Observations by Jonar Nader » Design

Disconnected designers

Jonar Nader — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 17:06:49 +0000

Walking through Auckland’s newly refurbished airport, I spotted design elements that no experienced designer would have made. In ‘How to Lose Friends and Infuriate People’, I noted that the role of the manager is to pre-empt. This means to ‘think ahead’ about possible consequences, while considering the environment. Let us start with this store signage for a Japanese restaurant. It looks good enough. I took the photo in anticipation of the inevitable. A few weeks later, upon my return, I was able to take the second photo which I had foreseen in my mind. A designer cannot look at signage in isolation. Designers are taught to create things that are ‘fit for purpose’. Obviously, this alone is not good enough. A designer must consider the environment. Where is the restaurant? What kind of traffic will it see? What are the people like? It’s not as if the designers had never seen an airport, or that Auckland’s airport is completely new. It’s been operational long enough for the designers to know that travellers at airports use trollies, which are a common feature of all airports. We also know that airports are high-traffic areas, here crowds come and go in quick bursts. We also know that there is always a percentage of travellers who are in a rush. If we combine these elements together, we would be able to pre-empt that the signage for this Japanese restaurant would be damaged because it is protruding and just asking for trouble.

Also at Auckland Airport was Wishbone’s sandwich bar that emerged as part of the new refurbishment. It looks neat and inviting. I was instantly attracted to the mirrored column. I could not understand why someone would use glass in a high-traffic environment. Sure enough, someone had already chipped the glass mirror. This explained why there was a stand next to the column. It’s not an ideal place to position the stand. However, the store manager needed it as a protective barrier. The stand kept people away from the chipped glass, which was now even more of a risk for children who might cut themselves. Once again, the interior designers were disconnected. I took this photo and waited, wondering what I would see a few weeks later upon my return, knowing that something had to be done. I was expecting to see wood panelling.

Not only did the designers ignore the surroundings, but now the managers had ignored the consequences. Left unattended, and with neither the environment nor the materials changing, the inevitable would and did happen. Here we see that several weeks later, the mirror went from being chipped to being broken. I am looking forward to my next trip to see what the next phase of this stupidity will be.

Why designers must annoy people

Jonar Nader — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 02:28:01 +0000

I annoy people because I ask a lot of questions. And I receive no thanks for it. Only at the end of any assignment would people realise the importance of asking a lot of questions. I grant you that it is annoying, because it makes people wonder whether or not you trust them.
This photo is a perfect example of what can happen when people just follow a simple instruction. Someone must have said to a designer, ‘Go make a massive image for me. Design something with our phone and web details that we can use as a billboard.’ And that’s exactly what the designer did. A nice large design that did not suit the environment. Had the designer asked to see the location, or to see photos of where the billboard was going to go, the designer might have done a better job. The tenants did not fancy living in the dark. They needed sunlight and fresh air. It gets pretty hot on the top floor above a takeaway food shop whose speciality is fried Asian food. You might know the song, ‘Climb every mountain’, from ‘The Sound of music’. I have words to that tune that go along the lines of ‘Ask every question’. But that just annoys people.

Google lacks innovation

Jonar Nader — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 09:14:25 +0000

Google is a story that inspires fairy tales. Its market capitalisation exceeds US$181 billion. But is it an innovative company? I think not. Ask a room full of people to name innovative companies, and the names Apple and Google always come up. But both can do better.

If you had purchased Google shares in August 2004, you would have paid $100 per share. Two years later, they reached $285. In January 2008 they peaked at $692 and fell to $286 by December 2008. By December 2009, they hovered around $594. But is Google and innovative company?

With Gross Profit reaching $13 billion, the company has a one-line statement that says, ‘Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful’. Regardless, I wonder about the company’s attention to detail.

Google is the envy of every global corporation. But I am unhappy about many of its services… from a user’s point of view. Opps, sorry, does a user’s point of view matter? Maybe not. That’s what trips me up every time. As a technologist, management consultant, and social observer, I put my foot in it when I forget that life is all about the dollar. So long as a company is making lots of dosh, then nothing else matters. Silly me.

Small things point to big things. Google is massive and brilliant. But the only relationship I have with Google is similar to most people’s relationship: it starts at the home page. This is the front door to Google. I could post many criticisms about Google, but that is not the objective. I am merely showing how a company with everything going for it, can be blinded by success, to such a degree, that its most basic business is neglected. Here is an example.

