then solve the problem for themselves. Conversely, the upside-down logo for everyone else lasts for the life of the product - and the product fumbles a great chance to advertise itself to prospective customers. Every other laptop maker seems to have come to the same conclusion, and it'll probably stay that way - until a tech comes along that enables flipping logos!
[via Gizmodo]

Icons Stuck in the Past

2012-05-22T07:41:00.001-07:00

Icons are handy little things: they make efficient use of display real estate, provide a quickly-identifiable visual cue to the user, and work across all languages. But some of the standard icons we've used for years have been orphaned, as the technologies they visually mimic have gone extinct. Scott Hanselman, a Microsoft programmer / author / comedian, has a great list of them on his blog. Three of my favorites are above - I wonder what today's generation of "digital native" children would make of a 3.5" floppy disk, a reel-to-reel tape voice recorder, or a TV with (1) a rounded picture tube, (2) a rainbow test signal, and (3) rabbit ears?
[via Gizmodo]

Bigger Buttons: Adding meaning to energy consumption...

2012-05-14T07:24:00.001-07:00

Small, clean, tasteful buttons and switches may be the Apple-inspired style of the time, but there's no denying the emotional heft of a big damn button. So why not harness that built-in meaning for a good cause? Two products aim to do just that: on the left, Bracketron's Mushroom GreenZero is a big button you mash with your foot to start gadgets charging (for a limited amount of time), while on the right, ThinkGeek's Panic Button replaces any light switch so you can save energy with the action-movie urgency of an emergency shutdown. Both products add drama, and meaning, and thought, to what's become a mindless activity - and maybe by thinking about it a little more, we can be a little more conscious of energy use.
[via Gizmodo and, well, Gizmodo]

Bloom Chips: Packaging Becomes Serving Bowl

2012-05-09T08:37:00.003-07:00

It's one of those concepts that just makes you smile right away: folding out a Pringles-esque chip can into a serving bowl. Bloom Chips made some judges smile, too, winning its designers a Red Dot Design Award. It's not without its drawbacks - it can't re-package partially-eaten contents without crushing them to crumbs, and the engineer in me worries about the seal between the lid and the folded top edge of the can. But those are problems for the real world, right? As a concept, this one's plenty clever!
[via Fast Company Design & Gizmodo]

Wheelchair-Friendly Kitchen Design

2012-05-07T08:55:00.003-07:00

With aging baby boomers about to hit old age, it's time to stop seeing products designed for the elderly as "niche" - they're definitely going mainstream. Italian manufacturer Snaidero recently showed just how attractive and sensibly designed these products can be with a wheelchair-friendly Skyline Kitchen. The lowered countertop that wraps around a stationary user is an obvious start, but nice touches like multiple lazy susans show good thought toward real usability. Perhaps the best innovation is that it actually looks good. Let's hope that catches on!
[via Core77]

Not all buttons are created equal...

2012-05-03T08:05:00.003-07:00

The photo here is of a remote control, modified so that one particular button is easier to find by both sight and touch - by gluing the other kind of button to it. Besides being cutely "meta-button", this brings up an important point: not all buttons are created equal. Some are way more important than others - mute, pause, and skip forward, for example, are more important than sleep, sound-mode, or close-captioning. A well-designed product will reflect this, making the important buttons easy to find (again, by both sight and touch). But when the design doesn't do that? Apparently it's time to get out the glue and shirt-buttons!
[Lifehacker & Reddit]

FasTrak Switches It All Up

2012-04-24T08:47:00.000-07:00

Maybe I care more about this stuff than the average person, but this photo makes me physically cringe. So, what happened here? I think I know exactly what it is, and so does commenter Michael Zuschlag on the original post on Usability Forum: "The simplest way to make a three-position slide switch is to make center be OFF and the outside positions each be ON for different circuits. The guts of the device treats Solo Driver as the default (no signal, thus OFF), while the other two carpool options require distinct electrical signals." Basically, someone added this feature at the last minute - too late for the electronics to be redesigned to make "2 Person Carpool" the "OFF" position of the switch. It happens all the time - and usually, industrial design and usability take the hit!

Google's Project Glass: Non-sloppy data...

