Ged Carroll

Category: design | 設計 | 예술과 디자인 | デザイン

Design was something that was important to me from the start of this blog, over different incarnations of the blog, I featured interesting design related news. Design is defined as a plan or drawing produced to show the look and function or workings of a building, garment, interfaces or other object before it is made.

But none of the definition really talks about what design really is in the way that Dieter Rams principles of good design do. His principles are:

  1. It is innovative
  2. It makes a product useful
  3. It is aesthetic
  4. It makes a product understandable
  5. It is unobtrusive
  6. It is honest
  7. It is long-lasting
  8. It is thorough down to the last detail
  9. It is environmentally-friendly – it can and must maintain its contribution towards protecting and sustaining the environment.
  10. It is as little design as possible

Bitcoin isn’t long lasting as a network, which is why people found the need to fork the blockchain and build other cryptocurrencies.

Bitcoin uses 91 terawatts of energy annually or about the entire energy consumption of Finland.

The Bitcoin network relies on thousands of miners running energy intensive machines 24/7 to verify and add transactions to the blockchain. This system is known as “proof-of-work.” Bitcoin’s energy usage depends on how many miners are operating on its network at any given time. – So Bitcoin is environmentally unfriendly by design.

On the other hand, Apple products, which are often claimed to be also influenced by Dieter Rams also fail his principles. They aren’t necessarily environmentally friendly as some like AirPods are impossible to repair or recycle.

  • Rolex service centre

    Rolex service centre

    Friday, and my Palm PDA bleeped in that nagging sort of way that it does. I looked down and saw that it was time to get my watch serviced again at the Rolex service centre. I have the good fortune to have got a Rolex Submariner at a knockdown price off my old man some years ago before their prices went stupid. The watch is as old as I am and has weathered the adventures we have shared (including scuba diving, flyposting in sink hole estates, dj’ing in abandoned mills and dot.com client meetings) considerably better. Every three years it goes in for a service.

    The Rolex service centre in London had changed their location since last time, so after getting off at the wrong tube and then heading halfway across W1, I arrived at their new offices in St James’ Sq in a bit of a fluster. Talk about brand experience, their foyer is all sea green wavy patterned glass, dark green marble (all in the same colours as much of their packaging and website) and high quality woodwork, with a couple of lovely looking blonde receptionists; it looks every inch like the sitting room of a Bond villain’s hideaway.

    A reassuringly old man in a spotless white coat took my watch away. I will be interested to see how much work it needs in the next week or so. Seriously tempted to get it a companion with a 50th anniversary edition Submariner or a Seadweller, but that would be a bit materialistic… More related content here.

    Firefox up

    For some reason Safari, the zippy default browser on my Mac does not like the format buttons in Blogger, the online tool I use to write these musings. I have loaded up the latest iteration of Mozilla called Firefox as a back up. I am very impressed with its speed and relative lack of bugs. It beats seven bells out of Microsoft Explorer and Microsoft was withdrawn from the Mac marketplace for Internet browsers so a fast reliable alternative was required.

    Cufflinks & ‘The Game of Death’

    Cufflinks are men’s equivalents to alice bands (except for David Beckham) frivolous items of attire, there is no rhyme or reason for them but shirt makers insist that you use them so that they can skimp on buttons. I can find using them to be a right pain in backside. My one set of cufflinks were bought at a shop in the West End and feature a black and white hand and shoulders portrait of Bruce Lee (from The Game of Death publicity stills apparently). This struck me as a bit of an oddity unless that practicing kung fu is as time consuming and trying as doing up a set of cufflinks in a hurry. They are bit of a conversation piece and my friend Ian and I were talking about them. I complained that using cufflinks were a ‘challenge’ and he pointed out that cufflinks in his view were a way of preparing for the day. You cant do them efficiently unless you are at ease, rather than having your mind going in 20 directions at once. There you go, one man’s frivolous clothing item, another man’s zen pillar – you decide….

  • Are we too complex?

    Are we too complex is a post that I originally wrote on the now defunct Alwayson Network regarding the thoughts of Dan Geer on complexity in technology.

    Dan’s ideas are interesting because they make sense to the man in the street. For instance the more complex you make something, the more likely it is to go wrong. This makes sense whether it is a sophisticated mechanical device or a piece of software. I looped his thinking into my own because I believe there is a ‘sweet spot’ for technology sophistication and usability. Classic examples of that sweet spot would be Videoplus remote controls, pre-Symbian Nokia phones, Palm Vx and the original iPod. They’re largely intuitive, they do one thing really well and they just work. By comparison, most PC software and operating systems probably don’t.

    Geer considers this primarily from an information security point of view. But he also realises that computer experience is an important part of security.

    Dan points out that our ability to use computers as individuals is not increasing as the same rate as computing power and storage. For the past seven years I surfed the web. listened to music and churned out documents on behalf of my clients. The only difference is now that I use a more powerful Unix based workstation laptop (my Apple iBook) to do the same thing. What’s the point? I am not more efficient or effective.