St Jerome had a large space to work in, but apparently he preferred a little, boxy, office. Possibly easier to heat than the vast hall. Italian Architect Giovanni Michelucci lived in a large villa on the hills of Fiesole; but towards the end of his life he had a small room transformed into an all purpose working place, with drawing cabinet and sofa bed, all woodwork, all within reach. There is something about peripersonal space that we may underestimate when we design interiors.

So when your daughter asks for a room, all to herself, maybe what she is looking for is a box. And maybe she means it. She’d like to have a roof and a window. A lamp. And plants above the roof. The footprint of the box is smaller than that of the table that was used for the plants: it actually saved space in the apartment. It’s a little house within the family house. And it sits, triumphantly, in the living room.

Design: Roberto Casati. Box: Zeiss industries (the packaging originally contained a large microscope. It is assembled in minutes thanks to an excellent system of clips. Sturdy plywood, five-layered.) Litho: Antonio Bueno. Child’s furniture: Paolo Biagini, Fiesole.

Cet article Space is the new box, aka: peripersonal space est apparu en premier sur Mangrovia - design collectiv.

On Milan Green Line Metro, november 2016.

The time will come, you have act in an emergency. Quick, what does the panel say? Text is too long, go for the picture! Quick! Pwerful visual language!

Here is what the picture means: top, pull the emergency handle down. Middle, open the case with the door-opening handle (in red). Bottom, pull the doors open. Further bottom, evacuate.

Hey, not so fast. Notice how the shapes in Middle and Bottom are basically the same. The case of the door-opening handle looks almost exactly like the doors to be opened. You are surely entitiled to infer from Midlle that you have to find a way out by pushing the window pane of the door.

Last but not least, all the shapes are air-du-temps, rounded-angles rectangular smartphones. The computer metaphor is so strong, it also affects Top, where the handle system looks like a desktop PC. (Mind it, “handle”: why not use the powerful root, “hand”?)

So this is how I read it.

Top: here begins the story of the computer.

Arrow down, we move from red-screen desktop to red-screen smartphones (Middle).

Arrow down, choose between two cellphones (Bottom: actually, a step back from smartphones).

Further bottom: time to take a ride on a merry-go-round. Mind the inverted step.

Bob Noorda, R.I.P.

Cet article In case of an emergency, look for the red window est apparu en premier sur Mangrovia - design collectiv.

Speedometers come in a range of formats. Some are purely digital; most are analog. Digital speedometers have the cognitive advantage of an immediate and precise reading of the speed, but are poor in signaling accelerations. Analog devices convey an immediate sense of the acceleration, but the actual speed is generally approximate, and must be inferred by interpolation (as it is impossible to pack the whole range of speed values in the relatively small interface.)

Advantages and shortcomings may well be balanced.

But surely there is room for differences in effectiveness within each format. How quick is the retrieval of information in the analog display, how smooth the deployment of inferences? What is my speed right now?

Fiat has chosen to display 20km/h increments in its 500L model speedometer. Now the first tag is at 10km/h. This produces a series of tags that runs: 10, 30, 50, 70… At times the needle hides the tag. What is my speed right now? Intuitively, 90 is followed by 100, in a ten-increment. We need to remember that we are in a twenty-increment, and make thus a slightly longer calculation to find out that we drive at 110km/h.

Cet article Odd Even Numbers est apparu en premier sur Mangrovia - design collectiv.

Last monday I had quite an important meeting: the Career Office gave us an update on new policies for recruiting students: serious matter, requiring clear explaining from the speakers and attention from the audience.
Some fifteen people gathered in a meeting room around a long table.

There was some tension in the room because of some connectivity issues with the speaker’s laptop and the screen: Apparently the presenter could not project her powerpoint slides on the big screen.  I noticed that her slides were all text-only. No images. After few minutes of struggle I stepped in:
– Excuse me, but if those slides are so important that all that you want to tell us is in the slides, why don’t you just send them via email and adjourn the meeting? Otherwise why don’t you just go through your notes and tell us what’s about?

And so she did, with some hesitation at first, she went on explaining the new policies; she spoke, we took note. People made questions and answers were given.
The meeting ended on time with the audience expressing appreciation for the useful explanations. I actually still remember vividly the key points about the new policy — and people who know me, understand that this is significant! In all honesty, it was the perfect meeting: we got all the info we needed and all our questions were answered.

