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Jony Ive’s Mistakes: When Beautiful Design Is Bad Design

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Re: Jony Ive’s Mistakes: When Beautiful Design Is Bad Design

#11

Post by darkpuma »

foolfoolz wrote: post #6
piinbinary wrote: post #3

I think it's good to draw a distinction between visual design and functional design. Design that focuses on function can sometimes (but definitely not always) result in designs that are also visually appealing, but design that focuses on the visual rarely produces a very functional result. I'd much rather look at a mac book pro than a thinkpad. Next to the minimalist design of the mac, a thinkpad looks like you rippe…

iphone is the best counter argument to this. when released it was 1000x more functional and 1000x better looking than any phone available

That's revisionist. People tend to forget that when the iphone was released it had no appstore and Apple was telling people to develop webapps. This was less functional than existing offerings on the market, but it sure looked and felt better.

Re: Jony Ive’s Mistakes: When Beautiful Design Is Bad Design

#12

Post by simonebrunozzi »

Glyptodon wrote: post #7

In my opinion the hated puck mouse is far and away better than the current Magic Mouse, which will will pretty much destroy your hands and give you carpal tunnel guaranteed. The puck mouse had an orientation trough on the button that was easy enough to get used to and, more importantly, was huge enough to be substantive and supportive under a hand. As far as I'm concerned the magic mouse is a class action lawsuit in…

You are right, but unfortunately nothing beats the Macbook trackpad, and that's what I tend to use 99% of the time nowadays.

Re: Jony Ive’s Mistakes: When Beautiful Design Is Bad Design

#13

Post by jacobolus »

tenaciousDaniel wrote: post #9
piinbinary wrote: post #3

I think it's good to draw a distinction between visual design and functional design. Design that focuses on function can sometimes (but definitely not always) result in designs that are also visually appealing, but design that focuses on the visual rarely produces a very functional result. I'd much rather look at a mac book pro than a thinkpad. Next to the minimalist design of the mac, a thinkpad looks like you rippe…

So many people I've talked to have never noticed the sharp edges of the mac pro. But they irritate the living crap out of me. After a few hours use, it starts to feel like I've been grinding my forearms with sandpaper.

Tangential public service announcement: Your forearms should not be digging into the edge of the laptop. If they are, you are positioning your hands and wrists in an uncomfortable and inefficient way which has a good chance of leading to RSI. Irrespective of the smoothness of the laptop corners, don’t do this!

Ideally you shouldn‘t be putting any significant pressure on any surface with your forearms, palms, or wrists while actively typing. You want your hands “floating” with the fingertips resting very lightly on the key tops. But even if you must rest your hands or arms on something, please keep your wrists as straight as possible, and especially avoid wrist flexion or extension.

The surface of your laptop should be more-or-less parallel with the plane of your forearms, with the keyboard kept close to your torso so that your shoulders can remain relaxed with your upper arms hanging down at your sides. (This reduces the torque your arms put on your shoulder, allowing you to comfortably support your arms without any need for external props.)

If you have a tall desk and a low chair, and can’t change furniture, the way to work around the poor furniture design is to either (a) move the laptop to a low tray or directly onto your lap, or (b) prop the back side of the laptop up so that the base of the laptop is tilted toward you, with the keyboard parallel to your forearms. Keep the laptop (or whatever other keyboard) near the edge of the desk.

Re: Jony Ive’s Mistakes: When Beautiful Design Is Bad Design

#14

Post by bootlooped »

Glyptodon wrote: post #7

In my opinion the hated puck mouse is far and away better than the current Magic Mouse, which will will pretty much destroy your hands and give you carpal tunnel guaranteed. The puck mouse had an orientation trough on the button that was easy enough to get used to and, more importantly, was huge enough to be substantive and supportive under a hand. As far as I'm concerned the magic mouse is a class action lawsuit in…

It fails so horribly on ergonomics it's hard to believe it even got released. I was furnished one at work and quit using it after an hour.

Re: Jony Ive’s Mistakes: When Beautiful Design Is Bad Design

#15

Post by idlewords »

jacobolus wrote: post #13
tenaciousDaniel wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So many people I've talked to have never noticed the sharp edges of the mac pro. But they irritate the living crap out of me. After a few hours use, it starts to feel like I've been grinding my forearms with sandpaper.

Tangential public service announcement: Your forearms should not be digging into the edge of the laptop. If they are, you are positioning your hands and wrists in an uncomfortable and inefficient way which has a good chance of leading to RSI. Irrespective of the smoothness of the laptop corners, don’t do this! Ideally you shouldn‘t be putting any significant pressure on any surface with your forearms, palms, or wrist…

Different people type in different ways.

Re: Jony Ive’s Mistakes: When Beautiful Design Is Bad Design

#17

Post by idlewords »

minimaxir wrote: post #5

I'm surprised the article didn't mention the Lightning-charged Magic Mouse given the infamous memes. (IMO, it's not bad design; you're not supposed to be using it plugged-in 24/7, you're supposed it to plug it in for occasions when you aren't using the mouse anyways) EDIT: it was mentioned, I missed it

Gratuitously making a mouse unusable during charging, where there was an easy and obvious way to make it usable during charging, is bad design.

Re: Jony Ive’s Mistakes: When Beautiful Design Is Bad Design

#18

Post by jdofaz »

Glyptodon wrote: post #7

In my opinion the hated puck mouse is far and away better than the current Magic Mouse, which will will pretty much destroy your hands and give you carpal tunnel guaranteed. The puck mouse had an orientation trough on the button that was easy enough to get used to and, more importantly, was huge enough to be substantive and supportive under a hand. As far as I'm concerned the magic mouse is a class action lawsuit in…

That was the second version, the original model didn’t have the dent.

Re: Jony Ive’s Mistakes: When Beautiful Design Is Bad Design

#19

Post by idlewords »

tomger wrote: post #4

I think the author of this article thinks a design team is run as some sort of isolated dictatorship. In reality design teams balance stakeholder feedback, technical constraints, timelines and so on.

That's the point the author makes in the article—that Ive's team did better work when it had tradeoffs imposed on it.

Re: Jony Ive’s Mistakes: When Beautiful Design Is Bad Design

#20

Post by quickthrower2 »

Glyptodon wrote: post #7

In my opinion the hated puck mouse is far and away better than the current Magic Mouse, which will will pretty much destroy your hands and give you carpal tunnel guaranteed. The puck mouse had an orientation trough on the button that was easy enough to get used to and, more importantly, was huge enough to be substantive and supportive under a hand. As far as I'm concerned the magic mouse is a class action lawsuit in…

For those of us who don't know:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c8/Ma...

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