A simple fork

A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”

Antoine De Saint-Exupéry, GalantiéreL. and Gilbert, S. (1984). Airman’s odyssey. San Diego: Harcourt.

This could appear to be a weird choice, but I hope the reader will hear me out. I have a bit of a story that made me settle on this being an example of good design. The recent lecture about what makes good design reminded me of one of the first assemblies I had in high school. A teacher brought in a big, attractive and modern looking piece of kitchen equipment. It was supposed to be a juicer, but he couldn’t work out how to use it. In the end he went to a shop and bought a small wooden juicer tool for £2 and it worked fine. He was teaching us a lesson about good design. I was then wondering why I didn’t have a juicer in my kitchen. I am a complete sucker for ordering kitchen utensils, but I do try to reign in my purchases and think to myself whether it actually has a practical use before I buy it (because space in my kitchen is sparse). Then I realised the reason why, it is because when I juice a lemon I use a fork. I cut a lemon in half, push a fork in the open flesh and squeeze the lemon around the fork, it does the exact same thing a “simple” juicer does, it is probably messy for some, but for my needs this works well.

I don’t want to sound like a Beatle, but when I was thinking about the Fork I was whisking some eggs to make myself some scrambled eggs, and I realised I have a useless gadget that my partner’s parents bought me for Christmas. It stays in the cutlery drawer because I never use it. It is a small whisk that you push down on to “whisk you eggs” I think I have used it once, it was fiddly and it made a mess. The fork is perfect, it is the perfect size to hold at an angle across a bowl and it whisks the eggs perfectly in seconds. Plus it fits neatly in my cutlery tray in my dishwasher, and I have loads of them in case I want to make eggs again later in the day (I do eat a lot of scrambled eggs).

Desire lines on my estate

Designers want to override the wishes of users”

Allsopp, J. (2000). A Dao of Web Design. [online] A List Apart. Available at: https://alistapart.com/article/dao/.

What we understand to be good design means that we create with users in mind. I have a bit less tolerance for bad design than others. Some might say I give up easily, I say I just won’t tolerate bad design choices. This is a picture of the grass verge as I walk into the estate where I live. As you can see, there are paved paths where the council wants us to walk, and then there is this stretch of dirt where we all prefer to walk. It is an example of good design created by users and why the original designers should have considered users to start with. 

I use this path because often when I am walking this way I am coming home from work, and I just want to get home quickly, or I am coming from the large Tesco’s and I have a lot of shopping on my back, so I want the quickest path. What I really like about this is that the council have not tried to correct this, they could replant the grass or put in a barrier, but why bother? The people have spoken, and the path to our estate makes sense to be here. There are some issues with the path though, because it hasn’t been paved, when it rains it can get muddy. However I often walk this way anyway as I am often wearing shoes that are made to endure bad weather.

Thameslink Trains

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Clarke A (1973) Hazards of Prophecy: The Failure of Imagination” in the collection Profiles of the Future: An Enquiry into the Limits of the Possible

I have used really simple examples of good design, but I dont think good design necessarily means that it has to be simple. This is an example of something that was probably quite an investment for the train company to make and then also maintain, but I love it. 

I hate commuting to work, I used to live in North London and it was so much easier then, just a quick 20 min tube journey. Now I live in South East london there are several changes on a train or DLR, unless I take the Thameslink. There are only two Thameslink trains an hour, but I often wait. Firstly because I do not have to do any changes. Secondly because the trains themselves are a lot less claustrophobic, they do not have any doors to separate the carriages, the chairs are well designed to give a lot of space to walk through the train. And lastly, they have these really clear display screens that show you not only where the empty seats are, but where you are currently sitting, and also where and which toilets are free.

Each one aspect of this design makes the overall experience so much better. It is so great that I will WAIT longer to take it over the train that might come next.