Sage with Design

TVs are giant black holes in living rooms. Don’t get me wrong, bigger TVs are the best way to watch a movie. The investment is worth it. I would rather have the big tv. The catch is, on or off, it always dominates the room and there’s no cheap solution.

Writing for 100 days helped me think more clearly and gain confidence. It’s frustrating to lose ideas if you don’t draw or write it down. It’s just as frustrating to spend hours on a single piece of work when it was already fine a few drafts ago. My intention was to change this and change how I thought and felt about myself. When I started this blog my goal was to organize my thoughts and learn more about design. The first day was about gaining farm strength by working at something every day. It needed to be easier to arrive to thoughts. While I posted writings far below my best, it loosened me up a little. The best thing I learned was how much there is that I want to do. That it feels better being a little busier when it’s interesting. It’s valuable to learn how to write like you talk. My next step is to draw like I write. These were my most popular posts from the last 100 days: The instant pot Form follows function 100 involved fans Crisp, clear analysis A maker makes (ducks)

Hockey is larger than life. And the one thing larger than hockey is Wayne Gretzky. He made more goals, assists, points, and hat tricks than anyone in hockey. A hat trick is when a player scores three goals in one game. A “hat trick” though goes back to cricket, almost 200 years ago. The term came into hockey in the 1930s from a newspaper. A Toronto store owner in 1946 handed out free hats for hat tricks as a promotion and the tradition started. But most of the time people throw their own hats. Free hats are rare. The trick is to bring a cheap hat to a hockey game. One you’d be willing to throw, and one that’s aerodynamic.

Complementary colors are color pairs that are opposite to each other on the color wheel. This includes blue and orange, like the sun setting against a blue sky. Analogous colors are adjacent on the color wheel. Think of shades of red, pink, and purple flowers in a bouquet. Color gradients show up in rainbows as different colors that transition to others. We consider colors harmonious because we see it in nature. We absorbed meaning from what nature does on it’s own. Nature doesn’t think about what it’s doing. Nature is nature.

My friends and I all have wasps in the summer. One friend has a pool to handle Midwestern summers. The trouble is that wasps like the pool, too. Every year he spends hundreds of dollars on traps, mothballs and scents. It works but he doesn’t always have the time to keep up with it. One evening he was swimming and a bat brushed right by his ear, eating wasps. He realized that having a bat close by could deter the wasps from his pool. The bat house he bought plus some traps eliminated the problem entirely. My other friend doesn’t live near water. He has a porch that attracts wasps because the wood isn’t finished. Wasps love to burrow in it. Last spring he strapped unscented glue traps every few feet around the porch. The traps killed 50 wasps this year. He keeps dead bodies on the traps to deter their wasp buddies. No scent, only visuals attract them. Wasps still come around but not enough to bother him. My neighborhood lake attracts wasps and all the other bugs. Muggy e...

They lose luster. A hose nozzle left in the sun, snow, and rain all year will corrode because the metal oxidizes. And like all our other products we’ve owned, it will need a replacement before long. The Statue of Liberty’s green patina is an oxidized tarnish. The copper lost electrons to the air and formed a green film layer after 30 years. The thin, oxidized layer is a type of corrosion, but the copper beneath is preserved. Some people force a patina (not rust) on their kitchen knives with vinegar. Since it oxidizes the knife, there’s less chance of it rusting. The patina won’t rub onto food and the knife will be a little stronger. Something that looks old can still play an important role. It may work even better.

But corporations pollute more by far. Most water is not consumed by homes, it’s used for agriculture. Recycling is marginally worth the effort. It can reduce landfill space but it’s expensive, labor intensive, and requires a lot of power. You are better off getting involved in community efforts to change regulation. The pressure shouldn’t be put on the individual. Home recycling will never be enough to fix the problem.

That’s all people have with products. We pick something up to use it and once it’s set down we don’t think about it. People don’t actually want to think about what our products can do for us or what problems they solve like designers want. People want plug and play. When we design for user experience, we’re designing for the few moments someone may use their home appliance or a tool or a vehicle or phone. A good product is a background character. Some background characters shine brighter than others, like Saul Goodman on Breaking Bad. The show wouldn’t be as good without him. And it’s because he has distinct and relatable characteristics, not generic qualities about lawyers.

It isn’t as popular as it once was, but pinball games are getting better as a whole. Games have modern visuals and more ball saves. It’s more approachable to new players. It looks more appealing and most newer games do a better job of guiding the player through the game. Better lighting, a screen to guide you, and familiar themes. It offers better stimulation than video games or tv. And it’s more social by offering better ways to compete with people on scoreboards. It’s the most social single player game that exists today.

One of the best ways to improve everyday design skills is to be precise. Align and place components exactly where they need to be. Ergonomic handles. Margins on a page. Pictures on a wall. When thoughtful detail is shown clear through nuance, not only does it look better, everything else you do becomes believable.

