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.

  • Grenadier car project + other news

    Grenadier

    Ineos Projekt Grenadier: an old-school 4×4 off-roader for 2020 by CAR Magazine – interesting that they think there is a gap here. Chemical conglomerate Ineos, have the money to pull the Grenadier off.

    Grenadier market?

    The larger question is around whether there is a market for the Grenadier? While we think of Land Cruisers as luxury vehicles, you can still get a barebones one in markets like Australia, the Middle East and Africa. Mercedes still does a bare bones G-Wagen.

    Grenadier costs

    A mass production assembly line for the Grenadier including tooling would cost about £100 million or so, based on previous refits I have seen done at the Vauxhall car plant in Ellesmere Port.

    That wouldn’t include an engine foundry. I would expect Grenadier to raid the parts bins of other manufacturers for things like engines. They will buy off the shelf transmissions from the likes of ZF or Magna PT, if they can’t raid a parts bin. The problem with raiding parts bins is that you are using products that are designed to be digitally integrated together now. Would companies like VDO be able to provide you with analogue instruments? Most modern cars aren’t unreliable because of cabin electronics, the problems are usually the underlying mechanics and control systems. Those electronics are put there to get the vehicles to ‘limbo’ under the tightening environmental standards and Grenadier will be no exception.

    Overall development of the Grenadier may cost multiples of the price of the production line, including type approval across markets.

    Business

    Publicis and WPP are takeover targets and Accenture ‘looks a credible buyer’, bank says – interesting hypothesis

    T-Mobile and Sprint are in active talks about a merger | CNBC – Son-san and Legere could be an interesting and complementary mix

    Consumer behaviour

    Under The Surface: The Why of Chinese Consumer Behaviour | Holmes Report  – with a billion people and a fast-growing economy, those feelings of uncertainty are even more profound and widespread.   The true meaning of technology for Chinese users? The ability to feel in control in an era of anxiety.

    Douglas Todd: Men do well in science and tech, but lag elsewhere | Montreal Gazette – the real reason more males complete STEM degrees, says Tabarrok, of George Mason University, is that, to put it too bluntly, “the only men who are good enough to get into university are men who are good at STEM. Women are good enough to go into non-STEM and STEM fields.”

    The findings of Card, of the University of California, Berkeley, and Payne, of McMaster University, are consistent with wider concerns about the under-representation of men in higher education and in many sectors of the labour market, says Tabarrok.

    “If we accept the results (of Card and Payne), the gender-industry gap is focused on the wrong thing. The real gender gap is that men are having trouble competing everywhere except in STEM,” says Tabarrok – the big question is the why? It also makes one wonder if the narrative of privilege has gone into reverse for some reason?

    Economics

    Sustainable development: China’s path out of poverty can never be repeated at scale by a country again — Quartz – interesting read. It puts the internet into perspective, shipping containers had more impact in China’s economic rise

    Ethics

    Idle Words | Anatomy of a moral panic – worthwhile reading as it illustrates the current poor state of news reporting

    Ideas

    Blade Runner 2049_: Inside the Dark Future of a Sequel 35 Years in the Making | WIRED – “Blade Runner changed the way the world looks and how we look at the world,” William Gibson says. It was one of the things which inspired me to move to Hong Kong

    Innovation

    Really interesting hologram imagery created using the persistence of vision effect

    Here’s another example of it from a Chinese company in Shenzhen thanks to Naomi Wu for the video. According to Naomi this is a Rainbo device.

    Media

    ​Facebook: news a pagamento entro il 2017, anche in Italia – Rai News – Facebook to trial paywalled content

    China’s Booming Live Streaming Market Has Reached Its Zenith – Huajiao. Long answer: emoji-like “gifts” from the viewers that can later be cashed in for money. Chinese viewers are less enamored by mindlessly goofy check out my six pack vids (*cough* Logan Paul), and more interested in watching the mundanities of their favorite influencer’s everyday life — i.e. singing in the shower, driving, and… slurping soup? – There is a clear line between this and things like Korean ‘eating’ videos.

    Influencer Marketing Effectiveness is Limited by Management! | PARKLU – not only China!

    Uber Sues Mobile Agency Alleging Ad Fraud – WSJ – interesting implications around tracking showing weakness in Uber’s much vaunted data expertise?

    Should Social Go Local? | The Daily | L2 – some nice assets

    Online

    Twitter to test longer tweets – but only for European languages – Mumbrella Asia – to be honest it makes sense for languages like German and Finnish

    The New York Times on Facebook

    The First Web Apps: 5 Apps That Shaped the Internet as We Know It | Zapier blog – great lunch time read

    Security

    DuckDuckGo: The Solopreneur That Is Beating Google at Its Game – The Four-Week MBA

    Signal Has a Fix for Apps’ Contact-Leaking Problem | WIRED – I so hope they sort it

    Distrustful U.S. allies force spy agency to back down in encryption fight  – academic and industry experts from countries including Germany, Japan and Israel worried that the U.S. electronic spy agency was pushing the new techniques not because they were good encryption tools, but because it knew how to break them.

