Lecture 10-18 post-mortem

I think my reaction to the video on IDEO was: envy.

For me, coming up with ideas for things is sort of like a hobbie, it's idealistic, and to think that people actually do this for a living, it makes me think they're the luckiest people in the world. I have notebooks at home with doodles of things that I think could be designed better. If I hadn't ended up a computer programmer, very likely I would have gone into industrial design.

I find it fun to observe things and to squirrel away any new or interesting devices I find, either from articles, news, places I've traveled. It's all very interesting because people are interesting. And because there are things like 'Thoughtless acts', that make it so that designing things is always a challenge. How do you create a product that can appeal to every one? How do you make one that's smart, every button, every key, every shape and location on an object is important, despite our initial dismissal of them. For example, remotes, you should alway place the channel changer where-ever people will rest their thumbs while handling a tv remote because it is the most often used button. In addition, the power button should always be as far away as possible from often used buttons because no one wants to accidentally turn off the tv. All the buttons should be spaced so there's no double button smashing if someone uses the remote in a haphazard fashion, etc.

When it comes to creating things, if you're going spend all that time, money, effort into making a product, why not just make that extra little step to design it well so that it's user friendly? Because when the user is aware of the fact that you thought about them when designing your product, it is very likely they'll come back to you for future products.

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In other news, I thought we had a group of 3, but then I remember Diana joined the class, so we actually have 4... I was initially thinking about redesigning backpacks, especially for people that carry their computers around with them all the time.

I know that it's only supposed to be about interviewing people and deriving information from their complaints and wishes, but I think my brain already went ahead of myself, so I already started to think about how to redesign it.

Because having a computer in the backpack is important, we have to think about the strength of the frame of the backpack and the inner cushions so that the backpack isn't damaged. I was thinking that maybe the frame of the backpack should be fold-able in some way so that your backpack can stand upright when you're not carrying it (because there's usually concern about letting a backpack flop over if there's a $2,000 piece of equipment inside). In addition, does the foam cushioning most laptop bags use today even help if you accidentally drop a laptop bag? I've seen this sort of rubbery gel material (for keyboard wrist rests) that would work so much better if you lined the inside of backpacks with them.

Additional problem: where do you put the charger? what about recharge-able solar panels?

Other thoughts:
-Should we give the user the option to use the backpack like it's a backpack or a messenger bag? if so, how do we design it so that, it's okay to flip the bag the other way around?
-handles on a backpack are important, but if your bag can be a messenger bag too, how do you deal with the fact that the handle needs to be on the wider part of the bag now?
-multipart/customizable bag? You can attach additional parts to the backpack depending on if you need to carry books, stationary, or food that day. (this was a good idea too for the shopping cart, I think implementing this into the backpack may help.)