Product design

product design in theory and practice

product design in theory and practice

The Design of Everyday Things

July 12, 2009 by Roy Johnson

classic design principles using everyday objects

Donald Norman is a product design and usability guru who has teamed up recently with Jakob Nielsen to form the influential Nielsen-Norman Group. They specialise in advising businesses on the usefulness of their web sites. The Design of Everyday Things is the latest edition of what has become a classic in usability principles in the short time since it was first published. Norman discusses the problems we all have with the results of bad design in everyday life – doors which open the wrong way; telephone calls you can’t put on hold; washing machines with spaceship control panels. He clarifies the rules of good design as he goes along. These turn out to be – visibility, good conceptual model, feedback, and natural mapping.

What this means is that the controls should be visually obvious, they should feel part of a natural process,they should tell you that an action has been performed, and they should reveal the connection between action and results. Every point of his argument is illustrated with practical examples and anecdotes drawn from the problems of normal life. These range from the trivialities of taking the wrong turn when driving, to the disastrous consequences of aircraft engine and nuclear reactor failure. One of the reasons this is such a charming and interesting book is that it’s written by an expert who admits to his own weaknesses and problems. This is the professor from MIT who can’t program his own video recorder, who says so, and who convinces you its not the user’s fault but that of the designer.

He’s also good at explaining the function and limitations of memory, and gives a clear account of one concept on which he relies heavily – mapping. This is the ability of good designers to arrange their controls, buttons, and switches in a way which corresponds to something we already know and have mentally internalised. He also offers interesting analyses of mistakes, breakdowns, and disasters – relating them to issues of both design and the relationship of humans to machines.

Donald Norman is a ‘usability’ guru who puts the user first. This is a witty and humane approach to the issues of good design – and it rightly deserves its reputation as a modern classic. You will never interact with the physical world in quite the same way again.

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Donald A. Norman, The Design of Everyday Things, London/New York: MIT Press, 2000, pp.257, ISBN: 0262640376

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The Struggle for Utopia

July 5, 2009 by Roy Johnson

Rodchenko, Lissitzky, Moholy-Nagy 1917-1946

This is a series of essays tracing the development of three ground-breaking artists who deliberately harnessed their design skills during the highpoint of modernism to the service of revolutionary social change. The first chapter of The Struggle for Utopia offers an analysis of Alexander Rodchenko‘s designs for public information kiosks, comparing them with El Lissitzky‘s for new forms of paintings and books. This points to the essentially conservative ideology underlying some of Rodchenko’s work, in distinction to El Lissitzky’s attempts to break into new ground. The next deals with the work and theories of the German constructivists – Moholy-Nagy and Lissitzky who had moved to Berlin from the Soviet Union.

There were lots of theoretical wranglings amongst the artists and many bold claims made for the social and even revolutionary meanings in their works. Nevertheless, a simple connection between artist’s belief or intention and its manifestation on canvas or print remains as illusive as ever it will be. And if these abstract paintings dropped out of the sky unsigned, their meanings would be even more intractable.

This is followed by a chapter on Rodchenko’s work between 1922 and1927 when he gave all his creative energy to the cause of ‘production art’ – the design of socially useful objects such as furniture, books, magazines, exhibitions, and advertising posters. His furniture was never put into production [through no fault of his own] but his graphic design was a big success, was hugely influential, and is still fresh as paint today.

Next comes a comparison of the pioneering work in photography done by Rodchenko and Moholy-Nagy in the 1920s. Then Margolin tackles the difficult task of trying to find positive things to say about the work Rodchenko and Lissitzky produced as propagandists during the black years of the Stalin period. He does his best, but it’s difficult to take seriously the pictures of smiling ethnic minorites and the construction of the White Sea Canal when we now know the brutal truth of what was going on.

Rodchenko amazingly survived until 1956, though he produced nothing more worthy of note. Moholy-Nagy moved to Chicago where he influenced a whole generation of product desgners in his new Bauhaus Institute of Design.

This is a scholarly work with a full apparatus of citations, references and footnotes. It’s also beautifully designed, illustrated, and printed – as befits the subject matter. My only carp is that I wish a list of further reading had been extracted from the dense thicket of footnotes which cluster at the bottom of almost every page of the book. I want to read more: make it easy for me to follow up.

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Victor Margolin, The Struggle for Utopia: Rodchenko, Lissitzky, Moholy-Nagy 1917—1946, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997, pp.259, ISBN: 0226505162

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Tools for Complex Projects

July 16, 2009 by Roy Johnson

large scale project management skills

Tools for Complex Projects is not just about project management – but the management of complex and large scale projects. That complexity might be structural (building a large engineering plant) technical (developing a major new chemical) directional (a cross-national political initiative) or temporal (national oil supply during a time of war). The overall strategy of Kaye Remington and Julien Pollack’s approach to this subject is to examine the nature of these complex projects in some theoretical detail and then to offer a series of practical tools for dealing with them. There are of course other ways of categorising complexity – most commonly by scale or cost of a project, its duration, or the degree of risk to its owners. Their claim is that the four categories they have chosen are more fundamental and will cover any project.

It has to be said that the theoretical part of the book is extraordinarily dry reading:

During implementation, variance control must be vigilant so that stakeholders are kept informed of possible cost blow-outs. Techniques like Earned Value Management (EVM) a tool which links scope with time and cost, can be used to translate schedule slippages into budgetary terms.

Discussing the features of large and complex projects only really comes to life when concrete examples are used to illustrate the argument. It’s only when a chemical refinery, an ocean-going oil tanker, or the production of a full-length feature film hove into view that the picture snaps into focus.

The same questions are posed in each of these cases. What are the implications for communication and control within the project? What does the project manager need to do to in terms of team support, finance, scheduling procurement, and risk analysis?

In fact the larger the project, the more likely it is that these issues will be delegated to individual experts. The project manager however must have the skills to keep the larger picture and the smaller details in mind at the same time. S/he must have the capacity to be one moment an eagle, and the next a mouse.

The second part of the book looks at a number of ‘tools’ for dealing with the problems generated by complex projects. These in general are suggestions for defining the problems that arise using charts and ratings boxes; drawing up one-page ‘maps’ which show the ‘anatomy’ or connections in a complex system; and collaborative working arrangements (CWAs) instead of adversarial lump-sum contracts in the construction industry to reduce budget over-runs.

Some are fairly obvious such as splitting a large-scale complex problem down into a series of smaller discrete projects which are easier to manage and complete. Another is defining quite carefully the roles and responsibilities of project team members.

Multiple tools may be employed where uncertainties are created in long term projects (due to political or environmental changes, or financial problems arising out of volatile stock-markets. In such cases, a cost review might take precedence over an examination of delivery dates.

Risk-assessment maps can be drawn up to calculate the possible effects of worst-case scenarios. These look something like TV weather forecasts, where the arrows get bigger and are packed together more tightly – to show where the danger lies and where an emergency procedure needs to be put in place.

It occurred to me whilst reading this book that one of the largest and most complex projects I could think of was governing a country. I wonder if Gordon Brown or George Bush use any such management tools whilst simultaneously running democracies and waging costly wars – which we pay for. Somehow I doubt it, but maybe they should.

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Kaye Remington and Julien Pollack, Tools for Complex Projects, London: Gower, 2007, pp.211, ISBN: 0566087413

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Product design

product design in theory and practice

classic design principles using everyday objects

Rodchenko, Lissitzky, Moholy-Nagy 1917-1946

large scale project management skills

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