KPCB Design Fellows app

Describe, in a blog post or video, the last product you used that took your breath away. Please explain what the product is, why you loved it, and any broader analysis or information you think is relevant. This can not be an Apple product. You can provide your submission as a link to your blog post or video:


There are so many products out there that try to be too many things at once... and fail. They try to be too modular and end up being clunky and unusable because of their added girth, or they become so integrated and convoluted that the only people able to understand how to use it are the individuals who designed it.
Admittedly, it is much easier for me to come up with all of the products that I hate or things that I don't feel like they have the user in mind that when someone tells me to come up with a product with an experience that I love, I struggle. 

The best products in my opinion, offer users features that they never knew that they needed, and now can't live without: providing an experience that becomes the new standard. 

As a writer, I love to use plain marble composition notebooks and black pens, because it gives my writing space and creativity a sense of control so that I can go wherever I want to with my writing. A sense of security. Marble composition notebooks can be pretty typical, but black pens can vary wildly, but the best pens that I've used have provided me with features that I never knew that I needed, and have set the new standard for me and my moderately priced writing implements (< $10). 

Deciding to treat myself before a conference, I bought a Uni-ball pen because it was squishy and I thought it would make me look more "professional." It also had some interesting and useful features such as the ink was meant for writing checks because it sticks to the paper and can't be washed away easily. This became my favorite pen for reasons other than I had originally purchased it: the ink flowed easily, it didn't bleed through pages, and because my hand was comfortable and the pen worked without effort or thought, I was able to be my most creative in my writing assignments. Using other pens of different materials, of different tip thicknesses, different weight balance, different ink, different storage (click, twist, or cap), hasn't quite measured up, and if I were Uni-Ball, I would take this as a walloping success.

You're probably thinking: "Wow, out of all of the products in the world, she chose to describe a pen" but how many things just work all the time, and surprise you as to their positive features. As much as I love my macbook, THAT doesn't even do that for me (we're having some trust issues after it decided to completely fail last year). There are a lot of products and websites that I think have a lot of promise, but because of the lack of clarity, agency, or other things for the user, they haven't exactly taken my breath away.

But the pen represents so much more about simplicity. The best things are simple. Even if they are complex, using products should be simple. Oversimplifying products doesn't necessarily make using them simple (taking away buttons, doesn't necessarily make it clear how one uses it). But in the end it isn't about all of the bells and whistles: it's like sound design in the theatre: if you notice it, it wasn't done very well, if it works, it ultimately disappears.

J10

Journal 10 (J10): Coleman Project - Personal Documentation

The team:
Be
Ben
Chris
Cindy
Ian
Rachel
(and me)

Previous posts: J08 & J09

WE finished! we did it. yay.

We all worked pretty well together. There were some issues, people showing up late (or not at all), technology not working, etc.

Despite our slow start, because we had taken the time to brainstorm so thoroughly, the decisions started just coming out because we all had a clear vision of the project.

We went from about 4 'finalist' ideas to eventually working on the organized pots idea.

I felt like I contributed a lot to this project. Putting in ~10 hours to model it in SolidWorks, helping guide the initial brainstorming so we wouldn't end up in a 'solution' before we fully defined our 'problem'. Also the final project originated from one of my initial brainstorm problems/ideas.

Dropbox was a really great tool that we used. We uploaded all files and pictures to our file so that we could all have access to up-to-date information. I don't think there was much more I could have done to help facilitate the project. This project was much better than the final project in Design 230. I thought it would have been nice to be able to comment more on the quality of other people's presentations because they may have hit all of the bullet points on the rubric, but they may have had a bad idea, or their logo may not have been very nice. Not saying that everyone's work needs to appeal to everyone, but I would have felt that the grading sheets would have meant more if we were able to comment on the subjective elements as well (because it may have been indicative on how good their brainstorming process was).

I thought our project turned out pretty well, but it was kind of lame that one of the group members didn't show up to the final meeting or presentation.

cr10

Course Reflection 10 (CR10): Course Review

What did you think of the Design 200 course this quarter?

What I liked:

• guest speakers
• no exams/long ish papers
• chill atmosphere

What I didn't like:

(this stuff may be because I have taken Design 230, or the early engineering courses that all emphasize design, but really, how many times must I 'learn' the same stuff?)