So, the question we should ask is the following: how come that a brilliant presenter, perfectly capable to deliver an effective exposé of the new policy, was contemplating postponing a meeting because of the impossibility of using Powerpoint? Who shared this blatant lie about text-only Powerpoint slides being indispensable for presentations?
In fact the opposite is true. Powerpoint – and Keynote, Prezi, you name it – can be useful only when presenting data which require visualizations and to large crowds, more or less in the way overhead slides were used decades ago.
But in the vast majority of cases, when you are presenting in meeting rooms or medium size classes, a case can be made for deliberately not using such tools.
Imagine: having back all the time spent worrying about slides, typefaces, colors, pictures and cliparts; and just using it to fine tune your speech. Or go to the movies, visit a friend, read a book, or anything.
It is time to say it plainly: presentation softwares are a waste of time. They do more harm than good in communication. Unless you are dealing with images, unless you are not exposing data that command visualization, then you simply do not need slides. Even when you need images, you do not need fancy presentation tools. And surely when your presentation is text only, then there is simply no benefit in asking your audience to follow you in a silent karaoke.

PS: I just found a “Powerpoint tutorial” online that has this advice:

Have you ever been in the middle of a presentation and wanted to gain the audience’s full attention?
In order to get it you may need to turn their eyes away from yourPowerPoint slides! Use the ‘B’ keyboard button to black the screen and you will immediately gain the full attention of your audience!

Black the screen to gain attention, you said?
And I rest my case.

Cet article Next slide please. est apparu en premier sur Mangrovia - design collectiv.

“Imagine a situation in which an elderly woman is able to live independently. She typically shops for her groceries every few days. When she arrives at her apartment door, she puts down the grocery bag, searchs for her key, opens the door, and then bends down to pick up the bag and carries it inside. Today, however, is different. She puts the bag down but can’t bend over far enough to pick it up. Luckily, a neighbor happens by to help her, but the problem persists. If she can’t get her groceries home, she is no longer able to take care of herself. Her adult children, fearing for her diminshed state, help her move to a nursing home.

Now consider this scenario. An elderly woman living independently comes back to her apartment with her groceries. She places the bag on a small shelf outside her door, searcher for her keys, opens the door, and carries in her grocery bag. In the first case, the woman is considered too frail to care for herself, but not in the latter. The only difference is a small piece of wood serving as a shelf”. (Ellen Langer, Counterclockwise. New York, Ballantine Books.)

“The only difference is a small piece of wood.” Chapter 5 of Langer’s book (Reeingineering medical rules) should be mandatory reading in design curricula. Design makes a huge difference in those borderline cases in which a single, microscopic step takes you from being considered as healthy to being treated medically. And the key to design is mindfulness.

Cet article Design is about mindfulness est apparu en premier sur Mangrovia - design collectiv.

A prayer or a tourist exiting from the main doors of Montréal’s Notre Dame cathedral is visually invited to walk down a flight of steps into the piazza. A perspective of posts shows the way to the walker. Only problem, the crossing of Rue St. Jacques, just at the foot of the stairs, with just a faint marking of a difference in function – no fence, no sidewalk, only a change in pavement texture.

Rue St. Jacques is open to the car circulation. A perspective of posts shows the way to the driver. At this time you will not be surprised to discover that the very same posts that create the affordances for the driver are those that determine the affordances for the walker. Using a square grid for the post inevitably creates orthogonal lines. Geometry makes the lines of post talk at cross purposes.

We would like to introduce the important notion of collateral affordance. Posts were meant for drivers – for keeping them on the road, for signaling to them that they ought not to enter the piazza. This is their main affordance. But locating them on a square grid creates a collateral affordance for pedestrians – in this particular context.

Affordances proved an important explanatory tool for psychology, and their theoretical power propagates into the study of design. But we need to modulate the notion – to explore it in more detail. You are bound to afford something. Whichever modification you make to the mesoscopic environment, there will be consequences.

Cet article Collateral affordances est apparu en premier sur Mangrovia - design collectiv.

