Ged Carroll

Category: gadget | 小工具 | 가제트 | ガジェット

What constitutes a gadget? The dictionary definition would be a small mechanical or electronic device or tool, especially an ingenious or novel one.

When I started writing this blog the gadget section focused on personal digital assistants such as the Palm PDA and Sony’s Clie devices. Or the Anoto digital pen that allowed you to record digitally what had been written on a specially marked out paper page, giving the best of both experiences.

Some of the ideas I shared weren’t so small like a Panasonic sleeping room for sleep starved, but well heeled Japanese.

When cutting edge technology failed me, I periodically went back to older technology such as the Nokia 8850 cellphone or my love of the Nokia E90 Communicator.

I also started looking back to discontinued products like the Sony Walkman WM-D6C Pro, one of the best cassette decks ever made of any size. I knew people who used it in their hi-fi systems as well as for portable audio.

Some of the technology that I looked at were products that marked a particular point in my life such as my college days with the Apple StyleWriter II. While my college peers were worried about getting on laser printers to submit assignments, I had a stack of cartridges cotton buds and isopropyl alcohol to deal with any non catastrophic printer issues and so could print during the evening in the comfort of my lodgings.

Alongside the demise in prominence of the gadget, there has been a rise in the trend of everyday carry or EDC.

  • Size zero design

    Size zero design

    What do I mean by size zero design? If you look at the product design of Apple’s most-hyped products: the Apple MacBook Air, the iPod Touch and the iPhone all have one attribute: being thin. I am picking on Apple just because they have some high-profile designs feature it and Steve Jobs seems to obsess on it, but they are not the only sinners.It’s just that Apple happen to be taste-makers for other consumer electronics and technology manufacturers.

    Before size zero

    It used to be back in the day that things were about small. Owning a cellphone in the late 90s and early noughties saw my handsets shrink dramatically in size from 1999-to-2001:

    Handset                          Size                                             Mass

    I888                                130 x 49 x 22 mm                    195 grams
    T39                                  96 x 50 x 18 mm                      86 grams

    However there is a limit to how small a phone can get from a usability point-of-view. Secondly, more functionality meant more powerful electronics which gave out more heat and larger screens for email, web-browsing and other smartphone-type functions.

    Size zero origins

    There were hints of size zero design back in 1999 with the Palm V and Vx PDAs. These pioneered the use of glued one piece devices and a metallic slim look. In 2004 Motorola released the RAZR clamshell mobile phone and could be considered the inciting incident driving the current fad for size zero design. It had sales-floor sex appeal and stood out from the competition. In reality it was a crappy cell phone with poor battery life that felt wrong when you held it. But it became the best-selling clamshell phone ever. By contrast Motorola’s PEBL which was designed to give the consumer a more tactile experience was a more modest sales success, good enough for Motorola to make a second version but not enough to echo through the product design of the Motorola’s phone range.

    Handset                          Size                                             Mass

    PEBL U6                        86.5 x 49 x 20 mm                    110 grams
    RAZR V3                        98 x 53 x 13.9 mm                     95 grams

    The apparent lessons where not lost on the industry. Steve Jobs used to have a RAZR. Despite the fact that it was Sony Ericsson who was the handset manufacturer who led compatibility with Apple’s iSync software at the time. I had to buy adaptors from a German software company to get iSync to work with my Nokia devices. Jobs experimented with size zero design on the first iPhone and iPod Touch and then rolled it out to the MacBook Air. By the time that the iPad came about, size zero design was encoded into Apple’s tablet DNA.

    The MacBook Air is notable because unlike the iPhone, Apple did have a product to judge it against. Delving back into the Apple past products the MacBook Duo series of the early 1990s set an aggressive product design to match in terms of size and functionality. That the MacBook Air decided not to have a dock is a discussion for another time, what is more interesting is how the MacBook Air is actually bigger in every way except depth than the Duo series of devices.

    I call this obsessive size zero design because I believe that it is an unhealthy design language. Jonathan Ive’s recent work at Apple owes a lot to the works and thinking of Dieter Rams. How does these size zero designs stake up against Rams’ ten principles of good design?

    1. Good design is innovative.
    2. Good design makes a product useful.
    3. Good design is aesthetic.
    4. Good design makes a product understandable.
    5. Good design is unobtrusive.
    6. Good design is honest.
    7. Good design is long-lasting.
    8. Good design is thorough down to the last detail.
    9. Good design is environmentally friendly.
    10. Good design is as little design as possible.

    I think that the Apple’s size zero product range break rules: 2, 4, 6, 10.

