If you thought the iPhone multi-touch screen was impressive, take a look into the future of interaction courtesy of Jeff Han at NYU. Make sure you play the video on the right side of the linked page.

This discussion has for the most part been misguided though. When I’m talking about design, I find it helpful to break the discussion into functional, process and aesthetic categories and I deal with them in that order.

1. What’s the functionality I’m trying to offer?
2. What process is needed in order to allow the user to use that functionality?
3. Lastly, what aesthetic choices would best serve both function and process?

You can answer questions of functionality and process and never make any choices on question three and still have a phenomenally successful project, but if you have the time and awareness for smart aesthetic choices, your customers will be better served.

It isn’t about ugly design. It’s about functional design and functional design doesn’t have to be ugly. In fact, when most people are talking about ugly design, they’re really talking about spare design (i.e. craigslist.) Craigslist could be prettier and just as useful and even more usable, but given Craigslist’s large user base, design changes at this point in it’s life should be made with great care.

I’m a big fan of a healthy aesthetic sensibility when it comes to creating software, but lead with function, understand completion and then think about aesthetic design as an aide to the first two.

There’s no shortage of companies in the computer industry that make ugly products. Belkin, which makes wifi routers and quite a bit more, was clearly in the plain to ugly category with most of it’s hardware in varying shades of grey and forms that couldn’t really be discerned from the competition.

But, with the release of the Flip, I’m sincerly hoping that this fantastic piece of design isn’t a fluke, but a new look for a company that could bring healthy design principles to an area of the industry that desperately needs it.

Yeah, But What Is It?

Let’s say you have two computers, but only one keyboard, mouse and display. The Belkin Flip lets you hook up both machines to the same keyboard, mouse and display and switch between your machines simply by hitting a button.

It’s generally been referred to as a KVM (Keyboard, Video, Mouse) Switch and they’ve been around for ages, but they’ve always looked like ugly little boxes with a near meaningless display of LEDs staring out at you. It’s not a product that most people are aware of and with a common name like KVM, you can sort of see why it generally hasn’t expanded beyond the geek set.

But with a name like Flip and a design that’s not only appealing but makes a whole lot of sense, Belkin has taken a solution that’s been available for ages and put it in a design that makes sense to a whole new set of users.

More Products Like This Please

So, to the decision-making types at Belkin, whatever smart employee made this design happen, give them a promotion. Get this level of design and appeal across the rest of your product line and you’ll certainly see your efforts rewarded in sales.

The Vessel love continues. It seems they’ve made a slightly altered version of their Time Tag: The Tempo Thermo Tag that tells the temperature. Nice.

It’s probably worth it to state the obvious: Apple is changing the names of all of it’s machines to make sure the word “Mac” appears in each and every available model. If Mac is already in there, it probably won’t change. If it’s not, then be prepared for an awkward shift.

• iBook will change to MacBook
• Powerbook has changed to MacBook Pro
• Mac Mini will probably stay Mac Mini
• iMac will probably stay iMac
• PowerMac will change to Mac Pro in order to drop the “Power” prefix and be consistent with the Powerbook name change

It makes sense from a long term marketing standpoint as “buy a Mac” will clearly be referring to the entire product line, but as shuddering geeks have already registered publicly, giving up well established names like Powerbook is not going to be easy.

“To get to a Dow Jones average with a first digit of 2, the average must increase to 2,000, and getting from 1,000 to 2,000 is a 100 percent increase.

“Let’s say that the Dow goes up at a rate of about 20 percent a year. That means that it would take five years to get from 1 to 2 as a first digit.

Actually, it only takes four years. At a rate of 20 percent a year, by year four the Dow would be 2073.6

“When the Dow reaches 9,000, it takes only an 11 percent increase and just seven months to reach the 10,000 mark, which starts with the number 1.”

An 11 percent increase doesn’t get the Dow to 10,000. An 11 percent increase of 9000 is 9990, not 10000 or more as the quote states.

I’m about to tackle my copy of Ray Kurzweil’s The Singularity is Near, his 672 page hardcover tome on The Law of Accelerating Returns and it’s implications on the years ahead. The singularity in Kurzweil’s words is:

technological change so rapid and profound it represents a rupture in the fabric of human history. The implications include the merger of biological and nonbiological intelligence, immortal software-based humans, and ultra-high levels of intelligence that expand outward in the universe at the speed of light.

He’s an optimist to say the least, but it’s nice to see serious data place dates on the ideas that sci-fi novels have explored for years. It is a book that very much answers “Where’s my jetpack?” to a degree we have difficulty imagining in our current day to day lives. Needless to say, I’m excited about running through this brain candy store.

There’s only one problem. It’s big. I do a lot of reading when I travel. These two things don’t go well together. Big thick hardcovers may look cool on shelves or impressive on coffee tables, but they’re a pain to actually read. Why don’t publishers offer editions that are broken up into small carry-friendly sizes for reading on the plane, train or waiting room?

GTD devotees already know that if you need to not forget something on your way out, you should set it in front of the door.

Well, CB2 has figured out how to make money off of your desire to accessorize your productivity habit with their do not forget doorhanger.

Fifty sheets for $5.95 US.

I had intended to comment on this sooner, but it caught me in the midst of a pretty insane election campaign and I found myself without a spare minute up until this week.

In one of those “hey, someone does read this thing” moments, I ran into a post over at Standard Gamble about his exploration and attempted application of lesson’s learned from Tufte’s work and he was kind enough to reference my previous post on Tufte’s The Cognitive Style of Powerpoint.

Clay’s Work

There’s a good exploration here in trying to tackle a difficult visualization of conflict, with a Snyder-Diesing conflict graph populated by recent hurricane data as his test subject. If you made it past that sentence and finding yourself excited to learn more:

1. Seek professional help
2. Head on over to Standard Gamble to see his exploration

I hate to comment on his work without some proper time to ruminate, but my initial impression is that the data display may be aided by integration with a geographical element such as an overhead map of the areas affected with data overlaid appropriately. It would add an immediate sense of familiarity and relevance for an audience trying to derive something from a seemingly complicated series of objects, as well as a new data set in the form of geographical location and clear sense of the height of the conflict when the storm reaches the shores at it’s highest power.

A Maddening Evolution Through Background Ruminations

Trying to implement lessons from Tufte is not unlike his well-known over-saturated ego: a bit maddening. The luxury of Tufte is that he gets to practice design as redesign to his heart’s content and when it finally hits a healthy point, he publishes something damn impressive. Time is far too scant to pursue his level of quality in the day to day world. Some lessons fit as simple guidelines that are easily found: direct labeling, simplified language, the outright rejection of obvious data junk, but the more subtle lessons can be insanely illusive when in the harried act of your own creation. At some point though, I realized many of these more subtle choices started to become a part of my standard behavior: the minor yet welcoming reduction of data noise by slightly more informed font choices, a certain relaxation and reduced complication of aesthetics that takes place all around when growing out of certain visual hangups, the ability to throw away dozens of visual experiments and accept that the first and most simple one is the winner.

Elusive Definitions

It’s tough to define the success of Tufte’s well chosen examples when you first encounter them and it’s even harder to implement them, but once you do, once you realize your brain is finally understanding some of the finer notions of displaying information, you find yourself at an almost equal loss for words when trying to pass these lessons on to another. When we get lost in the nuance of something that lives far outside of a black and white world, we are stuck with referring to them in nuanced ways. When Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart was asked to define obscenity, he could have referring to good information design.

“I don’t know how to define it, but I know it when I see it.”