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Industrial Design Winners Announced
prostoalex writes "Every year Industrial Design Excellence Awards try to pick the products, whose usability, interface and design qualities are unmatched by rivals. 130 winners are announced in 12 distinct categories. Of special interest are Computer Equipment (congratulations, Samsung, Apple, Logitech and HP) and Consumer Products (Apple, Nokia and others)." (Earlier this month, we posted about Apple's selection of winners; there are quite a few others worth looking at, though.)
To me its not necesarly the look of an object like an Apple or Ipod that makes it good industrial design its the whole purpose
the look and the feel and how well it works and how easy it is to manufacture. How easy it is to tool and how easy it is to modify if need be, and how well everything supports its intended purpose. It is inside and out and part of the process of manufacturing that should be considered the whole way through
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dupe. http://apple.slashdot.org/apple/04/06/25/2211224.s html?tid=107&tid=162&tid=187&tid=99
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I have to say I'm glad to see the Zodiac on that list winning at least the bronze. I got mine last week and have been continually impressed with just how smooth the "fit and finish" have been. Aside from a small problem with a bend in the case near the sync port, the Zodiac is a great piece of electronics. Now, if they can only work out a better solution for the stylus, integrate a latch to the flipcover and make it firm (like the Newton 2x00, perhaps) and see what can be worked out with the somewhat tricky sync port connection, it'd be close to perfect.
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A great example of what you're talking about is found in "Cradle to Cradle" by William McDonough and Michael Braungart. I heard a CBC radio broadcast last week in my car that had Michael Braungart on it and it was fascinating. He wants to see products go from being made to returning to raw components efficiently. I might add, this guy isn't a typical Enviro-nut TM. He's actually quite intelligent and pretty far from the fringe, from what I could tell when I heard him on the CBC. The book Cradle to Cradle was also reviewed on Slashdot, with a critical 10/10 rating.
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link is here:. htm
URL:http://www.idsa.org/idea/idea2004/g257
very nonstandard solution
The dyson vacuum cleaner.
Seriously.
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While I always enjoy the IDSA awards, these are not awards that consider usability. These products are evaluated by simply having the judges examine the products and what the product creators say about how the products were made. To judge usability, you actually have to evaluate the product as used by the target audience. The judges do not do this, nor are the product creators required to.
I'm VERY pleased, as an artist, to see the brush cleaner. The primary reason why I (and many other artists) do not like to use oil paints is that cleaning the brushes in solvent is a major pain in the butt, so seeing something that will do it for you opens up a whole new avenue.
Good design also fills a need. In this case, it fills the need of low frustration.
Now if someone will only invent a device that keeps the cats away from my easel...
Actually I am a lab rat in an elaborate plot to take over the world.
I shop for and buy old Yamaha sound generators and MIDI tone modules.
I perfer Yamaha because they have scanned and made available for download all of the manuals for all of their music products regardless of how obscure or how old it is.
This is very important because a MIDI tone module is just a small box with a serial port (with non-standard interface) on one end and a pair of standard phone jacks on the other. The ability to get extraordinary sounds out of this box depends entirely on knowing what elaborate set of codes to send to its serial port.
Most music sound generator companies won't tell you these codes (called MIDI sys-ex command formats) or want to charge you more money than the entire used synthesizer is worth for them.
Not Yamaha. Whenever I see a Yamaha listing on eBay for a synth that I have never heard of before, I just download the manual and study it. If I think that I can use the device, then I bid and sometimes win. With other synth manufacturers, I look at the listings on eBay and if there is no manual included, I pass on it regardless of how cheap or cool it may be.
Providing all the documentation that your potental customers would ask for before they ask for it is the sign of a great company. Everybody else, please wake up!
So why aren't the people who said they were making a computer "for the rest of us," making a computer that the rest of us might want to buy?
Maybe you aren't a member of "the rest of us". Part of the appeal of Apple hardware is that it just works. Plug it in, it works. Allow for easy modification and you open the door to things that don't work. Ok, power users still want that flexibility, so there's the PowerMac which lets you do just that.
On the home user front, most of them just want their computer to run like a television--plug it in, connect a few well-defined cables, and you're up an running. Make it easy to open and expand (like the PowerMac) and people will start trying to plug in random cards from Office Depot or from their old PC and things will not work so well, if at all.
You're not the rest of us, you're the elite. Get a PowerMac if you want OS X + modifiability.
As for this:
But it's married to the most user-hostile hardware on the planet.
Your definition of "user" is definitely not the rest of us if you think their hardware is user-hostile.
On the site, in the Design Explorations area, you'll find these Nike golf tees. They look cool, and maybe they even have some good ideas (though if the ground is too frozen to drive a tee in, maybe it's not yet golf-season). But the quote about the "Mojo" tee is just frickin' priceless:
"'The Mojo' tee has a liquid center brewed from turf from Scotland, sand from Pebble Beach, tears from the Nike Goddess and sweat from Tiger Woods."
Yeah...
Well, my friendly neighborhood car dealer says "sometimes you just have to make a fashion statement", but maybe that's because he sells Porsches.
I've been beating the hell out of a Powerbook (my first) since last October, and don't see anything particularly user-hostile about it. If you want a raw computing tool you can always strip the plastic off a case and let the wires hang out (or nail the motherboard to a perfboard), and in some cases that's appropriate. But as someone who's found the sharp edges on those cheap white metal chassis more than once, I'm quite happy I can carry the Powerbook around and not have it catch on anything. It's nicely done.
My guess is your idea of "most people" doesn't actually cover many people who aren't consumed with their computers. Most people (in terms of actual numbers, not your opinion of them as people) will never ever upgrade their PC. Never. Ever. And have no interest in doing so.
They quite reasonably conclude that they can hold on to one until it's annoying and then go buy another whole new system which is much better all around, and give the old one to the kids or keep as a backup. And not spend their precious non-work time downloading drivers, re-formatting hard drives, and possibly screwing up the whole thing in the end anyway.
The revolution will NOT be televised.
The new iPod didn't win anything, yes, but I assume that the grandparent was talking about the iPod Mini, which did win Gold in the Consumer Products division