Four Design Links: April 8, 2010
Four Design Links is a review of the design- and ethics-related stories we've been reading online this week.
1. ‘If you want options, go talk to other people’
We were just talking about this the other day. If a client asks for three options, there’s usually only one the designer feels is the real solution. The other two are often filler.
In the end, the client will cherry-pick bits from all three and combine them into something awful that the designer is forced to build. Ultimately, neither the client nor the designer is happy with the result.
Rand had the right idea. Why mess around?
2. Compromise
The punchline is disturbingly accurate.
3. ISO Standards for Power Symbols
File this under Interface Trivia, but I never made the connection that power buttons (right) are a representation of toggle states for a standard I/O switch. Also, did you know that the crescent moon-shaped Sleep icon is an ISO standard? Word.
4. Building Ethical Drones
The Economist writes about Georgia Tech researchers who are attempting to build drones with ethical programming in order to prevent civilian casualties.
Their plan involves connecting them to global databases, networking them to each other, and giving them learning intelligence. I know it’s practically a cliche, but does this sound like a good idea?
| Tagged with: | Paul Rand |
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Comments on this post
1.
Regarding the power symbol, the NYC Department of Health has suddenly made it more suggestive by putting it on condom wrappers. Talk about input/output :)