Minimalism in The Design of Common Objects

Since I talk about minimalism so much and even have the word included in my site name, I think it’s about time that I write a few articles about the subject. So this is one of them.

I appreciate minimalism because, in a world filled with images and designs all vying for your attention, a minimalist design cuts out the clutter, strips away the unnecessary, and provides a no-frills approach do giving you exactly what you need and letting you do exactly what you want to do. It reduces the choices we have to make while at the same time making it easier for our brains to process information. In a world hyper-saturated with media and graphics and noise and flashing lights, minimalism offers a silent, collected, and hopeful alternative.

Minimalism, at least in relation to design, comes in three different forms. These forms can and often do overlap, but they can be separated into their distinct individual elements. These elements are aesthetic minimalism, functional or utilitarian minimalism, and spatial minimalism.

Aesthetic minimalism is a celebration of the simple design. Iconic logos such of the Mobil pegasus, the Shell shell, the Nike swoosh, the Adidas three stripes, the Target bulls-eye, and the McDonalds arches are simple images that are recognizable the world over without the addition of any text at all. Clean lines, simple shapes, solid colors, cohesive textures, and stark contrasts are the norm here. Consumer goods also benefit from a minimalist design approach. An iPod can be recognized as an iPod from across any room, as can a pack of Newports as the iconic menthol cigarettes that they are.




Functional or utilitarian minimalism applies more to products, and can used when a consumer good has been designed for one or two specific purposes and does those very well. Examples are when a radio is just a radio, an analog watch just has hands, or a coffee pot just brews coffee. This is a rebellion against the scanner-copier-fax-printer, the alarm clock-radio-CD player-tape deck, and the MP3 player-calendar-internet communication device-cell phone. This is when you want something do to exactly one thing, and do it well without the extras because, let’s face it, most times you don’t need them. The last twenty years has seen our companies design product after product and software package after software package packed with features that we will never even read about in the manual, let alone use.

The opposite of the functional or utilitarian design is spatial minimalism. This again applies to products and is used to describe a product that does as much as can be done in the footprint that it occupies. The more it can do in as little physical space as possible, the better. A dominant product of this school of thought is the personal computer that can function as nearly anything to anyone. Accounting tool, music studio, radio, dictionary, home entertainment system, newspaper, telephone, artistic canvas, and so much more - if you can name it, it can probably do it. Spatially minimal products are great when you want to reduce clutter in your living space or multitask without having to physically move. Some of them utilize a minimalist exterior, preferring to have all of the options appear on a screen rather than through knobs, sliders, and buttons. A really good example of this can be seen in the transition from film cameras to digital ones. Settings and options that were once assigned to a few buttons and winders are now available to be scrolled though in a screen. This makes the camera more powerful, but also more complicated to use.

Like I said earlier, these styles of minimalism can overlap. My MacBook is a good example of aesthetic spatial minimalism, while a product like Samsung’s ML1630 laser printer is an example of aesthetic functional minimalism. I’m sure you can find plenty of your own examples as well.





The keys to fully subscribing to minimalism are factoring in price to your purchasing decisions, and disregarding the corporate mandate that New is always Better. While aesthetic minimalism transcends time, functional minimalism is sometimes most evident in older products. Spatial minimalism spans a wide expanse of products and a variety of industries and is fast becoming the norm for consumer electronics.

Important for the aspiring minimalist to realize is that sometimes sacrifice is in order to preserve a uniformly minimal style. Often this means leaving features out of things that you buy. Opting for less powerful but more streamlined and aesthetically beautiful objects bring you back to thinking about why you really needed extra features in the first place. Whether it is a lamp with no ornamentation, a toaster that is brushed metal instead of white plastic, or a car with beautiful lines, these functional items may cost more, but have the added benefit of being something that you enjoy looking at.


And that in itself is beautiful.




_DZ

Making The Most of Experiences Both On & Off-Line

On 2/28/09, the Baby Blues syndicated newspaper comic depicted a scene of a man and his young daughter in an ice cream shop.

