Nathan's Possibly Interesting web site
Commonsense design blog
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of everyday product design
Recently I discussed how workers at customer call centers can turn into computer-like zombies. The other day I stood face to face with such a person. I was trying to order two coffees at a fast coffee shop. My wife likes her espresso with a drop of foamed milk on top – “Espresso Macchiato”, meaning … Read more
Until now, we had paper money, and we had plastic – which meant credit cards. Well, now the distinction is blurred: as of April, Israel joined a growing list of countries that have plastic paper money! See the two 20 Shekel banknotes above. The one on the right is the trusty ol’ paper banknote, showing … Read more
I’m getting to like the Lenovo blogs more and more. Consider this sentence, from an early version of an About page they had: Finally, if you need to speak to someone, live, give David Churbuck, Lenovo’s Global VP of Marketing a call, his cell phone is 508 360 6147. This was regrettably removed later from … Read more
My friend Jeff pointed out to me a novel implementation of a coffee-to-go carrying device, in use in a coffeeshop chain in Germany. The assembled device in use is actually less elegant than the usual little tray-with-handle cardboard carriers we’ve had for a long time; in fact you can’t even plop this one down on … Read more
Every commercial piece of software we use comes with an End User License Agreement (EULA), which we all merrily accept without reading. After all, who has time to read a rambling document of barely decipherable legalese that we can’t do anything about anyway? Sometime I do glance through them, and my blood pressure shoots up … Read more
We like our cars to have large glove compartments, but when we cram stuff into them we can’t seem to find anything (a problem especially while driving). I recently drove a Chevrolet Optra, and it had an obvious solution: a divider, to split the compartment in two, like this: But even nicer, the divider was … Read more
A riddle: what’s rectangular and flat, can fit in your pocket, and can calculate six-variable functions? No, not a pocket calculator; I forgot to mention – it has no electronic components whatsoever. Here, check it out in the latest addition to the HOC collection on my Possibly Interesting web site.
I discussed a while ago how Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems are being designed to be more human like. Well, the reverse is also sometimes true, with human operators becoming more and more computer-like. Consider: Our car lighted up a “service required” lamp, so I called the 24×7 number provided by our garage, to ask … Read more
Passing through an airport I bought the book “Boeing 777: the technological marvel” by Norris and Wagner. This gives many fascinating insights into the novel design methodologies that went into the 777, my favorite jetliner. It also introduced me to one of the ugliest airplane designs ever to disgrace a designer’s sketchpad. The Boeing folks … Read more
The wonders of the natural world are many, and the living body includes countless amazing features (and, admittedly, some not-so-amazing ones as well). Today I give due homage to a piece of truly elegant design: the perfect match of the outer ear to the iPod’s earphones! The earphones’ convenient usage stems from the presence of … Read more