There are free online ai tools that are instrumental in some design processes. Midjourney and Notion are big names right now. Photoshop beta needs to be in the toolbelt, without doubt. For background removal alone, it’s horrifyingly easy to make rapid mockups.

Different questions come with different answers. A good way to come up with new ideas is to ask more questions.

Then the appearance of weight is more important than knowing one thing right now.

They’re full of different mechanics and lights. But that’s not what makes a good pinball machine. A good pinball machine has clear paths, is generous, and has a strong playfield. New mechanisms are fun, but never required to be a crowd favorite. The same is true with difficult and easy games. Because eventually you’re going to lose. What matters is if it’s captivating in the meantime.

“Knocker-uppers” would go door to door to wake up people. They would knock on doors and tap on windows before dawn. Who woke up the knocker-up though, no one knows. Alarms came before alarm clocks. Factory whistles were used to wake up employees. Sometimes a candle clock would be used to melt for 8 hours. Enough for sleep and a lodged nail to fall from the wax and onto a metal pan. But the best sleep doesn’t revolve around work. Ideally, we would follow our circadian rhythms and daylight hours. To wake up from the sun instead of sound. But work starts too early. Waking up to the sun is nice, but alarms have to do for most early risers. The important thing is to sleep in the first place.

There’s so much out there. These are some (of many other) good ones to know about: Adobe Firefly : An obvious one for people who use Adobe products regularly. Use free and high quality text-to-image and generative fill tools. Better Research browser extension : ChatGPT on every website. Ai Valley : Find trending and new Ai tools: Google Search Labs for Chrome : Turn on SGE (Search Generative Experience) for Google search engine Ai responses.

It seems like everyone has one, but few people I know use it often. Yesterday, Instant Brands filed for bankruptcy protection. Their sales are 50% of what they were in 2020. It’s a good product, but there are flaws that hold it back from reaching a wider audience. It’s not as fast as they make you believe. The pressure needs to build up which adds 5 minutes at least. And most people have to take the time to dig the heavy pot out of a cabinet. It’s bulky and it can be confusing which prevents new markets from adopting it. The black top has many hard edges and a bold outline around the interface. It has a strong presence on a countertop, too. Which isn’t a bad thing if you use it all the time. Otherwise, it needs a spacious storage area. There’s a learning curve. There are so many buttons for preset meals, temperature control, pressure control, time, and more. It looks like a lot. And you need special recipes to cook with it. Their recent redesign is a step i...

It’s like digging through a treasure chest. Legos are more than building blocks. Lego’s are bigger than what Legos actually are. People obsess over them from the moment they open the box on their birthday. And you can tell when a box has Legos in it. Off-brand Legos don’t compete. You can tell by how they look, fit, and feel. Good marketing and user experience design know how to play to your senses.

The stop sign shape is a good example. The stop sign is designed to get your attention. Bold lettering and red and white reflective paint is easy to see under heavy weather conditions. They have 8 edges because it reflects urgency better than a sign with fewer edges, like a rectangle. People are trained and conditioned to react instinctively to a stop sign. We all see them regularly. This also means we react to things that remind us of a stop sign, such as the octagon. The shape of ADT or CPI security lawn signs share this shape. They get our attention in a similar fashion. The signs also use white text and some use a similar red. ADT reflects security through the color blue, but CPI looks like it’s stealing from the stop sign design. But it’s within their legal right to use their design. It’s obvious when you see a stolen design. There’s a threshold. If you steal subtly enough from another design, it’s inspiration.

If you shower for 10 minutes, you use about 20 gallons of water. That’s 2 gallons per minute, or 2 gpm. A minute is also about how long it takes for showers to heat up. We know from droughts and conversationists’ spiels that showers use a lot of water and that long showers are bad for your area’s water reserves. Each American city at least has a water tower. And a water tower for a single town holds enough water for a day. It goes quick when it doesn’t rain. If you’ve experienced a drought before, you may have taken a military shower which last 2 or 3 minutes and uses 5 gallons of water. It takes time to get used to, but it’s effective. The bare need is met in that time, but that’s not the usual case for most of us. Most American’s take a 7 to 8 minute long shower, which is 16 gallons of water. As Earth’s climate continues to change, more and more people will be exposed to drought conditions. People will be forced into using less wat...

Modern, clean designs are fun and easy to look at. They’re best for generic hotels and restaurants. But a homey feeling doesn’t share the same aesthetic, it doesn’t try as hard. It’s more natural, more rustic. It embraces aging and imperfections. It feels more relaxing because it’s relatable.

When the iPad was released, it was a joke. Naysayers said it was an expensive, large, novelty iPhone. But it was a huge success the first few weeks. For those few weeks. And then it was a paperweight. The iPad was the joke, SNL made it a joke before the iPad released. It was years later until it was established. I use an iPad every day for research, drawing, and renderings. Technology that changes behavior and meets the right needs will stick around. Time and iteration will prove it.