“I want two scoops with gummy worms, Oreo pieces, M&Ms, chocolate sauce, and sprinkles,” the girl requested.

“But what flavor of ice cream do you want?” asked her dad.

“Does it matter?” replied his daughter.

Does it matter, indeed.

The practice of adding more and more extras until the original item, the fundamental part of the experience, is irrelevant. Does it matter, indeed!

Comics are meant to mirror real life, aren’t they? They’re a great way of bringing out the idiosyncrasies of society; an effective medium for revealing the underlying behaviors that we all practice. So in what other areas besides ice cream selection do we do this? What other experiences do we dilute with extras until the original activity loses its significance?

The first one that came to mind is relationships. In a youth culture in which individuals like to relate to one another through bits of trivia and meaningless connectivity, it becomes easier and easier to objectify people and sort them by their characteristics, their likes and dislikes, and their perceived personality. Someone’s actual character, a thing distinctly separate from personality, becomes pushed further and further into the background. When this happens, finding a potential spouse becomes as easy as making a checklist of attributes, and once you meet someone who fulfills all of them, marriage is not far behind. You don’t want a real relationship with someone who shares your values, beliefs and personal convictions; rather you desire someone who “you can laugh with, someone who appreciates music, the arts, and who is just as at comfortable with a slow night at home as going out and hitting the city night scene.” You’re looking for the extras, the add-ons, to make the experience worthwhile.

Other times, it’s the extras that make the activity even tolerable at all. Would you buy a car with no CD player or cruise control? What about power, heated, leather seats, an iPod hookup, or a video entertainment system?

Because a car doesn’t need any of those things.

But, unless you’re going really really fast, driving is an inherently boring activity. It’s monotonous, not particularly mentally or physically stimulating, and sometimes very nerve-wracking. For many people, driving without being entertained would be interminable. Hence we now have all of these options available on our cars that help us relax and be more comfortable and entertained. This is also, I think, a big part of why we like to talk on the phone and drive.

I’m sure there are more examples of this, but for now we’ll just leave it at driving. The point is that inherently boring activities lightened by extras make them bearable.

Obvious questions arise here. Firstly, we know that this happens - so is it a good thing or a bad thing? If driving is seen as a necessary evil, are things that make it more tolerable acceptable even if they detract from the experience? Most would say yes. Some would even argue that in the case of driving, the add-ons make the experience what it is - i.e. driving IS listening to music. What about in relationships? Is it too much of a stretch to say that the US divorce rate is at 50% because we rush into relationships based on how well our checklist matches the people we meet? This is slightly problematic at best and pathological at worst. And what could this trend hold for he future of society as more and more of it moves online?

The practice of adding extras to enhance boring activities is almost a given in the current state of online universes such as World of Warcraft and Second Life, where something as basic as existing is already boring. Online life, i.e. being a digital avatar in an online world, is without the element of outside forces and randomness that is a innate part of our earthly universe. Things don’t “just happen” to you when you’re in an online world. (And when they do, as in the case of "random battles," they quickly get annoying and we wish them gone.)

Consequently, any enjoyment that you derive from being in an online world is a direct result of the experiences that you initiate. What you get out of acting in an online world is a direct result of what actions you undertake and, accordingly, you almost always get an expected result. You reap exactly what you sow. This set up allows for very little experience to have value, if value is defined as getting more out of something than what you put into it. (For example, if you buy a computer from a liquidating electronics giant for half of its original price, that is a good value - you received a computer that is worth more than you paid for it.)

If you ask people what they most value about life, I think you will find that most people will talk about the little things in life. Things like watching a sunset, staring at the stars, feeling a warm breeze, walking through crunching leaves, getting a hug, or eating a juicy bunch of grapes. A lot of these things are not affected whatsoever by human actions. Some of them are, yes, but a lot of the great things about nature are things that we cannot control. Since we reap the benefits but invest nothing, these are valuable experiences. And maybe more importantly, these actions are unquantifiable.

