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User Experience Matters: What EntrepreneursCan Learn From "Objectified"

By Om Malik Jan. 3, 2010, 9:38pm PDT 14 Comments

13

Like 79 people like this.

Braun's Rams influenced Apple's Ive. Photocourtesy of Gizmodo

A few months ago, my friend Christian Lindholm, partner at Fjord, a convergence design agency, and

father of the Series 60 interface (at Nokia) stopped by for one of our quarterly idea sessions. Our

conversation eventually veered towards a topic thats near and dear to both of us: design. I spend an

inordinate amount of time contemplating design and its eventual impact on products and

User Experience Matters: What Entrepreneurs Can Learn From "Objectified": Tech News

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10 Rules of Good Design by Dieter Rams

1. Good design should be innovative

2. Good design should make a product useful

3. Good design is aesthetic design

4. Good design will make a product

understandable

5. Good design is honest

6. Good design is unobtrusive

7. Good design is long lived

8. Good design is consistent in every details

9. Good design should be environmentally

friendly

10. Good design is as little design as possible

growing respect for HTC and what its doing with its Sense technology.)

Explaining Apples design philosophy behind MacBook Air, Ive told the filmmaker:

We push ourselves to ask, can we do the job of those six parts with just one? One part

that provides so much functionality that it enables one product. It wasnt design of the

physical thing, but it was figuring out the process. It is about whats important and whats

not important.

It is important to remember things that are important and not important and then

removing things that are vying for your attention.

Similarly, all features have to have a reason, Ive explained. He gave the example of the indicator light

on a MacBook which simply goes away when the laptop is in use.

Indicator has a value when it is indicating. So you spend a lot of time making things

less obvious, less conspicuous. When indicator comes on, it is not a feature. It is a calm

and considered solution and focus on how you are going to use it.

But not everyone thinks like that. What bothers me

today is the arbitrariness and thoughtlessness with

which many things are produced and brought to

market, not only in the sector of consumer goods, but

also in architecture and advertising, Rams said in the

film. We have too many unnecessary things

everywhere. I completely agree. And when the annual

Consumer Electronics Show (CES) kicks off later this

week in Las Vegas, were going to see a gaudy display

of these excesses. The good news is that many of these

will never see the light of the day.

Twitter, Hulu, Samsung,

Nielsen, Vevo, Adobe and more at NewTeeVee Live. Two weeks left to register! Learn more

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Dieter Rams, Jonathan Ive, Objectified

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ReplyAbhishekSunday, January 3 2010

Most companies (including web startups), he said, are looking to wow with their products,

when in reality what they should be looking for is an of course reaction from their users.

I am going to remember this for my life time. Thanks Om for posting this.

1.

Reply

Balakumar MuthuMonday, January 4 2010

Good design is as little design as possible thats my fav.

Reply

SjorsTuesday, January 5 2010

So you disagree with Apples design strategy to spend months and months designing

every very little minuscule of their products and would encourage them to just smack

some random bits and pieces together? Dont confuse minimalism with minimal design

Jeff DickeyTuesday, January 5 2010

Exactly. Getting all the unnecessary stuff out of a design, and the result properly

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organized, is hard workand not to be taken lightly.

Reply

ronaldMonday, January 4 2010

One can always see a design by Data (Microsoft, Google) and a design by abstraction.

Design by data leads to clutter, it always goes like this. But the data show that the user

wants/expects it. Ignoring the fact that a million users have a million different ideas of what

they want or need and any combination thereof.

Design by abstraction leads to a clear understanding what something should do and where the

boundaries are what it should not do. Problem is, there is no safety net to point to, like in data

(where one can proof and disproof almost anything). One really has to think it through, no short

cuts.

3.

Reply

AnonymousMonday, January 4 2010

As Seth Godin says, where is the Banana ?

4.

Reply

Adam CovatiMonday, January 4 2010

Great article. I try to think quite a bit about design because I feel it can be quite a differentiator.

Often times when creating a new page or feature for a site I have to keep bringing everyone

back to the question Why are people at this page? We cant be distracted by adding in flashy

toys, we need to answer the key question as simply and elegantly as possible.

Its very hard to keep simple things simple.

Sounds like its time to move Objectified to the top of my netflix queue.

5.

Reply

heathMonday, January 4 2010

Very nice post thank you.

Id seen Helvetica some months ago, and had been feeling nerdy ever since for rating it 5 stars

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without being able to recommend it to anyone (friends could care less about typography). Will

have to watch Objectified.

Reply

farisMonday, January 4 2010

nice!

good design bestows an affordance on to products

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affordance

FX

ps Christian is a legend! Say hi.

7.

Reply

Jeff DickeyMonday, January 4 2010

A brilliant of course piece. I too will remember the what they should be looking for is an

of course reaction from their users quote. I see it as a nice restatement of Saint-Exupry,

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to

take away. I think most new! things designers nowadays, especially American ones, tend to

either forget or ridicule that.

8.

Reply

Navaneetha KrishnanMonday, January 4 2010

Good article, the eleventh point in good design is price offordability.Need to have great

products for reasonable pricing with great product.

9.

Reply

Creative ideasMonday, January 4 2010

Nice reading! Thanks

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AlexTuesday, January 5 2010

Im employed at a web and graphic design firm and I agree with the central focus of this article.

We have the same focus with usability ranking as a top priority. When we create websites and

web design applications, usability is a primary consideration. We test the layout and aesthetic

appearance of the site with user testing; our sites always account for user interface web design.

If a site is not usable to real people, the aesthetic appeal and other impressive features areworthless. First and foremost, a website needs to be highly functional.

Reply

Thomas MoffettTuesday, January 5 2010

whenever Steve leaves Apple. I hope Ives gets the job! :)

12.

13 Trackbacks

The World as Will and Representation A product has various attributesJanuary 4,

2010Tracked on

[...] [ From User experience matter] [...]

1.

links for 2010-01-04 Jet GrrlJanuary 4, 2010Tracked on

[...] User Experience Matters: What Entrepreneurs Can Learn From Objectified GigaOM

(tags: design Tech business noshit?) [...]

2.

iA Whats Next in Web Design?January 5, 2010Tracked on

[...] font sizes, accessibility. The more advanced a design, the less it is visible, or, as Apples

Jonathan Ive put it: A lot of what we seem to be doing in a product like that is getting design

out of [...]

3.

The Daily Start-Up: Year-End M&A Surge Offers Promise | Finance BlogJanuary 5,

2010Tracked on

[...] The Of Course Factor Om Malik of tech blog GigaOm explains why many start-ups fail

to succeed with product design: When it comes to customers, theyre more focused on the

wow reaction than the of course factor. Great design means that one look and the end userreacts by knowing what to do with a knob or a button, without as much as even thinking about

it, Malik writes. [...]

4.

Lo que se viene en Diseo Web (Espaol) | unblogged. A blog about nothing. Yeah, nothing

January 5, 2010Tracked on

[...] ms avanzado sea el diseo, menos es visible, o como Johnathan Ive de Apple dice:

5.


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Om Malik on TwitterRSS Feed for Om MalikEmail Om MalikOm Malik

@Iconic88 loud and likely that way for a while i bet

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