    Good design makes a product useful

    Tell that to iPhone owners who are stuck with a device with an inadequate battery life. I can get just over one working day out of my phone if I nurse it carefully and use a mophie 3G juice pack air. The slimness of the product makes it awkward to hold and cuts down on the amount of battery that can be crammed into the case. Slimness was also responsible for the iPhone 4’s controversial antenna design.

    Good design makes a product understandable

    The iPhone 4 antenna debacle was partly down to people holding the device wrong, hardly an example of good design makes a product understandable.

    Good design is honest

    The first iteration of the MacBook Air has complex beveled sides to make it look thinner than it actually is.  Then there is the alleged gorilla glass failures on the back of the iPhone 4.

    Good design is as little design as possible

    Rams last principle is like a zen koan. On the one hand it could be talking about materials, on the other side it also means a lack of customisation and a lack of awareness from the user that the product has been designed. Instead it must be seen as the only obvious way that the design should have been done.

    Users of Apple iPhones and MacBook Air devices, by contrast are conscious of the products design. They are also conscious of the fragility of their devices, which is the reason why an eco-system in cases and protectors has been built up around mobile phones for the first the first time in a decade.

    In conclusion

    In conclusion, I think that size zero designs are leading technology product design up a blind alley, one that doesn’t benefit consumers in the longer term. Product usability has been sacrificed and the consumer is not free to alter any part of the device such as memory capacity the way they would with a normal laptop.

    All phone dimension data came from GSM Arena. More design related content here.

  • BlackBerry PlayBook

    My friend David asked me what I thought of the BlackBerry Playbook. I wanted to give my ideas time to percolate before jotting them down:

    • Sack the marketers – what does ‘professional-grade’ mean in with regards to a BlackBerry Playbook tablet? It’s the kind of weak nebulous marketing speak like ‘leading’, ‘best-of-breed’ and ‘solutions provider’. I thought that we’d left all that back in the 20th century? Obviously the memo got dropped somewhere outside Waterloo, Ontario. Whilst we are on about flaunting its professional-grade awesomeness, why was there no idea of what the BlackBerry Playbook battery life would be? There wasn’t even the usual over-optimistic numbers that manufacturers try and spin – this looks shady
    • The name – I know that business people like to use sporting analogies to try and imbue themselves with the kind of sporting prowess they have in fact lost as a desk jockey more used to putting away expense-paid lunches than points on the scoreboard; but BlackBerry PlayBook smacks more of of a kindergarden or Friday Night Lights, lineament, jock straps and sweaty changing rooms than the board room
    • Sack the industrial designer – Whilst Darth Vader black may be hip in the losers end of the college dorm, maglite black might be hip for the career shopping mall security guard or 80s black may be an ironic design nod to black ash flat pack furniture; the packaging of the BlackBerry PlayBook didn’t impress me at all. Colour ironically could have been a great way to differentiate the design from the Apple iPad. How about differentiation through the tactile experience of the device? It would be nice to have a tablet that didn’t feel as slippery as a bar of soap in the shower
    • Memories of the Palm Foleo – One of the most interesting aspects of the BlackBerry PlayBook was the tethering relationship with its older BlackBerry messaging  device siblings. There seems to be a degree of integration BlackBerry applications as well, this reminded me of the Palm Foleo project that Ed Corrigan killed off some three years ago. I will be curious to know whether RIM would also allow carriers to pair the device with a 4G modem like Sprint have done for the iPad in the US, or if the PlayBook is a giant BlackBerry messaging device accessory? This subtle differentiation is key as on its own, positioning-wise, the PlayBook reminds me of a slightly larger version of Nokia’s N900 but with no keyboard or mobile connectivity – its a clumsy communicator device
    • Finally an upgrade for my 3Com Audrey – back in 2000, I worked agencyside on the Palm account and some of my colleagues were working on 3Com. I was bricking myself because 3Com had their smarts together and partnered with a software company called QNX to create a hot new internet device. In comparison, Palm had some products that were ok electronic address books and a technology roadmap that you could have flossed your teeth with. Fortunately the 3Com industrial design team went for a kitchen appliance versus the Jetsons look and the 3Com Audrey became probably the most under-appreciated device in tech history. Move forward ten years and RIM has managed to capture the software goodness of QNX (with a polished front end) into a mobile device at last. Whilst the industrial design sucks, the underpinnings of QNX’ real-time OS is a geek wonder to behold. More gadget related content here.

  • Kin logo

    Whilst I won’t be dashing out and getting myself one of the Microsoft | Sharp Kin phones. I did like the Kin logo. The logo seems to be completely unrelated to the devices. It’s an atemporal brand design it would be easy to produce on screen, as an app icon or in print and also looks as if it draws heavily on Asian influence. 

