Designs Among Us! — A Mini Project
My personal opinions regarding Designs
Project Overview
Showcasing some good designs and some not so good designs with their problems and solutions which are found around us.
What is Design?
Every subject as well as object can be considered a design which is also defines as any imagination which is brought down to paper, digitally or even three dimensionally.
Mr. Norman, an American researcher, professor and author who is best known for his books on design especially “The Design of Everyday Things” where he introduces design from four aspects i.e.
1. How do products interact with users
2. How do people do things
3. Design thinking
4. Design and Business
Keeping these in mind including my opinions I have curated a list for some good and some not so good designs.
Good Design
So the question arises what is a good design? Object designs which fulfil the needs of a user without any ifs and buts, are innovative, honest, long lasting, environmental friendly, designs which bring business to the organisation and the list goes on. Listing a few good design examples below:
a. YONO SBI
Official application for State Bank of India. The above image is the home screen where we enter the pin or password, the numeric are randomly arranged which makes the account even more secure which means any person standing near you won’t be able to read your finger movements hence cannot judge what your pin or password is.
b. AMAZON
An e-commerce website and application owned by Jeff Bezos has this clear way of indicating small things which gives user a better design experience than any e-commerce website.
Listing reasons below:
1. Image is clearly displayed.
2. Discounts or savings are clearly mentioned in INR which makes it easy for the user to count his savings.
3. The interface is light and sober.
c. Rat Catcher
Old and simple technique object but designed in a very efficient way which is been used for many years now in most of the houses. Why a good design? The object is cheap and does not harm the animal keeping the house safe. A piece of food is kept inside attached to a iron thread as the rat even tries to eat the door in the front gets shut which results in trapping of the rat no matter what the size is.
d. Hand Massager
A dolphin shaped object used to massage body parts and is an electronic. As we connect it to the power source it starts working immediately and comes with different attachments for different body parts. The main purpose is to relax muscles and improves blood flow. Reasons for a good design:
- Portable i.e. can be carried with us wherever necessary.
- Self massager i.e. you don’t need a second person to do the job.
- Requires less electricity in comparison to other body massagers.
- Multi speed
- Powerful and effective
e. Hair Band
A metallic tool used to hold hair from coming on the face depending on the length. The zig zag wave design of the object differentiates in terms of usability, comfort and fully solves the purpose unlike other cloth hair bands which eventually gets loose on continuous usage.
Bad Design
Now what is a bad design? Object designs which do not fulfil the needs of a user, aren’t solving the problem as they are supposed to, not even long lasting, designs which bring business to the organisation but there is not much profit while they are in the market. Listing a few not so good design examples below:
a. Clipboard
It is a thin cardboard with a clip on top used to hold paper, basically meant to write without taking the other hand in use i.e. for holding the paper for flawless writing.
Problem: The size of the clip is too big which blocks the page from top which leads to the wastage of the page and lacks symmetry.
Solution: The size of the clip can be reduced to 30% which would also eventually solve the purpose of holding papers and writing freely.
b. VGA Port
VGA stands fro Video Graphics Array which is used for providing video output from any PC, laptop to a video display for example a television, monitor, and projector. VGA connector contains two pins which helps it to connect to the port and hold it tight.
Problems: Holder of the pins isn’t present which makes the cable loose and if shaken by mistake the video gets disturbed.
Solution: Two pin holders should be provided in order o tighten them as shown in the figure below.
c. USB Port
Universal Serial Bus establishes communication, connection and power supply between computers and accessories. It is the oldest port ever present in a PC or laptop which helps in connecting accessories like pen drive, card readers, compact drives, hard disks etc.
Problem: Now a days the USB3.0 port is missing in systems as there is a trend of getting slimmer and so are laptops following the trend but then there should be a room for at least one USB3.0 port which could make a lot of things easier for all of us. For just USB3.0 port we have to spend extra 5k–6k which isn't at all fair from a customers point of view.
Solution: If we increase the size of the base of any laptop by .2 centimetres it would hardly make any difference and the purpose would be solved eventually saving some money.
d. iPhone
Line of smartphones launched and designed by Apple in early 2007. Successfully selling phones since then, they removed their 3.5mm jack from the phone. As people wanted some thing to hear so they launched EarPods into the market which made too much of money for the company. In 2020 they launched mag safe chargers which were nothing but just wireless chargers. This is the first time a major smartphone manufacturer has released a phone without a charger saying that they want to reduce carbon foot print. There are rumours evolving that apple will discard the charging jack just like they did to the 3.5mm jack.
These design aspects might help in getting in my shoes of how I think about designs around me and I would like to hear your thoughts, your opinions regarding objects around you.