There are very, very few of these experiences in a controlled online universe as it exists now. Random nice things seldom happen to you, and you must search long and hard to find anything of true value. As more and more interactions take to the online world, and if the digital frontier is the future of human society (and it is) then this problem of lack of intrinsic value will have to be fixed. We will have to find ways to make simply existing in the online realm a valuable experience.

So now not only do we have to scrutinize our off-line lives to see how we can put meaning back into experiences but we have to figure out how to do so in the online world as well. What seems to be a learned behavior off-line is a fundamental part of the online experience. Either we as a society find a way to fix it in both realms or we learn to live with it and thrive off of it - an option that I think is less than ideal. Either way a lot of change is in order, and the sooner we get to work on it the better.





_DZ

We Have Computer Education but No Automotive Education? What Is Up With That?

I had an entry last month about how I think that computers should have a very limited role in schools. I want to go off on sort of a tangent of that and ask the question, “Why don’t we have mandatory automotive shop class in schools? Why doesn’t each and every student have a basic understanding of how a car works by the time they get out of high school?”

I mean, we all use cars just as much as we use computers. They’re just as big a part of our lives as computers are. Most every American adult has one. They’re even the second-biggest purchase (after a house) that we make in our lives. So why don’t we know how they work?

I was twenty, TWENTY, years old before I knew the difference between a carburetor, an alternator, and a distributor. I also didn’t know the difference between gas and diesel, that brakes and power steering systems used fluid, and that car axles weren’t just straight metal rods that connected two wheels like in the cartoons. And those were things I could’ve learned in ten minutes! I had a drivers license since I was 16, but I bought my first car without even test-driving it, much less looking under the hood!




We spend thousands of dollars on laptops for kids, while an automotive course requires a battered car that a school could get for $500. $300? Free?

Car stuff is knowledge that all our students could use, male and female, yet it is being withheld from them in the name of “electives.” Why is a course in basic automotive mechanics an elective while computers are brought in for every high school English class? Why do we insist that kindergardeners know how to type but leave the exploration of cars to those only those who are self-motivated? Again, cars are just a big a part of our lives as computers are!

The result of this is a generation who buys cars for looks rather then fuel mileage or parts availability, and chooses to pay the 70-100% (!) markup on parts that their garage charges them (which they do) for things like brakes. Brakes! You know when you need brakes, so why not just go down to an auto parts store and buy your own brakes? They have parts catalogs there to help you find what you need and everything!

And we blow fuel efficiency way out of proportion. This article from the LA Times critiques the new Honda Insight, priced at around $18,000. A comparable car, the Nissan Versa for example, costs $9,999, but is not a hybrid. At today’s gas prices, the Insight is estimated to save you about $315/year in gas over the Versa. When will this make up the $9000 price gap? In about 31 years. The I can almost guarantee that it will be cheaper to fix the Versa as well! Good fuel economy is something to consider, but not something on which to hang a horrible financial decision.

I think that good education about cars and how they work, even if it's a single course in high school, can help a lot of these problems and help the coming generation make increasingly smarter decisions about buying and maintaining a car. As cars become increasingly more sophisticated and engine diagnostic equipment becomes cheaper and cheaper, it will be easier and easier to solve your own car problems. Hopefully we can take full advantage of that when the time comes.





_DZ

My Experience with Non-Religiousness, aka Atheism

I read this article today about new research that claims that 15% of the American population is non-religious, and how the current public perception of the non-religious/atheist does not reflect that number. I guess a lot of people think that atheists are blood drinking baby killers of something along those lines, when that is not always the case. Oops, I guess I just proved their point.

But really, it’s appalling to think of all the people who think that atheists are somehow subhuman or something like that. The atheists that I’ve met (which, granted, are not many) have all been very nice and pleasant people. We just have radically different views on religion. They may think that my views are irrational and I may think that their beliefs are extremely, if not painfully, susceptible to subjectivity, but that’s where you talk through differences and debate points. Sometimes, however, I have the upper hand.