• same old same old videos (IDEO, typical TED talks)
• always working within the same groups. (the cards).
• The classroom kind of sucked for brainstorming and group work, and just in general.

j09

Journal 09 (J09): Coleman Project - Personal Documentation

The team:
Be
Ben
Chris
Cindy
Ian
Rachel
(and me)

Currently we're in good shape. We have direction and decisions have been made. Now its just all about completing the tasks that we know we have left. We spent a long time figuring out what we were going to do, but that has helped make this part of the process a bit easier. I feel like we're working together as a group decently well. We have a dropbox set up in order to share information, but between google docs and dropbox, neither is perfect. (It would be nice if dropbox had some communication/note taking abilities, although it is much easier to use that google docs).

Currently I've been rendering our product in SolidWorks which has been an annoying process (rebuild errors galore!) but i'm at least 75% done. As part of the group, i've helped contribute ideas and help ensure that we're staying on track, although that seems to be a group effort as we can all get sidetracked from time to time.

This has been one of the better group experiences that I've had where everyone here is contributing ideas and efforts to the project.

We had a meeting today and everyone showed up and we solidified our plan a bit more so we should be ready in plenty of time of wednesday.

Above are some of the initial renderings of the pots and lids as well as a brainstorming sheet and an image of our Coleman Home icon (its not our main logo, just a secondary image that will be incorporated into the packaging and kiosk.

rr08

heskett ch 9-10.

contexts:

Design is performed in 3 contexts: business, professional organization, and government policy.

As explained by many examples in the book, design has been the solution for many problems in government and business, and is the reason for much success as well. It's the companies that 'get it' that strive (like P&G, not mentioned in this book, but mentioned in nearly every IDEO book...). Essentially design is everywhere, and it is important to understand its work everywhere.

Futures:

Designers are responsible for how we interact with the future as they are responsible for the interactions that we make with products and things. As everything is getting increasingly global and industrial, it is the responsibility for the designer to keep human interaction in mind.

Essentially it is the designers who will design our futures. We just have to realize that its in their hands and give them the power to make good decisions.

j08

The team:
Be
Ben
Chris
Cindy
Ian
Rachel
(and me)

State of project:
We have made good progress, but we still have a long way to go in order to have a finished product. Not many official decisions have been made, but we are heading in some definite directions. We have been focusing our potential user as being related to a suburban family and we've done our research about them, but we haven't made a final decision on the user.

Here are our various brainstorming sheets:
definitions, categories and problems
problem list continued
Users and strategies
Mind map
Day 2 brainstorming

We've been working fairly well as a group, although it is admitedly difficult in any situation to work with a group of 7 people on a project that requires input and feedback from all members, were doing a pretty good job. The room situation makes it a bit difficult to communicate as we can all be sitting near each other, but not able to hear 2 people down. This in turn makes it difficult for all voices to be heard and to know everything that's being said. I'm hoping that when the project gets a little more 'real' we can split up into smaller groups which would make it easier for communication and in feeling more comfortable in sharing their ideas.

We're heading in a direction, albeit fairly slowly, but I'm sure when we make our final decisions on the user and product, everything else will be able to fall into place rather quickly.

For the first day of brainstorming I helped lead the initial brainstorming process so we didn't end up thinking about products and physical things before we brainstormed the underlying details. That was something that went wrong in Design 230 last quarter when one person in our group (who only attended the class half the time) led our only brainstorming session astray forcing us to decide on the direction of our project hastily at the end of class when we realized that all of our brainstorming that we had done had been for naught. By the time the brainstorming tips and hints were posted, we had already covered each element in depth already.

On the flipside, maybe my overconcern for thinking of solutions too quickly without defining the problem has contributed to our lack of final decisions made, and now we have a lot of work to do.

I think now we all realize that we have done the abstract thinking and now we need some concrete decisions in order to meet the deadline.

cr07

This past week in design 200 consisted of the guest speakers from Cobego (which included the marshmallow challenge) and the day of Eames videos and sorting ourselves into groups.

I enjoyed the talk from the former design students talking about their student and current work. I enjoyed talking with them after the class to get more information on how to get into their field.

While I can appreciate the message of the 'marshmallow challenge' type activities, I don't really enjoy doing them. They often end up having one trick at the end that just ends up geing really annoying, although my group considered just attaching the marshmallow to the ceiling either by using a spaghetti as a skewer or attaching it with tape, but we thought that was too cheap, so we didn't.

We also thought that it had to be freestanding (which it did) so we did not tape the bottom of our structure to the table, which would have prevented it from breaking.

The Eame's videos were kind of interesting, but the solar do-nothing whatever made me super tired because like the contraption, the movie did nothing.