If you design a new series of objects, you’ll think first of shape – of form. That’s where your design will make a difference, that’s your signature. Design is first and foremost a way to create new forms, or so it seems. Other properties of objects may then be just taken for granted. Size is one of them. Sure enough, you won’t design a 3m wide spoon, or try to market a 50cm long car. The measures of the human body are obvious contraints, and they end up in an invisible background of things you never think about. However, size does matter for other reasons. In particular, size interacts with shape in perspective. And perspective is as ubiquitous a constraint as are bodily measures. Everything is seen from a viewpoint, in perspective.

Consider objects with similar shape and different sizes. Spoons come in different sorts: tablespoons and teaspoons, among others. When you design a cutlery set, you have to modulate the size of spoons according to usage. You may actually decide to criticize the distinction between tablespoon and teaspoon. After all, tradition plays an important role in determining those sizes, and if you may have some difficulties in using a teaspoon for a large bowl of soup, there is nothing wrong in using a tablespoon for the fruit salad or the coffee – it just does not feel nice.

However, if you do think that you need two sizes, you’d better make sure that the difference in size is perceivable. This is what the designer of a particular set did not do.

In this particular set, tablespoon and teaspoon are so close in size, that they are hard to tell from each other in many circustances, even when we hold them in our hands. Size interacts with perspective when sizes are too close.

There is more to usability than just use, and there is more to use than just function. The function of a tablespoon is to help you lifting partly liquid stuff without touching it and delivering it to your mouth, and is accomplished by the graspability of the handle and the suitable convexity of the bowl. But in order to use it you need to be able to recognize it. And this recognitional task, this sorting out, is accomplished many times a day, each day of the year. Design is a global conception of an object in many different circumstances, and at least an open-ended approach to our interactions with the object is necessary.

Cet article Is size a neglected factor in design? est apparu en premier sur Mangrovia - design collectiv.

There are many constraints on the quality of information. Respect of hard mathematical facts, and of logic, is one of them.

Logic is about value. Not respecting logic is not respecting your reader. Toying with logic is toying with your audience. Sometimes you can try rhetorical tricks, violate logic for the sake of attracting attention. But these can only be isolated exceptions, distractions.

Sometimes you just make mistakes – and create some confusion. The Donors at the San Francisco Legion of Honor are divided in categories, according to the amount of their donation. But then, these categories cannot overlap.

Where did your name end up? If you donated $2,800, were you promoted to the $2,500-$4,999 category, or demoted to the $1,000-$2,999 category? Are you very good, or just about good. And how can the reader know? Nice, solid capital letters. Great visual impact. Everything in this image bespeaks power, generosity, and reassuringly so. But the overlap of categories spreads the doubt, and dramatically lowers the epistemic value of your information.

But this, as we said, is likely to be a mistake. What if you deliberately toy with logic, and with the logical expectations of your audience? French law requires labeling of the country of origin of food on sale. Here is how a retailer managed it:

Read it carefully: “Origin: France, or imported”. The point is, no one is lying here: the label could not be more true. Potatoes: they do come from France, or elsewhere. “Elsewhere” means “not France”. “P or not P” is a tautology, a sentence that is true in all possible worlds. In no situation potatoes will not come from France, or not France; they are bound to come from somewhere (maybe from Mars, or from Sirius: the sentence will be true nevertheless).

Logic is about value. Tautologies, in this communicational context, are too cheap. That they have been used indicates laziness, or worse.

Cet article Logic is part of design est apparu en premier sur Mangrovia - design collectiv.

After my lecture on wayfinding and typefaces at Paris DEC, last friday, I have received an interesting feedback from my friend Valeria Giardino, a Postdoctoral Researcher of the CNRS who was in attendance; apparently one moment of my talk sounded a little bit schizophrenic: let’s stop using the most beautiful typefaces ever created! Look how perfect they are and that’s why we should not use them anymore…