Go to Google.com and go to the ‘Images’ section and search for ‘trees’ or any term you like. Then click ‘Next’ while keeping an eye on the photos on offer. Keep clicking next while searching for a tree that takes your fancy. You will soon realise how frustrating it is to use this ‘Next’ feature because the hyperlink keeps jumping about, away from your mouse’s cursor. So you have to constantly move your eyes away from the task at hand to reposition the cursor on the ‘Next’ button.

Search for any image and notice how the 'Next' button keeps jumping about.

This aspect drives me mad. In the scheme of things, with people starving and children suffering, what does it matter. However, as a management consultant, I am often asked to assist corporations with their innovation and growth. CEOs and Boards often lumber me with heaps of data. I certainly study all the data, but not at first. I would rather observe an organisation from a different angle. The truth of a company’s function and functionality speaks louder than numbers in a spreadsheet.

I took a screen-shot of the pages that Google returned while I was searching for trees, and I overlaid them. You can see how the Google bar and the Next arrows keep jumping all over the place. In itself, this is no big deal. As a reflection on the company and its attention to detail, this anomaly speaks volumes. It shows me that Google staff do not use their own search engine. If they do, they have not noticed, which makes me wonder what else they had not noticed about their company. If they had noticed, why has it taken so long for anyone to do anything about it? Could it be that no-one cares, or the bureaucracy is so bad that those who care cannot tell those with authority. Who am I to know? That is what a consulting task must first uncover: the truth behind why things are the way they are.

In this day and age, it is incomprehensible that Google has not fixed this most simple problem whereby the user has to keep chasing the 'Next' button with the cursor. How frustrating.

Whatever the reason, Google has been remiss, and this worries me about a company. Is everyone over-worked and too busy? Who knows? But I do know that this comes down to the front line. I am not complaining about the colour of their wall or the state of their carpet. This is the fundamental business of Google at the heart of its mission statement.

When designers don’t think ahead

Jonar Nader — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 15:07:06 +0000

Good performers always envisage the next line. Chess players must contemplate the next move. Karate experts must anticipate the next strike. Why are designers unable to think ahead? As I have described in my book, ‘How to Lose Friends and Infuriate People’, managers must be pre-emptive. This means ‘to think and plan ahead of the game’. Here is a perfect example of managers and designers not thinking ahead. The new housing units in Parramatta are part of a massive complex. The sails act as sun shades. Unfortunately, they have had to be repaired many times over. Sadly, tenants on the upper levels flick their cigarettes without giving any thought to litter, the neighbours below, or the fire hazards. A constant reminder is visible on the sails. If you look closely, you can see the hundreds of burn marks. Every few months, the sails are visited by a repairer who fuses patches to plug the holes which let in the rain.

DNA tests ought to be conducted to work out who owns each of those cigarette butts, and the existing $200 fines ought to be levelled at the litter bugs. However, one wonders if the designers had thought for one moment about the synthetic material that they ordered for these sails. Did they think this through? Did any of the design-meetings discuss this problem? Just as well the jolly material is not prone to instant combustion. Then again, maybe they ought to have been so that the matter is escalated and eliminated. It seems that only massively dramatic situations command attention. Smaller matters are tolerated for years on end.

Oh well, one more thing for the strata managers to discuss each month, and one more levy for the owners.

Every sail is damaged. The blackened sections are where a repairer had sewn patches to plug the holes.

Here you can see two cigarettes that had not yet been blown away by the wind.

Tenants on the ground floor find the unrepaired holes annoying. You can see right through the sail because these holes are yet to be patched up.

Brilliant design, hopeless execution

Jonar Nader — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 06:10:21 +0000

The new Singapore Airlines A380 is an engineering marvel. Sadly, despite boasting that it ‘offers, by far, the most spacious Business Class seat in the world’, it seems that the designers were not travellers. Either that, or they are not good observers of human nature.

I flew on this craft and found the seat to be one of the most uncomfortable ever. It was the widest ever, with excellent entertainment and superb dining. The staff were exceptional, and the airport club was spotless and inviting. Everything was brilliant, except for the core of the activity. The core is the flight. Everything except the flight was grand. The seat was back-breaking and frustrating. Here’s a lesson for designers and teachers and anyone who offers a service or who designs a product: learn the ways of humans.

If we lined-up a range of seats from competing airlines, and laid them out for people to test, no doubt people would vote the Singapore A380 as one of the best. However, that is not the way that travellers experience an airline’s seat. They are ushered on board and told to sit up, belt up, and wait until the captain permits them to move about the cabin. So, to unwind, people will put their feet up, then they will watch a movie, and enjoy the fine dining. After that, they will slowly ease into good music or do some work and take some notes.