Now I don’t claim to be an expert on atheist beliefs (if there can even be such a person), but I haven’t always been a Christian either. I was ambivalent about religion until I was about 16 or so, and after that I had a two year or so stint of living with no consideration for religion whatsoever. I lived however I felt best. This was really liberating at first, but as time went on I became more and more depressed with each bad decision I made. Soon I was about to turn 18, and I had a whole host of options available to me about what to do with my future. Should I go to college? Where? Should I work? Where? Should I stay In Japan? What did I want to do with my life? Should I go overseas? All of these questions came crashing down on me, and I broke down. I couldn’t handle the reality of potentially making a bad choice and being unhappy for the rest of my life. I had enough trouble choosing my high school classes. How could I be expected to run my own life? I needed answers. I needed a purpose.




And this I feel is where atheism doesn’t, or indeed, can’t, help. It has no compass. It is humanistic. ‘Do whatever you feel is best,’ it says. ‘Try not to be a jackass, but as long as you do what is best for you, that should be good for others as well,” is what I feel is the overarching message. It has no roots, no baseline standards. And that makes it scary for people who don’t understand it. Atheists that I know turned to atheism out of a disdain for religion - not because they thought it was a good idea. They didn’t sit down in their local library, pull out the Big Book of Atheism and say, “Hey, this sounds like a good way to live!”

When you have a non-religion that teaches that you should live your life the best way you know how, you get a different flavor of atheism for each follower. And this, I think, is what scares people most.

Coming back to my own story for a minute, I turned to Christianity when I felt like I truly had no more options left. I was unwilling to make choices about my future out of fear of failure, and nothing inside me could point me in a better direction. If I hadn’t accepted Christ, I have no doubt that I would’ve been dead in six months. I would have found the easiest way out of my situation, regardless who who it hurt, because that is what I felt would’ve been best for me.

Instead I chose the seemingly paradoxical option of turning my life over to God so that I could live more freely. I submitted to God’s will for my life so that I could pursue it wholeheartedly, with faith that God would show me what it is. After all, He did make me, so I think he knows how best to use me in the world.

I wonder how many atheists know what their purpose in the world is?





_DZ

Your Music Library Should Say Something About You!

If you have a computer at work or school that runs iTunes, chances are you’ve loaded some music onto it. And if that computer is connected to a local area network (LAN), then you most likely have also shared music across computers. Music sharing is a handy feature that iTunes has had since version 4, and it allows everyone who wishes to share their music across a network to do so as well as access other peoples’ music libraries that are shared. You can listen to shared music but can’t copy it, lest Apple be sued for facilitating copyright infringement or something like that. And in a world where our music libraries typically span several gigabytes, what you choose to include in your music selection can say a lot about you.

It’s a fun game you can play in your dorm; trying to tell what people are like based on their music tastes. As you browse through a shared library you note certain bands or musical genres and make personality judgements based on them.

“Hmm, this girl likes a lot of indie pop. She probably dresses a certain indie pop way and claims to be independent.” Or, “Look at all of the speed metal that this guy has. I bet he owns that motorcycle out front and goes paintballing on the weekends!”

If you can be judged by the music you listen to, it only makes sense that having more music - adding more bands to your library - can only add more facets to who you are as a person. Or so one would think.

But is this true? I don’t think it is, and I’ll tell you why. Having an extensive record collection used to say something about you back when it cost you something. When you had to buy each and every CD you owned, buying a CD to enhance your perceived image meant giving up some money - and you assumed that you gained some value from that purchase. If I was going to buy a CD like Back in Black, chances are that I either enjoyed AC/DC immensely or wanted to be known as a raucous party guy who loved to have fun. Probably both, actually. But, now, when music can be downloaded for free, does having an extensive library mean as much, or even anything at all? If I downloaded Back in Black, does that mean I have the same values as someone who bought the disc? I don’t think it does. Granted, there are many reasons for owning a particular piece of music, but just owning it does say something about you. Take a look at the picture below, a screenshot of the results, ordered by number of people who want them, of the word “discography” typed into The Pirate Bay, a popular destination for illegal music swapping.