    You wouldn’t need to be able to read the characters to at least recognise the brand. With that in mind it would work in markets around the world. 

    All of that is makes for a really challenging design brief and the work done on the Kin logo is very impressive. 

    I’d go as far as to say that the Kin brand and products are unworthy of the Kin logo design 

    Microsoft Kin logo

    There is a noticeable stylistic similarity to the S|Double Studio logo from Shawn Stussy’s new clothing label.

    s|double

    And the S|Double logo reminds me of Asian seal designs used to sign documents and mark the ownership of artworks. 

    seal

    This is roughly what my given name would look like on a seal or chop in Chinese characters. 

    There is also a resemblance to Chinese design motifs in Chinese new year and wedding decorations. The one that immediately comes to mind for me is the double happiness character set that is incorporated into designs. 

    Such motifs are used in a repeated pattern across fabric weave, interior design prints and carvings. There is a certain irony in that the Kin logo: one of the most modern of graphic design assignments going back designs and principles that are millennia old. 

    I am curious to know if the Kin logo harking back to those designs was intentional, based on design research, or if it was happenstance. Both are probable likelihoods for this project. 

  • Palm troubles

    First of all some disclosure: I worked on the Palm account at my agency some ten years ago now and got to work with some of the smartest people in mobile device technology, notably the company’s chief competitive officer Michael Mace as an occasional media spokesperson back when his pictures had him with a Magnum PI-style moustache.

    At the time I worked on the account the company was riding high on the PDA boom, but the seeds of its current problems were sown back then.

    Even after working on the Palm account, I was a Palm customer. I had a Palm Vx which I used to death (quite literally) and spent a fortune on accessories including a Rhinoskin titanium slider hard case and a ThinkOutside portable keyboard. After that  I had a number of other Palm devices: a m515, a Tungsten3, a Treo 600 and a Treo 650.

    The last device left such a bad taste in my mouth because of an address book full of duplicates and corrupted data that I migrated to Nokia E-series devices, which provided a superior experience to the Treo 650 despite serious software stability issues.

    The company has been buffeted by critics over the years, many of them well-meaning.

    With the arrival of Jon Rubenstein to give it flare and product smarts and a matching injection of new money into the company, there was every chance that Palm could reinvent itself.

    Unfortunately it didn’t, and the company is now reaping the fruits of mediocre labours.

    To be honest the signs where there that the new product line wasn’t great and I wasn’t surprised:

    The communications-related signs are particularly damning as they indicate that at least some insiders at the company may have realised that the product despite the hoopla was not ready for primetime.

    Palm Pre

    The second good sign of a bad device is when after a decent amount of time virtually no one that you know owns one. I only know one person: the fashion-forward Rise co-founder Paul Allen; however on this occasion the Palm Pre has turned out not to be a fashion classic and more like a gadget equivalent of MC Hammer’s parachute pants.

    Interestingly, in his letter to Palm employees, Rubenstein puts much of the weight of corrective action on working short-term tactics with carrier partners to create demand push with no clue about what execution improvements in terms of product redesigns and quality improvements (if any) would be coming to shore up a poor customer experience. More gadget related content can be found here.

  • The Playful World by Mark Pesce

    The Playful World was written by Mark Pesce. Pesce was an early pioneer of the web. He was instrumental in bringing a 3d interface to the web through a standard called VRML. This was an early attempt to provide the kind of immersive ‘matrix’ experience envisaged by the likes of William Gibson and Neal Stephenson in cyberpunk literature. Were a digital double of the real world (or more likely a more attenuated digital version) provides for interactions in the virtual realm.

    Since then he has been applying his ingenuity and enterprise to academia  and futurism for the past decade and a half.

    The Playful World was written about a decade ago, yet was very prescient of today’s cutting-edge web and related technology trends:

    • Augmented web – the web provided a data overlay of the real world with applications like locative digital art and turn by turn directions for navigation. Putting this inside glasses rather than on a screen would mirror some of the human computer interaction work done since the 1960s for fighter pilots.
    • The web of things – items become intrinsically linked to the web with all the security risks that entails as well.
    • Custom manufacturing – smaller production runs, intellectual property becomes more important than manufacturing scale. Globalisation gets transformed. Waste could be reduced, though that would be affected by the kind of prototyping one goes through printing items in 3D printing from an existing file.
    • Gaming – lean forward entertainment becomes more immersive, though a lot of the growth in gaming has already happened

    Pesce knits his experiences together into an engaging narrative that would brings all of it together for the reader. If you want to get where things are going I recommend you have a read of Pesce’s book. You can find more book reviews here. More related content here.