AG023: Design Matters

Design Matters

Good design is all about making something that just works, that does what people want it to do with no fuss and perhaps with a little bit of style. Think about a plain old hard cover book. You buy a book because you want to read it, to get at the information or the story inside. You don't have to turn it on, you don't need a password, you don't even need to read the instructions. To get at the information inside a book you simply start reading and the data flows. Look away and the flow stops. Look back at the page and it starts again. Now that is great design.

Old traditional land line phones worked the same way: You never actually turned them on. To use a traditional phone you simply lifted the handset and the phone turned itself on. You could tell from the dial tone. Again, simply. Again, a great design.

The iPhone doesn't turn itself on automatically, but it is still a great design. The wonderful thing about the iPhone is that it just wants to be that little portable computer that you have with you all the time. But the iPhone doesn't aspire to spreadsheets and complex documents: Instead it simply does the stupid little computing tasks that need to be done. So the iPhone helps you figure out where you are and where the nearest pizza place is. The iPhone is computing in the small, at it is superb at it.

So what is good design? It is doing one thing really well: Be the repository for a certain chunk of information, or the always there voice communications conduit or the little computer that you always have with yout.

Good design also means doing things with a minimum of fuss: Thus, even though your book may contain important information, books don't generally come with locks on them. A lock might keep prying, non-paying eyes out, but it would be a pain in the neck to the actual owner. In the same way, the old phones just worked, they were always there and they were always ready to deliver your voice. And the iPhone fits in your pocket.

The ironic thing about high tech devices like the iPhone is that if they are well designed, they actually make the world a more human place. Or at least they make it easier to find good pizza, which amounts to the same thing.

Our opening theme is Them Say Piano by the 3AM Association. Our closing theme was Since I've Been Loving Your by SComber.

Russ