honesty

Is honesty always the best policy in design?

Cameron Shelley — Wed, 22 Feb 2017 15:45:49 +0000

Is honesty always the best policy in design? Cameron Shelley Wed, 02/22/2017 - 10:45

Noted industrial designer Dieter Rams insisted that good design is honest. He formulated this idea in the sixth of his Ten Principles of good design:

It does not make a product more innovative, powerful or valuable than it really is. It does not attempt to manipulate the consumer with promises that cannot be kept.

Elsewhere, Rams explains that his beef with dishonest design is that it violates his fundamental conviction that good design means setting the priorities of users always ahead of the priorities of designers. Dishonesty, he thought, was a kind of shortcut that designers use to get users to accept things without engaging in the painstaking effort required for truly good design.

It was with this notion in mind that I read Kaveh Wadell's piece in The Atlantic about the use of deception in some prominent apps. For example, Wadell discovered that a progress bar in the popular tax app TurboTax was fake. That is, it was merely a timer rather than an representation of the time the app took to check for tax deductions:

The animation was fixed. It didn’t appear to be communicating with the site’s servers at all once it began playing—and every TurboTax user saw the same one, which always took the same amount of time to complete.

It was explained to him that the deception was beneficial to users: It was put in place to assure users that TurboTax was working hard, as evidenced by the delay, even when the response from the service was nearly instantaneous. Users did not trust an immediate response: "Wow, that was fast! Did it really search for all possible deductions?"

So construed, the deception could be counted as honest according to Rams's principle. After all, it does not exaggerate the power or value of TurboTax. Neither does it make false promises. All deductions are considered, with or without the superfluous delay.

Nevertheless, the tactic would seem to violate Rams's justification for honesty. Perhaps the deception also serves more selfish ends, as Wadell points out. Making the construction of tax returns seem effortful is in the interests of TurboTax's providers. The harder it seems, the better customers will feel about paying for the service.

Construed in this way, the fake progress bar seems like an example of designers putting their own priorities ahead of their users'.

This case is an interesting one for at least a couple of reasons. First, it illustrates a gap between Dieter Rams's principle of honesty and his motivation for it. Second, it leaves us with the question: Did TurboTax make the right design decision here?

What is a gimmick?

Cameron Shelley — Thu, 19 Jan 2017 16:33:56 +0000

What is a gimmick? Cameron Shelley Thu, 01/19/2017 - 11:33

Posts in this blog sometimes relate to a some design and pose the question, "Is this a gimmick?" A recent example concerned a speaker-battery combination pack for electric bikes.

Of course, the more general question is, "What is a gimmick?" I was reminded of this while reading Meg Miller's FastCompany post about whether or not voice-control for houses is a gimmick. As you may know, you can buy a variety of gadgets that control household systems, like your fridge or thermostat, and have them controlled through a single intermediary, like Siri or Alexa.

This sort of voice control is quite popular at consumer electronics exhibitions. But, of course, such sources of the near future are notorious for hype. So, this is one sense of gimmick: Simply hopping on a marketing bandwagon, without concern for the ultimate appropriateness of the technology.

Miller also notes that people may not want voice control over their fridges, etc. While such features play well with early adopters, perhaps they do not address a real need. This is another sense of gimmick: Solving a problem that people do not have.

Of course, it can be hard to say what a gimmick is in this sense, since what people consider their needs changes with time and circumstances.

Another issue might be that voice control simply over-promises what it can deliver. People who buy this equipment might expect the kind of service provided by the HAL 9000 (without the homicidal tendencies, naturally) but get something less smart and capable. In this sense, a gimmick is a design that is simply dishonest, that is, deceptively appearing to be something that it is not.

Finally, Miller discusses how conversational, computerized houses might eventually work by monitoring their inhabitants in minute detail. Your house might monitor your posture, facial expression, heat signature, etc. in order to anticipate your every want, without even having to speak with you! Perhaps this points to another sense of gimmick: A Trojan Horse. That is, having a chatty toaster may be a further step on the road to ubiquitous and persistent surveillance, with all the challenges that brings.

Of course, a Trojan Horse is a kind of deception but in the sense of its unintended consequences rather than covering up of a poor design effort.

