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1. Perhaps needless to say, I think having philosophers working in design is just obviously a good idea. But why?

2. What makes a good designer? For my money, most of what good designers do is look at the world (or a certain very small subset of it) and try to figure out how it ought to be. Think about that. An Eames chair is just a claim about how chairs ought to look, feel and so on. And they’re so damn popular among designers because we all, in our considered professional opinions, agree with that claim. “Yup,” we think, “the world is a better place because of that thing. The Eames boys really had something worth saying about how the world ought to be.”

3. With practical philosophers, this is even more explicit. They are concerned entirely with figuring out what it means to claim that the world ought to be some way rather than another, and with figuring out ways to systematize their thinking in order to capture our intuitions and theories about that.

4. So what designers can take for granted (that they’ve got it right about the way the world ought to be), philosophers make explicit. That means there are two ways to be a good designer. Either you’ve just got spot-on intuitions, or else you do some practical philosophy to tune up those intuitions. And I think most of us can use a regular tune-up.

5. I think a lot of bad design is based on lazy, solipsistic thinking on the part of designers. When we all look at something and think that we were better off without it, or we’d be better off with something else, what we’re thinking is that the normative claim the designed object represents is just wrong.

6. Which is all to say that if designers are interested in getting it right systematically, what they’re interested in is scrutinizing their intuitions. You can do that with a lot of different tools: cognitive science, experimental psychology, design theory, and so on. But if you want to get down to the kind of skills that undergird those disciplines, there’s only one place to go.

Derrick Kuzak, Ford’s product development chief, told reporters on Jan. 4 that “we are intent on maintaining leadership in this kind of connectivity. We saw people becoming addicted to connectivity and we saw increased use of these devices inside the car and we connected the dots.”

…Ford said it’s augmenting Sync with the ability to convert incoming texts into spoken words. It will offer drivers 15 standard text responses that can be sent with a voice command. Ford is still researching the ability to convert speech to a text message, said Jim Buczkowski, its director of electronics.

And, in perhaps the best moment of bad design decision rationalization of 2010 so far:

Most of the industry studies show that just driving and just talking is the same,” Kuzak said. “As long as the customer’s eyes are on the road, they are not compromised.

Image via Geekologie

Via Core77

1. Saul Bass: On Making Money vs Quality Work

“It costs every designer money to make things beautiful.”

2. Productivity in 11 Words

Photo by Jayel Aheram

“One thing at a time. Most important thing first. Start now.”

Probably the best thing I read last week.

Via.

3. CreativeMornings Video: Michael Bierut on Clients

Via.

4. Minimalissimo

I can’t believe I missed this until now.

Minimalissimo is a great resource for Minimalist inspirado.

By Christina Agapakis.

Photo by Ann Verlet, via But Does It Float?

Winter, slumbering in the open air, wears on its smiling face a dream… of spring. - Bill Murray, Groundhog Day

Facebook users addicted to social games, and eager to accelerate their progress, often buy “virtual goods” — such as a machine gun for “Mafia Wars” — with “virtual currency”.

One of the ways to acquire this currency is by accepting offers from third-parties, usually companies who agree to give the gamer virtual currency so long as that gamer agrees to try a product or service.

According to The Business Insider, an anti-reform group called “Get Health Reform Right” was recently caught paying gamers virtual currency for their support. Instead of asking the gamers to try a product, “Get Health Reform Right” requires gamers to take a survey, which, upon completion, automatically sends the following email to their Congressional Rep:

“I am concerned a new government plan could cause me to lose the employer coverage I have today. More government bureaucracy will only create more problems, not solve the ones we have.”

While not apparently illegal, this practice is obviously ethically problematic.

A Screenshot of the “Get Health Reform Right” Survey

Disturbing.

I recently had occasion to review a personal classic from Coding Horror, Desktopitis. The plot is basically this. Jeff Atwood calls out some random presenter for his (very) cluttered desktop. To wit:

Here’s Atwood, excerpted:

After the presentation, I ribbed him about his desktop…He said he considers the desktop dead space if it doesn’t have something on it. I think his exact words were “make the desktop work for you”. That’s a unique perspective. It’s more of a portal philosophy. Fill the desktop to the brim with tons of stuff that’s relevant to you, so it’s always at your fingertips.

I realize there’s no right answer. Some people strive for blank, zen-like desktops, and some people fill their desktop with as many icons, gadgets, and gewgaws as they can possibly jam in there. It’s a religious debate…But I still maintain that it’s unhealthy to turn the desktop into an artificial destination. It’s like the Las Vegas strip; no matter how many zany attractions they add, eventually visitors have to come to terms with the fact that they’ve arbitrarily chosen to build those attractions in the middle of a vast, inhospitable desert.

For my money, I just can’t figure out how you’d ever find anything on such a messy desktop. When I’m browsing a directory, I can sort, search and so on. It sort of reminds me of people who just have huge stacks of books and papers on their physical-world desktop, instead of in a (physical) filing system or on shelves. It’s a lot of clutter for what I can only imagine is a marginal-at-best gain in productivity.

That said, it is interesting to consider the perspective of keeping everything I might need right at hand as I review my productivity habits for early-year revision. I don’t think I’m persuaded, but it’s nice to hear a counter-argument from a (presumably) computer-savvy advocate of a (rare) alternate view.

There’s some repetition in the graphic, but it made me look. I’d like to see a list of what’s not censored.