2012-04-19T08:53:00.004-07:00

Google's recent Project Glass concept has been talked about, and parodied, quite a bit lately. So I'm not going to hit the usual points of ugly-or-not hardware, potentially intrusive advertising or error messages, commentary on how electronic connection makes us socially disconnected or clumsy, or why these videos always star insufferable hipsters. Instead, I want to point out one thing they did well: resisting the temptation of sloppy data. In too many conceptual videos, designers want to show off the futuristic displays with oodles of spinning, fading, scaling, scrolling, morphing data - visually stunning, but more info than the human brain could realistically handle at once. Thankfully, the Google concept shows one simple thing at a time - clear, unobtrusive notifications that could actually be used without causing a headache. It's especially important in this kind of setup, where the display is always on and always in (and on!) your face. So, good job, Google team! Resisting sloppy data in a concept is step one - step two, resist feature creep in the actual product...

Haptic Steering Wheel for GPS Cues

2012-04-16T07:49:00.002-07:00

If you're getting sick of your GPS's bossy robo-voice and mispronunciation of road names, hope is on the horizon! AT&T Labs are trying out another way you can get your turn cues: through haptic vibrations in the steering wheel itself. Clockwise vibrations indicate a right turn, counterclockwise mean a left turn, and early results have been good - studies show that there's less "inattentiveness" with this method than with the usual visual and audio GPS cues. I'm a fan of keeping a tight loop between cues and actions - if you need to take action with your hands (turning the wheel), then why not provide the signal to... your hands? On the other hand (so to speak), road vibrations may provide background noise that would make it difficult to be sure you're getting a cue. Even so, it's a design well worth exploring.
[via Technology Review & Gizmodo]

Left- and Right-Hand Sensing

2012-03-27T09:23:00.003-07:00

This kind of thing must happen hundreds of times a day: a driver wants his passenger to enter a new destination in the car's GPS, but can't because that function is blocked while the car is in motion. It's a safety feature designed to keep the driver from distraction, but it overshoots and blocks the passenger from helping. This situation calls for a new sensor, something that's capable of distinguishing a passenger's interaction from a driver's interaction - and Cirque's new sensor that can tell which hand you're using seems like the right (or left?) way to go. If it's the left hand being used on the center dashboard, that's the passenger - unless the driver is doing some crazy contortions, of course. A sensor like this would be useful for the most part, although (like many sensors) probably annoying when it reads things wrong. But still, the more sensors the better, so the whole system can see what's really going on, and work as it's designed.

eReader: One Worthy Dedicated Device

2012-03-22T09:59:00.001-07:00

As tablets become more and more popular, device makers and users are figuring out how and where they like to do things: email, web stuff, games, videos, music, reading... Generally, tablets are a great all-in-one device. But it's starting to seem like one single-purpose dedicated device is still worthwhile: the humble eInk electronic reader. And it's not about the features they offer - long battery life, sunlight-readable display, small and lightweight and low-cost - but rather it's about the features they lack. As pointed out by the New York Times and Gizmodo, reading is an activity that's best with full immersion and no distractions - and while multifunction tablets are all about distractions, eReaders simply lack the capability. It's the same frame of mind that makes you want to turn your phone off (or chuck it into the ocean) while on vacation: disconnect, get away, and lose yourself in a book. And unlike your tablet, you can trust your eReader to leave you to it.

The Case For Cases

2012-03-19T07:43:00.001-07:00

Gizmodo recently posted a plea for people to stop ruining their phones with a stupid case - and while I respect that opinion (and love their blog, as the source for almost half of my own posts!), I feel compelled to make the case for phone cases. Reasonable people may disagree, but I think both sides deserve to be represented! So, to address some of their points:

1. "It's unnatural. Your phone wasn't designed to be covered up." True enough, but your phone also wasn't designed to be invincible. It was design to look sexy, and to be as thin as possible. People are willing to blame themselves when they drop and shatter their phones - but the design shares some of the blame for enabling it. A case makes up for an artificially de-prioritized design goal.

2. "It's not worth it." They're talking about resale value, scratches, stuff like that - but I'm more concerned with the case protecting the phone against a catastrophic drop that kills the phone entirely. In that case, $30 to protect a $600 total-replacement cost isn't a bad deal!

3. Consider the point of view. Like I said, I love Gizmodo - but they're all tech writers. Their whole lives involve getting and playing with all the newest electronics, so the value they place on any one device is probably much lower than those of us with one phone. They know they'll get the next one as soon as it comes out - and the early-upgrade cost is a business expense. We should all be so lucky - and live caseless and carefree.

As for me? My iPhone 4S is in a case at the moment; it'll probably go naked once it's one year old, like my 3G did. So people can come to their own conclusions - but in any case (ha), be sure to see both sides!

Phone Stack: Unpressable buttons for social etiquette...