This passenger was seated in front of me. He had dinner and watched a movie. He then slowly, ever so slowly, lost his energy and could not be bothered opening up his seat. The effort would have been too great. So here he is, sleeping in the most awkward position. This is what happens when designers have no idea how people function. All that money spent to secure his comfort in Business Class was wasted.

Slowly, very slowly, people will begin to tire. So they recline, and shift, and take their shoes off and lean back. Notice how all this is slow. This means that people do not decide to sleep, they slowly droop into a slumber. With this in mind, the designers of the A380 have failed, completely. It was my worst flight ever. Humans are lazy. And they become lazier, the more lazy they feel. We procrastinate. We put things off.

This was the passenger seated behind me. This is Business Class on what Singapore Airlines calls, 'The most comfortable, spacious and quiet aircraft to ever take to the skies, the Singapore Airlines A380 brings you travel in a new light.' I beg to differ. This man, along with many others on my flight, including yours truly, suffered for hours as human nature kicked-in... we are too darn lazy to get up to prepare the bed. We want to be able to press a button. Alas, that was not an option on this award-winning flight. Who were the judges who bestowed all these awards?

A designer needs to understand the flow. First we sit, then we recline. Sadly, this seat, the world’s most spacious, has very limited recline. In fact, the recline of this seat is almost that of an average economy class. And what makes it worse is that the seat is wide – far too wide, which means that it offers no bucket support. One needs very many pillows and cushions to feel supported. So we had no decent recline, and no body support. The lazy, tired traveller will procrastinate and just put up with it, thinking that the flat bed experience will assist in due course, but here’s the next bad bit: the flat bed is not something that a passenger can activate while seated. One has to get out of the seat, remove all magazines and papers, clear the whole area, and press and lift and move and tug and tuck and push and fold and click and then furnish the bed. Way too many moves. On a scale of fuss, it’s easy if you were asked to do it at the experimentation lab. Not so bad if you were standing there to test the seat. But when you are an exhausted traveller who had been in the seat for three hours, you feel listless and sleepy, and in no mood to stand up and fuss about. So you sit there, aching and tossing and turning and wondering how the world’s latest engineering marvel can be such a dud.

As a Qantas frequent flyer, I am on the Qantas Advisory Panel. Qantas had sent out a questionnaire about the various designs of Business Class seats of various airlines. This is what I rated the A380 Business Class seat: Terrible!

We need airport-friendly shoes

Jonar Nader — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 02:31:03 +0000

The things we take for granted. Like when buying shoes. Not only must we think about comfort, but also about airport. Every days bring a new learning experience. I came across these shoes made by Betts. They we so comfortable and suitable for travel, that I ordered two pairs. Not for a single moment did I stop to think about airport security. The labels spoke of the inner and outer linings, and nowhere had it mentioned the inclusion of metallic objects.

I have been catching flights for decades. The other day, while going through normal security checks, I beeped. I emptied my pockets, removed my belt, and still I beeped. It was my new shoes. They look so innocent, slim, and unassuming. What an inconvenience. If I had known about the metal bar embedded inside the shoe, I would not have purchased them.

When buying glassware, we are now told about them being ‘microwave safe’. Watches are sold on the basis of them being water resistant. Everything seems to boast about something or other. One can no longer purchase plain bread. It must be labelled and categorised in so many different ways. Yet, with airport security being what it is the world over, why have manufacturers not started to make shoes for travellers?

I hereby call for the airport-friendly shoe!

When technologies clash

Jonar Nader — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 01:44:35 +0000

Tea dates back further than 2700 BC. The bag as introduced in 1904. The Lipton Tea Company was formed in 1915. The microwave oven was commercially developed in 1945 and sold in larger quantities in 1965. We can say that manufacturers of the world’s most popular drink have had over forty years to twig to the idea that modern folk boil water in a mug, using a microwave oven. Unfortunately, many tea bags are not suitable for microwave ovens because manufacturers are still using two small metal staples to attach the string to the bag. As you know, metal must never be placed inside microwave ovens due to the dangerous sparks that would result.

Indeed, there are people who like their tea strong. Others, the lazy ones or those in a hurry, would prefer to place the sugar, water, and tea bag in a mug, at the same time, and start the boiling process. Tea is connected to boiling water, which is connected to microwave ovens. Given this inseparable link, I wonder why Lipton, Bushells, and Twinings still use staples?

On the other hand, T2 and Pickwicks tea bags have managed to solve the problem using ingenious designs.