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Innovative Designs and Devices
Patrick Griffin writes "When it comes to product design, the significance of aesthetics, the way its design looks and feels, determines the choice of the customer once the functionalities of multiple devices are more or less similar. If supported by sound user interface and a well-tested, clean implementation, innovative design solutions can drastically enhance the user experience. The article Innovative Designs and Devices presents innovative, futuristic gadgets, devices, designs and concepts which can become reality in 2008 or over the next few years." Some of the designs are real, others are stupid, and some are just dreams for the future. But some of this stuff is really cool.
If innovative design interests you, I highly recommend "The Art of Innovation" by Tom Kelley and Henry Petroski's books "The Evolution of Useful Things" and "Small Things Considered". Kelly's book is all about innovation in the workplace and uses IDEO to illustrate his ideas. Petroski's books (and I love all of his stuff) are more of an academic view of how engineering intersects with the real world. His books should be on every geeks must read list.
One button that does lots of things is generally considered nasty UI design. It's "pretty" and people think it's 'cool' but most people have trouble using it.
It's generally a lot easier to use 'one button per action' UI designs. They may not be as pretty, and they're certainly more expensive to produce, but they're generally considered easier to use.
Imagine having a bank web site with a single entry box and a single "Do something" button on it. To make a payment, you have to enter the details of the payee and click the button quickly, and then enter the amount to pay and click it for 2 seconds. To set up a regular payment you have to do the same but click it for 4 seconds. That's a 'nice, elegant' design as there's less messy controls involved, but imagine what a nightmare it would be to use.
It might be 'trivial' to learn how to use your single button answering machine, but imagine you have to use an answering machine at work with different effects to the same actions, and then your mother has one with yet different effects for the actions.... Or, come back to yours after 6 months of not using it, without access to the instructions and see how easy it is. Wouldn't it be easier to have different buttons for the different actions with instructive text/good icons on/by them?