2012-03-13T08:25:00.002-07:00

There's little denying that ever-present devices and always-on networks have taken a toll on basic social interactions - it's never been easier to be with friends or family without really being there. To combat this, some people make rules: I'm sure oodles of parents enforce a strict "no phones at the dinner table." To apply it to your peers, though, takes a little something extra - and gamifying the rule might just do it. This game, most commonly called Phone Stack, is pretty simple: stack your phones on the table at the beginning of a meal, and whoever breaks the stack first pays for everyone. It makes your buttons unpressable, literally - unless you want to pay. In the meantime, I guess you'll have no choice but to socialize with the other people who are actually there!
[via Gizmodo]

FreeKey, the press-to-open keyring...

2012-02-28T08:18:00.000-08:00

I was just saying how much I love purely mechanical innovations, and along comes another one to make my day! FreeKey one-ups the normal spiral metal keyring by simply adding a small bump in the metal. The result is a pressable (yes!) spot on the ring that will flex it right open - no painful prying required. Clever, functional, and I'd say ready for the market!
[via Gizmodo]

Pinch Hanger - Save your necks!

2012-02-23T10:21:00.001-08:00

Being a mechanical engineer myself, I'm a sucker for innovations that are entirely mechanical - they prove that we haven't ceded everything to the digital world just yet! So my thanks goes out to design student Jaineel Shah and his Pinch Hanger, which rethinks the interaction between shirts and hangers. The right geometry and material allow the hangar to squeeze together, making it small enough to not stretch the necks of your shirts. It hits all the sweet spots: it's simple, intuitive, and functional in an obvious way. It even passes the "why didn't I think of that?" test. Well done, Jaineel - let's see this on the market soon!
[via Core77 - and thanks for the heads-up, Jonathan Jackson!]

Foosball with Adjustable Goals

2012-02-06T07:38:00.000-08:00

Sometimes when you play a game, you find that you're horribly mismatched against the your opponent - and the whole thing becomes no fun. (I'm looking at you, Josh Whitten, air-hockey ringer.) Well it turns out that a simple design feature can easily adjust each player's handicap. Perhaps the first good idea ever from the pages of Hammacher Schlemmer, The Handicapping Foosball Table has goals that can independently made wider or narrower. The same concept could be applied, with varying degrees of mechanical complexity, to almost any goal-based game or sport: billiards, basketball, mini golf - and of course, air hockey. Bring it on, Josh!
[via Gizmodo]

Invisible Magnetic Drawer Lock

2012-01-30T09:40:00.000-08:00

There's some truth to the notion that the most secure lock is the one you can't even find - if you don't even know where to start, picking it becomes practically impossible! That's why I like the "Covert" invisible magnetic drawer lock from Quirky - it's not just a clean minimalist design, it's even more effective than normal locks. The only problem with this kind of product is that it relies on its secret for its effectiveness - so if the product ever becomes too popular, it'll essentially stop working!
[via Gizmodo]

GymPact: Work out, or it'll cost ya...

2012-01-25T08:05:00.000-08:00

I love products that users inflict on themselves in order to change their behavior for the better (remember the cash-shredding alarm clock?), and this one definitely counts. GymPact is a system that pays you to go to the gym - and charges you when you don't. It's pretty simple: you commit to a certain workout schedule, pay money when you don't go, and that same money gets paid out to people who do keep their schedule. The app seems to have clever enforcement techniques, like making sure you check in to the gym by actually being at its location as determined by your phone. Hey, if it makes people work out more, I'm all for it!

Unpressable Hotel Light Switches

2012-01-10T09:07:00.000-08:00

I took these photos of two tabletop lamps in the same hotel room in Phoenix last week. (Don't ask about the Fiesta Bowl, by the way.) First, a quick word about usability design in hotel rooms: make everything obvious. The nature of a hotel room means that all users are novices; their stay is so transitory, there's no time to become an experienced user. So, are these two switches obvious? No; in fact, one must be twisted while the other must be pressed, and neither visually suggests the correct action. And putting two lamps with differently-operating but visually identical switches in the same room is a very bad move! What any hotel chain would be wise to do is opt for large, obvious buttons on every device: if it's a button, make it a big ol' mashable BUTTON. If it's a knob, make it something that would be at home on an old-school stereo. Don't make me spend extra brainpower figuring out a room I'll never stay in again anyway!

Does Form Make a Camera?

