Nathan's Possibly Interesting web site
Commonsense design blog
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of everyday product design
I went to shop for a widescreen LCD monitor. I went from one large store to another; each had at least half a dozen candidates, and it was amazing to see how poor the images on them looked! Of course, in most cases the immediate cause was that they were being driven at the wrong … Read more
Was at Office Depot and noticed a keyboard on sale that was touted as the Anti-RSI keyboard from A4Tech. This, according to their web site, has an innovative “Natural A shape” layout that allows you to type ergonomically with your wrists held in their natural position, rather than bent at a strained angle. The site … Read more
Today, Nov. 13, is World Usability Day, sponsored by the Usability Professionals’ Association. This has been running since 2005; each year, on the second Thursday of November, over 225 events are organized in over 40 countries around the world to raise awareness for the general public, and train professionals in the tools and issues central … Read more
The triangular Polycom conference phone is a familiar device; in many companies there is one in every conference room. It is so familiar that few give thought to its miraculous ability to transmit high quality sound from one roomful of jabbering humans to another. In fact, this involves some pretty sophisticated technology for echo cancellation and … Read more
Care to guess what delightfully well-designed product is hidden inside this elegant 5 inch long metal case? Check it out in the latest article on the Possibly Interesting web site!
Ordered some books today and was surprised to find on the Amazon.com home page a message from Jeff Bezos telling of their new initiative to alleviate “Wrap Rage” – “Amazon Frustration-free packaging“. Apparently they plan to recruit leading manufacturers to put an end to clamshell blister packs, steel-wire ties and excessive cushioning materials. They aren’t … Read more
Modern car dashboards have numerous indicators and controls. Some are necessary: without a fuel gauge, for instance, we’d be in frequent trouble. Others are optional but quite useful: the rear collision warning beeper is a good recent arrival. But one indicator is totally unnecessary, yet present in a great many car models: the Tachometer, or … Read more
One problem with CRT-based television sets and computer monitors was that they took a long moment to turn on, because of the inherent necessity to heat up the filament of the picture tube. How fortunate, then, that the new generation of flat screen displays does not have a filament, allowing them to turn on practically … Read more
Everyone knows that the QWERTY keyboard layout sucks, because it carries a legacy from the early typewriter days; still, we’re all locked into its use and live in oblivion of what we’re missing. But we have another legacy from mechanical typewriters that is hard to forget because it bites us daily. i REFER TO THE … Read more
These days nobody is surprised to see a software product expect tens or even hundreds of free Megabytes on the disk – a far cry from the frugal eighties, when entire operating systems would fit on a floppy or two, but this is life and we accept it philosophically. But when a piece of Hardware … Read more