Forethink Design

Karmen is king of nerds. Pentagon sponsored his project to make innovative prosthetic arm for people who lost a arm or arms. Please play the video from link. It is really beautiful machine. It just looks like a Jedi arm for Luke Skywalker who lost his arm from battle with Vader. Karmen shows us how team work of ingenuity can improve human life. It reminds me that improving life should be top priority for design. Link: http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/video?id=221 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_Kamen http://www.dekaresearch.com/

Wheel chair was too big for trunk. But this car 'Sephia' from KIA (Hyundai motors) is not that small car. Wheelbase of this model is around 2500mm. Do we need to make more folding & compact wheel chair? or to let car designers think about wheel chair size rather than size of Golf bag or Ski? Apparently, the driver of car and the driver of wheel chair had a hard time with it.

Is it time for touch interface? I would say yes for my job security. I think I can make a carreer plan based on touch interface for another 5 years at least. Look at this. It is studio of CNN situation room for 2008 US presidential election. Yesterday was Super Tuesday. Every new visualization technique have been introduced at election time. This time CNN show off big size touch panel. It is not that big. All corners are touchable and display amazing quality of photo, map and graphs. It seems familiar. Probably one from Jeff Han's multi touch technology. Yes, it is big iPhone. CNN's election board is fantastic. You can manipulate all complex election information with just some touches. Camera man just need to zoom in/out while two guys are talking about it and simulate it on screen. Graph can be simulated by scenario and you can understand why and how a region is bonded with election information. I believe all school and conference room of companies need that soon. Reference ht...

I just got a brand new PC from my company. It is HP Compaq8510W. I don't know why but HP still uses Compaq for notePC brand name. On palm rest, there are 3 sticker labels. NVDIA, INTEL and HP... OK, I understand marketing guys want to show off their brand. But please stop it. At least, please make it easy to remove. I used my hair dryer and nail. First and second was easy. But NVIDIA's label was really sticky. Do you think it help brand recognition? Actually it might cause small problem with palmrest usability. These stickers are supposed to be removed after opening the box. Actually, some...many people just let it go and never remove it until the PC die or return. Even some of my friend wants to keep it and think it is decorative. But I'm pretty sure that stickers are never rendered in original design. Otherwise I saw new Apple Macbook Air at same day. Probably that's why I'm complaining about it.

Yes, I believe we need ethic. Ethic for usability is a core value. But with same knowlege about usability, you can do horrible anti-usability or less-horrible but still dirty job for your big boss. It is tempting when you know what people do in a typical way, you can predict and may utilize it for making more money. But if you exploit and don't share benefit with user as usability expert, you are in hell of usability. Some stupid design is actually designed for more making money. Actually it is stupid because it is short sighted for short term revenue. You can make a report how much money you could make a money from better design or you can make a report how much money you made from stupid annoying design. Why I'm sure about it? Why I'm sure usability-abuse will be ultimate failure for your business? Because user is smart enough. You have to have love for user. That's 1st principle. Example. At front page of Yahoo.com, if you click an interesting news article, you will...

I changed this video link to new 1 year old baby. S/he can control image browsing on iPhone. Interestingly can control speed for it. This is 2 years old baby Anna and she is playing with iPhone. It's quite awesome because she can't speak well yet nor read English but can do iPhone. Probably she can control TV set and DVD for watching Nemo. S/he is one of 5 percentile which cropped population by UI designer who usually focus on major population who can buy that product. What is easy? Yes, if 2 year old baby can do that it is definitely easy. Otherwise how about elderly citizen? Dean Kamen (Inventor of Segway) told us about his experience with 81 years old lady who did test run Segway. "I can't drive any more but need to go glocery store.","I can drive this (Segway)". What is needed for making easy interface? Good simple logic, Continuity... But how can it make Anna smile when she find music player? As once Spock said "Logic is only start of wisdom...

Robot get a new job. This is traffic guide robot at front of Kyungbu highway Seoul gate. He has white handsome face, blue uniform of police officer and red lighting wands. So drivers are supposed to be more careful when driving into tollgate. It is installed with new wireless paying system. But a scarecrow is only good for stupid sparrows. Smart sparrow will ignore it soon. It is certainly another annoying new invention. How much time is needed to be familiar with the robot for drivers?