Design: a brain-dump

first posted July 4th, 2008 on LiveJournal

Good Design

• is not aesthetics. 
  
• is invisible to the user. 
  
• reliable. 
  
• fails gracefully. 
  
• idiot-resistant. 
  
• intuitive to use. 
  
• It crosses all disciplines - architecture, engineering, sociology, urban studies, environmental studies, anthropology, history, etc. 
  
• Understands the legacy's preceding it and the cultural environment it is entering. 
  
• environmentally sustainable. 
  
• economically sustainable. culturally-suitable and relevant. 
  
• User-maintainable, repairable, and versatile. 
  
• driven by the stakeholders (democratic). 
  
• not compromised into uselessness - an over-riding vision and authority must be decisive on a direction. 
  
• edited and refined constantly. 
  
• elegantly-efficient. 
  
• Macintosh (this one is provisional - it still has a looong way to go - there's still too many fixable flaws in OS X). 
  
• Most Western-European cities. 
  
• NYC. 
  
• Portland. 
  
• Japan's Passenger Railroads. 
• America's Diesel Locomotives. 
• The Spanish Talgo trainsets (97% uptime!!). 
• Honda. 
• Toyota. 
• Intermodal containers. 
• Firewire (beats USB hands down). 
• The Knuckle coupler. 
• Ball bearings. 
• the pencil. 
• Two-finger trackpad scrolling. 
• The Humvee (but not the Hummer). 
• The turbine. 
• The lens. 
• The staple (better still is the paper staple - so clever but less versatile http://www.treehugger.com/files/2004/12/stapless_staple.php).
• Helvetica. 
• the new NS logo. 
• The McGinnis B&M logo. 
• The Chessie System logo.
• The rail. 
• The book Cradle to Cradle (the tree-less paper that book is printed on is simply amazing - way better than tree-pulp paper, and the book itself is awesome). 
• The Firefly class ship

Bad Design 

• is conventional for the sake of convention. 
  
• Unconventional for the sake of unconventionality. 
• Ignores/disrespects the past. 
• Refuses to break from the historic forms. 
• Designed from one perspective alone (everything looks like a nail if you have a hammer - engineers and architects fall into this all the time). 
• Pretty but useless. 
• Inflexible. 
• Designed to be easy to make regardless of utility. 
• Makes the user feel stupid because it's hard to comprehend. 
• Makes decisions with no attention to the trade-offs. 
• Designed with no knowledge of the context. 
• Greenwashed. 
• Designed to minimize UPFRONT costs only. 
• Designed by committee with no unified vision or editing (open source all too often falls into this... Linux, Firefox for Mac). 
• Socially-irresponsible. 
• Ego-driven. 
• Authoritarian. 
• The Ecotarium facilities. 
• The UMass campus. 
• Windows. 
• Every cell phone ever made (the iPhone finally broke that trend - it's not "good" design, yet, but it's the first that isn't bad design). 
• SPRAWL. 
• Houston. 
• LA. 
• GM. 
• Ford.
• Acela. 
• The Hummer (but not the Humvee). 
• Anything manufactured in Chinese sweat-shops (yes, this includes many of the things I consider good design - they can be both. deal with it). 
• Libertarian. 
• The Leopard 3D dock. 
• OS X and Vista's eye-candy bloat. 
• Wall-wart power bricks (universal power adapter's PLEASE?! USB would serve as a good 5v standard or Firewire for 12V...). 
• The Sylvan suites. 
• Non-user replaceable parts in Apple hardware. 
• Proprietary formats, plugs, interfaces, etc. 
• The new Amtrak logo. 
• The CSX logo. 
• The Death Star 1...