    The NSA has had to drop all but the most powerful versions of the techniques – those least likely to be vulnerable to possible hacks by the NSA

    Technology

    Unilever finds startups can replace some agency tasks – Digiday – marketing automation gone mad

  • Machine learning sublime influence

    Scott Galloway talks about the way brands are using AI (machine learning) and the examples are very much in the background.  Welcome to the sublime world of machine learning where the impact on the customer experience won’t be apparent. In many respects this is similar to how fuzzy logic became invisible as it was introduced in the late 1980s.

    The Japanese were particularly adept at putting an obscure form of mathematics to use. They made lifts that adapted to the traffic flows of people going in and out of a building and microwaves which knew how long to defrost whatever you put into it. Fuzzy logic compensated for blur in video camera movement in a similar manner to way smartphone manufacturers now use neural networks on images.

    The Japanese promoted fuzzy logic inside products to the home market, but generally backed off from promoting it abroad. The features just were and consumers accepted them over time. In a quote that is now eerily reminiscent of our time a spokesperson for the American Electronics Association’s Tokyo office said to the Washington Post

    “Some of the fuzzy concepts may be valid in the U.S.,”

    “The idea of better energy efficiency, or more precise heating and cooling, can be successful in the American market,”

    “But I don’t think most Americans want a vacuum cleaner that talks to you and says, ‘Hey, I sense that my dust bag will be full before we finish this room.’ “

    This was also the case with the use technology companies made of Bayes Theory. This was used by the likes of Autonomy and Microsoft Research.

    A second technique was rules, put simply IF then THAT. This kind of technology has been used to drive automated trading models and credit card approvals for decades. Pegasystems are one of the leaders in developing rules based processing. Rules based systems could even be built in an Excel macro and would still count as a form of machine learning. 

    Finally machine learning needs to think about a number of things with regards the models being used:

    • The importance of accuracy in the use case
    • The level of precision required and ways to indicate that precision means
    • The cost of generation versus other methods, this is very important in terms of computing power and energy consumption 

    More information
    The Future of Electronics Looks Fuzzy | Washington Post (December 23, 1990)

  • Apple retail special Event outtakes

    Key takeouts from the Apple special event with a little bit of analysis on Apple Retail.
     
    Apple Retail
    First presentation by Angela Ahrendts. There is a question of why she hadn’t presented at previous keynotes.  My read on it is that that the revenue per square foot metric beloved of retail analysts will tumble. Apple seems to be taking the mall companies idea of shopping as entertainment and doing it for their individual stores.
    Town hall – what they call the stores internally, bigger focus on engagement rather than transactions – is this an effort to try and recapture cool?
    Store features
      • Plaza – public private spaces outside the store if possible, interesting implications on future store placements – probably less in malls
      • Forum – open plan internal space
      • Boardroom – private space focused on developer relations, was probably the most interesting push. Stores are being given a stronger push as embassies for developer relations. 
      • Creative Pro – Apple genius for the creative apps, probable mix of amateur and professional audiences addressed
      • Today at Apple – driven by Creative Pro staff to focus on creating more usuage of key offerings i.e. photo walks – think Nike Running Club. Also includes teacher outreach
      • Genius grove – the genius bar but with plants presumably to try and break up the overall store noise
    • Avenues  – wider aisles that products are on
    Continued retail expansion in the US including Chicago – interesting that international expansion wasn’t mentioned. 
     
    Apple Watch
      • 50% yearly growth – the series 2 fixed many of the hygiene factors wrong with the first version
    • 97% customer satisfaction – health seems to be driving this
    Health features: focus on heart rate monitor and getting proactive about flagging elevated heart rate. Also focusing on heart rhythm changes as well.
     
    watchOS 4 out September 19 available to all customers. Interesting that they didn’t drill into some of interesting features on watchOS 4 using Siri
     
    Series 3 Apple Watch with cellular built in. Your Dick Tracy fantasies are alive. Apple thinks that people will leave their phones at home and bring their Apple Watch. They also see it as killing the iPod Nano with wireless music playback. I am yet to be convinced.
    Apple added a barometric sensor; usage example was focused on health and fitness rather then locative apps. Not a great surprise given that these sensors have been in premium G-Shocks for a good while. 
     
    Apple used specially designed lower power wifi and Bluetooth silicon. But no news about who is making the cellular modem. The SIM is embedded on the motherboard and presumably a software update? These changes could have interesting implications for future phones?
     
    Interesting carrier partnerships, in particular all three of China’s mobile carriers, but only EE in the UK?
     
