Four Design Links:
July 8, 2010
Four Design Links is a review of the design- and ethics-related stories we've been reading online this week. This week: the power of the pause, unhealthy 3D, stupid designers and their clients, and Dell's unethical behavior.
1. The Power of the Pause
One for the Less is Better file, Bobulate asks us to consider the effect of pauses within design:
Walter Benjamin reminds us “architecture is experienced habitually in the state of distraction.” So when a structure that’s always been present on your daily walk suddenly becomes an empty lot, your definition of space and flow changes — there is a pause. And the surrounding environment takes a new form.
2. More Evidence that 3D May be Harmful
Revisiting an old story, Slashdot has a few links that suggest 3D television might have adverse affects on people, particularly children.
Sega uncovered serious health risks involved with children consuming 3D and quickly buried the reports, and the project. Unfortunately, the same dangers exist in today's 3D, and the electronics, movie, and gaming industries seem to be ignoring the issue.
3. Stupid Is As Stupid Does
Another client post, this time from Andy Rutledge. I tend to agree with his take; designers should own up to more responsibility for a good or bad client experience:
There’s an easy test for evaluating design professionalism. The quality of your client experiences is directly proportional to the quality of your professionalism. If you have “stupid clients” it’s because you’re behaving stupidly to begin with, for we attract what we project. If you’ll stop being stupid, your clients’ IQs will increase dramatically.
4. Dude, You're Getting a (Broken) Dell
Some bad ethics-related press for Dell. It seems they tried to cover up a hardware problem with some shady behavior and got written up in the NYT:
Documents recently unsealed in a three-year-old lawsuit against Dell show that the company’s employees were actually aware that the computers were likely to break. Still, the employees tried to play down the problem to customers and allowed customers to rely on trouble-prone machines, putting their businesses at risk. Even the firm defending Dell in the lawsuit was affected when Dell balked at fixing 1,000 suspect computers, according to e-mail messages revealed in the dispute.
The broken components had an estimated 97% failure rate, and they're not even going to fix their own lawyers computers? I'll say this: they stayed committed to their own story. To fix the computers would be to admit there was something wrong with them.
| Tagged with: | 3D, Business, Clients, Design Ethics, Four Design Links, Less is Better, Professionalism |