When the iPad was released, it was a joke. Naysayers said it was an expensive, large, novelty iPhone. But it was a huge success the first few weeks. For those few weeks. And then it was a paperweight. The iPad was the joke like SNL started. It was years later until it was established. I use an iPad every day for research, drawing, and renderings. If it were to break, my process would need to change. The new Apple Vision Pro headset is like the iPad Pro, it’s not the first tablet. It’s just the good one among today’s VR headsets. It won’t be great, though. It will be useful and sometimes communicable, but too alien for most people. Iteration and time sets practicality in stone.

Which is a type of research where information is gathered through observation, interviews, and casual conversations. It’s qualitative research which is not controlled enough to follow the scientific method. User experiences are subjective because everyone’s a little different. We rely on user anecdotes and testimonies to understand how and why people do what they do. As much as possible, anyway. It’s like telling stories at a dinner party that people choose to engage in or not. Anecdotes are insightful when others are in on it.

But it is insightful. A sample size will never represent all audience members with 100% accuracy. Participants in focus groups might fib to be nice, to not look foolish, due to fear of judgement, or to conform with other group members. We put trust into our findings, but it’s never the full picture. We can never fully empathize with another person. But that doesn’t mean that research which is a little wrong isn’t important. It has to be in order to keep everyone on the same page for a project.

A dirty bucket, but most people didn’t use them. Trash in the early 19th century was thrown to the curb on the ground. Growing cities were struggling with systematically keeping streets clean. Paris was littered. People died from disease spread by trash. The modern trashcan was designed by Eugene Poubelle in the late 19th Century. It’s the shiny one made from galvanized steel with grooves to allow for an easier grip and added strength. It was made of metal so people could burn their trash before weekly collections. Ashes of trash are lighter weight than trash, so horses could pull it on wagons. Eventually, horses were replaced by vehicles. Heavy, unburned trash could be hauled somewhere else. People stopped burning their trash in the cities so vehicles could carry them to the country. Plastic trashcans were invented by Charles Harrison in the 1950s. They’re made of high density polyethylene (HDPE). There was a need for trashcans that were quieter and wouldn’t rus...

You’re not prepared how you envisioned. The drawing is not good and the pin up starts in 5 minutes. Maybe your standards are too high, you’re being stretched thin, or there was wasted time on your hands. But if you rush the next drawing you risk creating more errors. Hurry, don’t rush. The drawing may not be good, but it’s probably good enough. So long as it’s communicable, it’s better than the designer who shows up with nothing.

Every time you sketch, wear a shirt, send a message, make a suggestion, or deliver a product, you’re opening yourself up to criticism. It’s easy to say that criticism is a good thing. We rely on others to help us realize and shape our boundaries. Criticism is a tool. But professional criticism comes with consequences. You could lose the company money, damage relationships with people in power, or make a fool of yourself in front of a client. Threats hide behind criticism, it’s no wonder we struggle to speak up. Criticisms are not going away no matter how much you avoid it. What’s worse is when people tack on judgement to it. Fear must be managed and leveraged. Your fear is influenced by what you did when criticism came up last time. Athletes practice to build persistence and resilience. Persistence is your continued effort despite opposition. Resilience is the bounce back. Football players are among the most watched and criticized in sports. Both teams are exhaus...

It’s almost synonymous with the fear of missing out. Neophilia is the love for unfamiliar, innovative, and novel things. It’s a double edged sword because on one hand it can lead to adaptability and resilience. Having to constantly learn new things trains your brain to understand how other new things will work. But on the other hand it’s wasteful. Constantly pumping out new products isn’t sustainable for obvious reasons. It’s bad for the environment and it’s bad for our wallets. People chase trends for social status, rarely for improved function. That’s no mystery, it’s always been that way it’s just worse now. But the problem is not that people do things out of emotional decision making, the problem is that we feed unhealthy cravings. We don’t need to buy products only based on specs. Our brains are exposed to tons of bite-sized content all day so it expects new things. To fight the need for something new means fighting in many separate battles. The system is set up for company profit...

That doesn’t mean boring and minimalist. Louis Sullivan didn’t mean that form should be subservient to function. Each concept plays against one another. Part of the reason we have such a wide variety of cars is to serve to emotional desires of different demographics. It’s every product’s job to be an experience in people’s lives. When boxy cars like the Nissan Cube became a thing, most people wanted nothing to do with them. But that’s okay because companies don’t need most people’s business for every product, they need enough people’s business. Cube owners wanted to stand out through their car and companies sought to fill the market gap. Hard edges do a good job of standing out in a line of smooth cars. The best aerodynamics don’t always matter when your goal is to turn heads. There’s a place for it. The more abstract the function is, the less practical the form will probably be. Maybe that’s not a bad thing depending on the target audience. How a product looks is determined by how it...