    Apple TV
     
      • Apple TV now supports 4K, unsurprising hardware upgrade and includes high dynamic range – Apple is following the TV set industry’s lead
      • More interesting is the amount of content deals Apple has done with studios, in particular keeping the price point of 4K HDR content the same as was previously charged for HD content.
      • Interesting TV partnerships but no major UK TV stations only Mubi
      • Emphasis on easy access to sports on the Apple TV would wind up cable companies further
    • Apple TV was also positioned as the control interface for HomeKit smarthome products. There was no further  update on HomeKit in the presentation 
    iPhone 8 incremental changes
     
      • Wireless charging with glass back. The steel and copper reinforcement of the glass is probably to help with the induction charging
    • Incremental improvements in picture quality. Bigger focus on AR including new sensors.
    iPhone X
     
      • Positioned as future direction for iPhones. Biometric face ID is clever but has issues. I wonder how it will work with facial hair or weight gain – Apple claims that it will adapt. Apple also claims to be able to detect photos and masks. It’s also used for face tracking in AR applications with some SnapChat lens demos.
      • As with Touch ID, there is a PIN code if your face doesn’t work. I have found that Touch ID doesn’t work all the time so you need that PIN back up.
      • The notch at the top poses some UX / design issues and the industrial design implies case free usage which will be a step away from usual iPhone usage.
    • What isn’t immediately apparent to me is the user case for the iPhone X versus the iPhone 8 plus?
    What was lacking in the iPhone presentation was a celebration of all in the changes in iOS 11 under the hood.
    A11 – Bionic chip in the iPhone 8 and X
      • Includes new integrated GPU for machine learning and graphics. This explains why Imagination Technologies are in trouble
    • New image sensor processingThe A11 processor has a hardware neural network on the chip for the iPhone X – unsure if its also usable on the 8
    Apple’s moves to embrace, co-opt Qi wireless charging and build a super-standard on top of it will likely wind up members like Qualcomm and Huawei. How much of this is down to user experience and how much is down to the desire to get Apple IP in the technology stack?
    Apple is left with a large product line of iPhones: SE, 6 series, 7 series, 8 series and the X

  • Shoreditch and other things

    I’ve been a bit quiet on here this week, I was freelancing in Shoreditch, living the Nathan Barley dream with smoked salmon coffee. Here’s the things that made my day this week. It is strange that a whole area can become cliche in the way that Shoreditch has. The truth is Shoreditch isn’t even that great a location. There is no central proposition to the Shoreditch area. It just become important by default because it’s relatively cheap.

    乐播报丨七夕节，乐高积木X搜狗输入法送“独家”惊喜啦！ – Nice collab between Sogou and Lego on digital assets including stickers and a keyboard. Lego faces some high quality clone products so is trying to build strong brand preference. The challenge is that Lego is no longer made in Denmark, but China – so arguments about safety and Danish brand values are harder to argue.

    Naomi Wu shared this cyberpunk themed maker festival video by Tao Bao – the Alibaba-owned mainland China marketplace. I quite like it, it has a 1980s post-Blade Runner vibe to the visuals – but through the lens of Hong Kong comedy director Stephen Chow. Sit back and enjoy the short film.

    Students Nicci Yin and Nan Hung Tsai  from the ArtCenter College of Design gave this interesting talk on making locative art more social. Like the ARKit stuff, these explorations feel fresh like the computer graphics in the early 1990s and Macromedia (pre-Adobe) Flash. The idea of scanning items with a hand controller into virtual reality and it becoming a virtual social asset is was interesting. There are interesting implications handing off across realities in storytelling. This is a fascinating a talk to take in during your lunch hour.

    Great interview with Action Bronson – I let him speak for himself

    ARKit reminds me of back in the day with start of Macromedia Flash; developers and artists being creative and playful. Check out this brief animation from a Japanese developer

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  • Function and form

    Form and function of Black Flag

    You can see the nature of function and form everywhere you look I took it out of this great interview with Henry Rollins with BBC Hard Talk from January 2016. The interesting bit after 6:00 is how Rollins talks about his stage image that evolved from the rudimentary circumstances of being on the road with American punk band Black Flag.

    The origin of this function and form derived look of gym shorts and torso look was to cut down on the washing he needed to do in restaurant sinks post-concert. Rollins continues a variant of this form and function approach to his wardrobe, which focuses on limited basics, even now after his sustained success as musician, spoken word artist, poet, comedian, podcaster and actor.

    Dieter Rams

    Dieter Rams was one of the most important industrial designers of our modern world. His view was around form following function. He is also a big proponent of less and more in terms of product design.

    This approach is exemplified by Braun’s product design over the years, from hi-fis to shavers and and kitchen equipment. This look remained timeless with half century designs still being followed today. Rams extended this philosophy to furniture design company Vistoe.

    Whiskas

    Function and form doesn’t end with stage outfits. While doing my weekly shop I noticed that Whiskas had upped its packaging game. When I was a child Whiskas came in a tin that was indistinguishable from other tins. If the paper wrapper fell off, you wouldn’t know what was in the tin. It was also inconvenient to use and required a can opener. They like other pet food manufacturers moved to a plastic container with a foil lid that was lighter, an important consideration for supply chains. Now they have added a bit of personality to the container design with ears. It cut through the tins, oval plastic trays and aluminium trays usual in cat food packaging. It acts as great brand signage and also helps the human to open foil lid in order to feed their canine overlords.

    Whiskas packaging

    More related content to function and form can be found on my blog here.