Indeed it seems that I did not make myself very clear on one key point (possibly THE key point of my whole lecture) so a clarification is in order. Here the facts: at a certain point of my presentation, I discussed the development of studies on typefaces and dyslexia: more and more research indicates that there are specific features that make a typeface difficult to read by people with dyslexia.
Especially relevant is the case of those sans serif typefaces where letters such as b, p, q and d are made by one shape only, flipped and rotated.
This parsimony of design has been in use for decades – the reasons are to be found in the cost of casting metal types – and it became a hallmark of distinction: sans serif typefaces set in this way have been praised for their simplicity, their elegance and purity. The more similar the glyphs, the more elegant the whole typeface results.
Now, it turns out that these features are actually a nuisance for dyslexic readers and there is no gentle way to put it: similarities in the shapes of the letters make the text more difficult to read. Hence new typefaces have been redesigned with the specific goal of avoiding identical shapes.
When I displayed an alphabet in a typeface specifically designed for dyslexic readers next to an alphabet set in Frutiger, I said something about the former looking to me like an eyesore and the latter being more beautiful, proportioned, aesthetically pleasing. These remarks were interpreted as passionate complaints about he fact that aesthetic values were ignored in the design of the typefaces for dyslexics.
 This is the crucial point that must be rectified: I stated – and sadly I think I will be saying it again for the rest of my life – that Frutiger looks indeed so much more beautiful than OpenDyslexic to me. Yes, I appreciate I might have said that very passionately: on a recent trip to Berlin I took more photos of the Metro signs – set in Transit, a beautiful Frutiger condensed type – than of the Pergamon Altar. Yes, I do consider that quest to simplicity a testament of the grandeur of so many type masters of the last decades and yes, I can stare at those lowercases in awe for days. Yes, those letters look nothing but perfect to me.

But.

But if it turns out that research is right, and that those features are an impediment to a more universal fruition of the text, then all those typefaces should be banned from any signage system, until redesigned accordingly.
 And again, there is no way to put it down mildly: do we want our designs to be accessible, yes or no?
 Would we condone non inclusive contemporary architecture? Would we approve of a new building inaccessible by people on a wheelchair?
 We can still appreciate the exquisite elegance of the Spanish Steps in Rome – built in 1725 – but we know that nowadays we would have built it as a gentle slope without a single step.

So, do I mean that the overwhelming majority of wayfinding systems in place nowadays are wrong? Yes. Of course, they are wrong.
 Do I mean that they should all be redesigned, taking users with dyslexia into account? Yes. Of course.
 We should not allow any sign to be unnecessarily difficult to read anymore than we allow a mall or a car park to be unnecessarily difficult to access. There is way more dyslexic people than people using wheelchairs.

Do I mean to say that typefaces such as Johnston Underground, Frutiger, Transit – to name but three of the most exquisite sans serif ever designed – should not be used anymore? I am afraid I do. 
There is no contradiction here; just the acknowledgment of scientific and social progress. It is 2014 and we now know what makes those typefaces not ideal and we should simply acknowledge this; after all they were created with the intention to solve problems, to be inclusive. Now that we know that this is not the case, we have to act accordingly. That does not mean they are not beautiful anymore. They are and they will always be. And just like a trip to Rome will inspire generations of architects, so the identical shapes of the beautifully designed lowercase d p q and b of many sans serif typefaces will continue to inspire generations of designers. But their time as preferred choice for signage system is over. And it is our duty to make this happen sooner than later.

Cet article Can we kindly redesign all the signage systems in the world, please? est apparu en premier sur Mangrovia - design collectiv.

Read it aloud: three dollars and sixty-nice cents and nine tenths, the price of a gallon of gasoline. The decimal-positional system can be tweaked in various ways. This hybrid notation is decimal, but not positional, or maybe half-positional. Its decimal-positional counterpart would be 3.699 (if you like approximations, this is almost indistinguishable from a price of three point seven. Your wallet won’t notice the difference.)

So, 9/10 of what? Of a cent, that is 9 thousandths of a dollar. One can try to improve (improve?) this notation in various ways.

3/10. 6/10 9/10 9/10

(three tenths of a ten dollar bill, plus six tenths of a dollar, plus nine tenths of a dime, plus nine tenths of a cent.) Try also: 3. 699/1000 (three dollars and six hundred ninety nine thousandths of a dollar). Trys some hybrids (the fractional notaiton in the second position only, say).

The whole point of this innovation in design is to keep your eay away from the approximation. You read three point six, and you pay three point seven: the extra dime is the price for your cognitive inattention.

Still, there is something deeply intuitive about the fraction in the last position.

Cet article Three dollars and some est apparu en premier sur Mangrovia - design collectiv.