A century ago Gilbert Small, of Waltham, Massachusetts, invented a compact pocket calculator that is small, effective, and designed with special attention to usability. Read the new article on my History of Computing site to see what he’d crafted!
We’re all familiar with the spring-loaded paper napkin dispenser to the right. Every low-priced restaurant and diner has these; you’d think it has hit a sweet spot of stable cost and performance. After all, it works, doesn’t it? And yet, recently I’ve run into a major improvement on the theme: a competing design that has … Read more
Most cafeterias sell water to their thirsty customers in plastic bottles full of mineral water. The water is no better than the tap water in most countries, its environmental impact is dubious, and of course it turns a tidy profit for the business. As a customer I find it annoying to pay for one of … Read more
I’ve written before about the use of tactile sidewalk strips to help the blind, as seen in Japan. Well, now we have them in Israel too! I was walking under the Calatrava bridge in Jerusalem, and saw this: At first I was puzzled, but then I noticed this led towards the Jewish institute for the … Read more
Here is the Physics and Mathematics faculty building in Bashkir State University, in the city of Ufa, capital of the Republic of Bashkortostan, Russia. See what it looks like? Depends on your age or your affection for the history of computing, I suppose. This building looks like a logarithmic slide rule, the icon of the … Read more
This is the Ashtanur pencil case. Once you see it, you can’t help wanting one: it is simply too cool! So I got one, and here it is. These are made by two designers, my friend Ido Mohar and Baruch Mogilevsky, in mimicry of the local flat pita bread – called Ashtanur in Jerusalem, but … Read more
Every seasoned traveler knows the drill: you go to baggage claim, everyone’s bags arrive except yours, and you start running around to try and locate it. If you’re lucky, you end up finding your suitcase standing, forlorn and confused, with a few other bags in some corner or another. How it got there nobody can … Read more
Here are the headlamps of two Mazda cars. On the left, a Mazda 323 from the first half of the past decade, the other a Mazda 3 from the second half. Both fine family cars. See the difference in design strategy? The car on the left has the headlamp split into two parts. The one … Read more
Form, they say, follows function… which leads to many utilitarian everyday products. But every now and then you run into a design detail that shows inspired abuse of this principle: some unknown designer decides that the product also needs to be lovely, or unconventional, or humorous. Here’s an example I’ve come across: a drain cover … Read more
Now, I hate litigation, and like many would rather have companies focus on innovating for the greater good; also, I happen to like Android a lot. Nevertheless, I think many criticizers of Apple in its recent victory over Samsung are missing a key point. The argument goes, Apple sued Samsung for producing smartphones that are … Read more
