Nathan's Possibly Interesting web site
Commonsense design blog
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of everyday product design
Something weird is happening to car designers. Back in the mid-seventies there was one car in my home town that someone had imported from the US, and I remember how futuristic it looked to us then. Photo source: Wikimedia Commons. This was the remarkably innovative AMC Pacer, and it had those huge wrap-around windows that … Read more
Back then we had the Palm Pilot. It had a gray lo-res screen and minimal capabilities. No wireless, no GPS, no games, just basic PDA funcfions. Compared to the android phone I use now it was like a stone ax. And yet, that old Palm had a key attribute that is long lost: simplicity of … Read more
I was in the campus of the Academic College of Tel Aviv and l noticed a little courtyard with a nice deck and some garden furniture. What caught my eye was that the chairs were tilted against the tables. The reason became obvious when I saw one chair that had remained upright: it had a … Read more
We all know these automatic coffee machines: you place a paper cup under the nozzle, hit a button, and out comes a flow of some sort of coffee or chocolate drink. The machine at right is a good example. The problem with such manual cup placement is that you risk misaligning the cup to the … Read more
Form follows Function, as we all know… but function can change, leaving the form out of context. Consider the long, rather dilapidated building with the vaulted, tilting roof seen behind this parking lot in downtown Jerusalem. What does its form tell you? In its heyday, in the 1940s and 50s, this strange form was dictated … Read more
Most food products have nutrition information labels that tell you in minute detail what they contain, from calorie count to milligrams of Sodium. All very edifying, to be sure, but boooring! So the other day I saw this box of cookies, and below the logo of the English Cake bakery it says – in Hebrew … Read more
We veteran road warriors know the drill: go thru security, then hunt for a power outlet to recharge our computer at as we wait for our flight. This often involves scouting the terminal halls hoping to find the occasional wall socket intended for the janitor’s vacuum cleaner, hoping there would be a vacant chair near … Read more
I’ve already addressed pedestrian crossing signals in Germany, but here’s a truly surprising one, which I sighted in Munich. So what does it mean? One can imagine what the intended usage is, but if one were to believe the images literally, this signal tells you when it’s OK to do acrobatic stunts on your bike … Read more
A while ago I took HP to task for their tendency to fill your hard disk with hundreds of Megs of software when all you need is a printer driver. I am happy to report that they’ve improved their ways… sort of. Back then, I wrote: It is not good manners to sell someone a … Read more
Everyone knows that sport fans can get violent in their excitement… there is even a Wikipedia article listing violent spectator incidents in sports. This being an aspect of human nature, it is not surprising that the custom of berating and clobbering the opposite team’s supporters goes back to earlier times. Still, I was quite amused … Read more