Crafting Successful Products: A Designer’s Recipe for Innovation

Crafting Successful Products: A Designer’s Recipe for Innovation

by | Jun 20, 2021 | Blog, Product Design, UX

My recipe rant

Way back in the days that Google maps did not exist, (I am purposely discounting any other technology that ‘promises’ to help you get where you want to go) there was the TomTom. Maybe you heard of it, maybe you haven’t – in short, it was a device that you would stick to the front window of your car and it would guide you where you want to go.
Eventually the TomTom got pretty good at guiding you to your destination but in the beginning it suffered from bugs.

I remember one time when I was finding my way in Belgium and instead of telling me to turn right at the next exit, the device told me that I had missed the exit after I had passed it. That was unpleasant. I had to drive for aeons to get back on track. Another time in Spain the TomTom guided us through rice fields (I kid you not) only to find ourselves stuck in a dead-end web of sandy roads. That too was an unpleasant experience.

The same thing often occurs when I follow a cooking recipe which in my mind works like this:

I have been cooking every day for the last couple of months now and what I find with most recipes is that the amount of time that is needed to prepare the meal is mostly wrong (or at least not right for my kitchen appliances) or that the ingredients are only available in mainland China and that you should have ordered them far in advance. What I do in those cases is find an alternative recipe. Hands-down the most dreadful thing that i get when I follow a cookbook recipe for the first time is that sentence at the end of the recipe saying: “Now put in the fridge for 24 hours and cook the next day”. What?! I have guests tonight!

When I see a recipe I like, I begin making the meal in the order in which it is written down (doesn’t everybody?). So at the start of the recipe it would say first make this, then prepare that, put that to a boil until you place all the ingredients on a plate.

I still love his cooking, but are there no UX people around when he writes his books? people who can observe people while they cook and tell him all the different kinds of manners there are that people approach cooking a recipe for the first time

Nothing is new except what has been forgotten

Nothing is new except what has been forgotten

by | Jun 20, 2021 | Product Design, UX Research

Consider the image above. The left image is that of an Assyrian who lived 3000 years ago. He uses an inflated animal skin to breathe underwater. The image on the right is that of a scuba diver who is breathing under water through a tube that is connected to a metal device that contains compressed air. It’s nothing new.. it just took 3000 years to improve the idea from what is was then to what it is now.

Did you know that before the 1940s blue was a colour that was mostly worn with girls and pink was worn by boys in the United States, the United Kingdom and some other European countries?

According to Jo B. Paoletti, a professor at the University of Maryland and author of Pink and Blue: Telling the Boys from the Girls in America, this is because pink was associated with red which was considered a strong, masculine colour and blue was considered a soft, delicate colour that was reserved for girls. Obviously, gender issues were not on anyone’s agenda back in the 19th century and almost all children wore white.

So when did it change? What happened that pink is now linked to girls and blue to boys?

The practice of linking pink with girls and blue with boys started taking shape in the 1940s and became stronger over the next few years. This change happened because of a mix of reasons, like marketing tactics, cultural influences, and social expectations. Recently, there’s been a push against these old gender stereotypes, including the idea that certain colors are meant for specific genders. More and more people are calling for children’s clothes, toys, and products to be gender-neutral, challenging the traditional views on color and gender.

And I am willing to bet you, that that’s nothing new either.

Something that strikes us as new and different today is often just forgotten by the current generation and “rediscovered”. This is true for fashion, music and movies and for other things as well such as politics or entire movements.

“Nothing is new except what’s been forgotten”

— Rose Bertin. Dressmaker to Queen Marie Antoinette

How I survived a heart-stopping near-death experience on a night dive

How I survived a heart-stopping near-death experience on a night dive

by | Jun 12, 2021 | Blog, Product Design

My Near-death experience

A few decades ago, when I was in my 20’s, I lived in the southern tip of the country. I had successfully passed my exams (Art & Media Technology) and as a present, to myself, I took up diving. We mostly practised in a public swimming pool. On occasion, however, we practised in the wild in one of the surrounding lakes.

Then one day it happened.

For your one-star licence, the requirement is that you swim underwater blind (with a black piece of plastic in your goggles). We went outside to one of the lakes to make it more realistic. (This exercise is to test how well you do in murky waters.)

The distance wasn’t all that great, but being unable to see and being underwater does something to a person. One starts to imagine all kinds of things. Sharks, Piranhas, THE LOCH NESS MONSTER.

I think that I couldn’t have been in the water for more than 2 minutes when I felt ‘a force’ pulling me back by my right leg. Ever so slightly at first. I thought I was imagining things. But then it happened again, and again. Oh my goodness! SOMETHING CREEPY WAS NIBBLING AT MY LEG!

I swam to the other side of the lake as fast as I could while that ‘thing’ kept on biting at me. It was obviously looking for the right time to bite my leg off. My heart was racing like crazy and I swam like there was no tomorrow.

As I catapulted out of the water like a penguin on Antarctic ice, I quickly pulled off my flipper and goggles to fend off ‘the monster’. And then I saw it.

It was a fish. A small fish that was still attached to a fishing hook and line. The line had caught my flipper. The poor thing was a big as the palm of my hand and probably fighting for its life.

My team looked at me wide-eyed unable to appreciate my near-death experience.

“You okay?” the instructor asked

“su..sure,” I said panting heavily

I passed that exam also, but to this day it is still the scariest 60 seconds of my life.