2012-01-05T18:53:00.000-08:00

This one comes from old pal Jonathan Jackson, and it's a little silly on the surface - but like a lot of silly products, it's packing some design commentary just underneath the surface. What you're looking at there is an iPhone case - and yep, it makes it look just like a somewhat old-fashioned camera. Besides the disguise, the Gizmon iCa adds some function: it lets you attach different lenses to the iPhone camera in the bottom left corner, and features a big tactile shutter button and optical viewfinder. But what's really apparent here is that smartphones have generally failed as a form factor for a camera. You can't find the shutter button (if a real one even exists); your finger often blocks the oddly-placed lens, and holding the phone only by its edges (to prevent touchscreen interaction) just begs for an accidental drop. Something like this silly case could actually improve the usability of the phone as a camera. Now if only it didn't look quite like that...
[via TechCrunch]

Usable Robot Interaction

2011-12-16T09:28:00.000-08:00

Robots have always been comfortable in industrial settings, where the jobs they perform have to do with parts, assembly, and other inanimate objects. But when they have to function around people, it's a whole different ballgame: it's not just the accomplishment of tasks that matters, but also how robots interact with the people around them. That was the focus of a recent study at Palo Alto's Willow Garage, as reported by tech columnist Dan Lyons in Newsweek. What they found was that people need more than just the rote performance of tasks from robots; it helps to have little extra signals that communicate, in human terms, what's going on. My favorite example: "To figure out how to open a door, the robot will simply stand in front of the door, not moving, just scanning the surface with its cameras. To a human, the machine seems to be stuck in one place. But if engineers make the robot’s head move up, down, left, and right while it is scanning, humans understand that the robot is trying to figure out how it works. The movement is unnecessary, but it helps humans recognize what the robot is doing, a trick that animators call 'readability.'" In fact, more than just being unnecessary, that movement likely makes the engineering task even more difficult. But since it helps the robot function in its context around humans, it's beneficial to the overall design - it's precisely where human-centered design and task-focused engineering meet, and hopefully find a way to get along!

Return of the Shutter Button!

2011-12-06T20:24:00.001-08:00

Apple has been on a crusade against buttons for quite a while, removing them from the faces of phones, tablets, and even their own store elevators. This means almost everything is done through the touchscreen - but recently, the tide has receded, and a few functions have regained physical, tactile buttons. The one I'm celebrating today is the camera shutter button, which is the new secondary function of iProducts' volume-up buttons. And folks, this makes sense! When you're taking a photo, you're focused on the world you're shooting: making sure the camera is aligned, everyone's smiling, and so on. You need to be able to feel the button, to press it and get that tactile feedback. It's pretty remarkable that we've gotten to the point where we applaud the re-introduction of old technologies as new design innovation. Incidentally, using the volume-up button enables some new useful tricks, like using a wireless headset as a photo remote. Welcome back, shutter button - it's good to see you again.

The Pillow Tie: Silly, serious commentary?

2011-11-30T14:41:00.001-08:00

Okay, so it doesn't quite fit with a "usability" theme - but there's something kind of deep in this ridiculous combo. The blurb puts it best: most functions that require a tie deserve to be slept through. So the subversive thing to do is enable the wearer to sleep - thereby committing a more egregious violation of norms than simply not wearing the required tie in the first place. It's a statement; first camouflaged, then bold, always ironic. And sorry, but completely unusable! Oh well...
[Thanks, Ruairi!]

Future Vision: Not just ubiquitous touchscreens...

2011-11-14T17:49:00.001-08:00

Microsoft recently made another one of those "vision of the future" concept videos, and designer Bret Victor tears it apart limb from limb. And the limb, in this case is the hand: Bret makes the case that touchscreens make pitifully insufficient use of the versatile and capable human hand. It's true: simply sliding around Pictures Under Glass (as he calls them) like in the top screengrabs from the video is such a limited interaction, when the hand can do so many things as shown in the bottom rows of photos. Let's hope the future isn't just the same iPad-style interaction model we have now, extended to every possible surface - that's just the present, mindlessly multiplied to aggravating infinity. Read Bret's rant, and demand something better!

iPhone Player Buttons: More Space, Please!

2011-11-10T09:14:00.001-08:00

Don't get me wrong, I love my new iPhone 4S. But it's not perfect, and some of its buttons are downright - yes - unpressable. Today, I'm picking on the quick audio controls that come up when the home button is double-clicked. They're a great idea; they're just spaced too darn close to each other. The times when I use the quick-access buttons, instead of fully unlocking the phone, are times when I can't give the phone my full attention - I just want to quickly pause the audio. But the buttons are spaced so close together that I frequently hit the Forward or Back button instead of Pause - and that risks losing my place in my podcast. Apple, why not give each button more space, like the quick Photoshop job on the right? It may not look as "clean" from a design perspective, but it's definitely more usable. They'd be more pressable buttons!