What other senses of gimmick might be appropriately applied to designs?

Should a fitness tracker look like a ring?

Cameron Shelley — Wed, 04 Jan 2017 19:39:20 +0000

Should a fitness tracker look like a ring? Cameron Shelley Wed, 01/04/2017 - 14:39

For our first posting of 2017, consider a new fitness tracking device in the form of a finger ring. The Motiv Ring tracks sleep patterns, heart rate, steps and other activities, all while looking chic. It will officially debut at this year's Consumer Electronics Show and is priced at $199 (USD).

The Ring contains some technological innovations, including optical heart rate tracking and impressive miniaturization.

However, its appeal is due in no small part (excuse the pun) to its style, that is, its ability to pass as a personal adornment. After all, some earlier fitness trackers, in the form of arm or ankle bracelets, can make users appear to be under house arrest—not cool!

While the smallness and visual simplicity of the Ring are appealing, is it dishonest? It could be argued that making the Ring appear like a piece of jewelry is to dodge the problem of what devices in this category should look like.

Of course, since fitness trackers are a new category, the matter of their appropriate appearance is not clear. What should a fitness tracker look like, if not disguised as bling?

Did the designers make the right choice in this matter?

View "Introducing Motiv Ring Activity + Sleep Tracker" on YouTube

Btw, I do not think any of these people actually need a fitness tracker! Either they are there to emphasize the sex appeal of the Motiv Ring or they are insanely insecure.

The dishonest printer

Cameron Shelley — Mon, 07 Nov 2016 14:30:38 +0000

The dishonest printer Cameron Shelley Mon, 11/07/2016 - 09:30

Andy Greenberg at Wired points out an interesting project by one Julian Oliver: A printer that highjacks cell phone traffic. You may have heard of the StingRay, a device used by police (among others) that intercepts cell phone traffic by spoofing a legitimate cell phone tower. Well, Mr. Oliver incorporated a similar device in a standard-issue officer printer.

Why? Oliver was inspired by the common practise of disguising cell phone towers as trees, flagpoles, and other bits of the urban landscape:

For quite some time I’ve had an interest in this bizarre uncanny design practice of disguising cell towers as other things like trees. So I decided to build one into a printer, the most ubiquitous of indoor flora, and have it actually antagonize people’s implicit trust in these technologies.

Once a cell phone connects with the device, it sends the unsuspecting owner some dumb texts and prints weird things for them.

Oliver is not interested in selling copies of this device. The point is rather to undermine people's trust in the appearances of their technology.

Generally, people expect designs to be honest, that is, to be what they appear to be and not to be disguised in some way. So, people expect something that looks like a printer to be a printer and not a tracking device.

As this example suggests, one of the features in favor of honesty in design is that it helps people to get what they expect from a piece of technology. However, being accustomed to honest design may lead people to be overly trusting about what their devices are doing.

One way of addressing this issue would be to make the occasional dishonest design, just to keep everyone on their toes. Thus comes Oliver's spying printer but only as a publicity stunt.

Is Oliver's stunt indeed instructive?

By diskdepot.co.uk, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

An attractive electrical substation?

Cameron Shelley — Mon, 11 Jul 2016 14:24:40 +0000

An attractive electrical substation? Cameron Shelley Mon, 07/11/2016 - 10:24

The Seattle City Light utility is preparing installation of the Denny Street substation. Why is this news? Because the new substation does not look like a substation. Behold!

(Courtesy NBBJ Architects.)

Normally, an electrical substation is somewhat of an urban embarrassment, a useful eyesore shuttered behind a chain-link fence.

However, the new substation is designed to be something of a community destination. The structure will include an off-leash dog track, a 3,800-sq. ft. community space programmed by Seattle Office of Arts and Culture, and a 2,900 sq. ft. learning center.

Aesthetically, the structure will be surrounded by a pedestrian walkway, fenced by inward-sloping walls (to lower its apparent profile), and feature metal and glass cladding that will glow at night. (Would that be a kind of advertisement for the product?)

In our Design & Society class, we talk about the prominence of honesty in modernism: Things are best designed when they do not disguise what they are. This station seems to have wrapped itself in the guise of a community center. Is that dishonest? A good idea? Or, have the architects innovated a new category of structure?