(click to enlarge)

The total amount of music on this first page alone totals to roughly 92.448GB (yes, I checked), or about 3.08GB per artist. I have a mere 19.5GB of music on my laptop, and yet that already totals to 9.6 days of music. Imagine how long 92GB would take to listen to! And that’s just 30 artists! My music library includes 257!

The point is that when anybody can get that much music for free, having an extensive music library that takes someone a full minute or so to scroll through doesn’t really say much about you other than you like to pirate music. There’s no set pattern of tastes; no established ‘likes’ or ‘dislikes’ of artists. Based on that screenshot, what type of music would you recommend to that user? Certainly no techno, classical, or easy listening. And this guy has classic acts like The Doors, The Beatles, ZZ Top, and Bob Marley, yet still listens to Metallica, P.O.D, RATM, Slipknot, Tool and Papa Roach? Really? And Kelly Clarkson?? What is that!? A guilty pleasure? Should I recommend Christina Aguilera (whose last name my spellcheck recommends I change to “Uglier”) based on that taste? And I like both Depeche Mode and Rush. Do I try to find common ground based on these bands, or did the guy download them just for looks as well? Because when music becomes free, it becomes really hard to tell what someone likes and dislikes. They might just have a few bands so they can say, “Yeah, I listen to them too.” I have totally been guilty of this.

In the past, having a huge record collection meant, more often than not, that you really cared about music and spent a lot of time listening to what you bought. Now it just means you know where to find The Pirate Bay and how to run a torrent client.

So now it seems the opposite is true. Being able to pick and choose what you listen to, to weed out the stuff that you downloaded “just for looks”, helps you present a cohesive music library that actually says something about what you like and don’t like. Having a lot of music actually says less about you.

So what do yo think? Should people take the time to go through their iTunes and eliminate music that they don’t listen to? Or is it just more fun to have a huge library at your disposal?





_DZ

A Poem About Some Sweet Pants

I have pants
These pants are blue
These pants are of no importance to you
For they are my pants

Every morning I pull on my pants
Because I can wear them without a belt
They are my favorite pair of pants
And I have never washed them

My mom bought me these pants
I said, “ I want those pants.”
She said, “Are you sure?”
I said “Yes.”
I got the pants

Teachers look at me and say
Young man, you might go far someday
(I think it’s the pants!)
I like these pants

I wear my pants in my van
I wear these pants despite the heat
I can stick it to the man
In these pants

If you saw a picture
of these pants of mine so dear
You would scoff, wrinkle your face
And say, “ Those are but pants.”
But I like these pants

I can dance in these pants
Which would be great
If I could dance
Some things cannot be helped
Even when wearing these pants

I walk the town in these pants
I spy on people, too
Around the corner, I see France
Maybe soon, I’ll see you

You will say
“I like those pants”
And I will think you cute


And we will dance
In our pants
For I can dance, with you.





_DZ

Everyone should be able to check this box at least once in their lifetime!

I was finishing up my taxes the other day, and I came to this screen.


Knowing that little things like this exist on tax forms makes me happy.


_DZ

Texting and Twittering Increase Connectivity but Detract From Meaningful Experiences

As cell phone use, instant messaging, and participation in online social technologies such as Twitter become more widespread, our society, or at the very least my generation and the ones after it, are becoming increasingly more spontaneous. People are more connected, more in touch, and just in general more in the know about what the happenings are in the world around them. Parties are organized, e-invites are sent out, and guest lists are compiled all from a cell phone at the grocery store in front of shelves stocked with dishwasher soap. We should rejoice, right? After all people are communicating with one another! Efficiently!

But I think that there is a dark side to this revolution as well. And there’s no denying it - it IS a revolution. It is a revolution in which the present is preeminent, a revolution that could turn the organized human being into an impulsive, mechanized, social drone. Where there once was clear communication and coordination there will now be compulsive multitasking and extraneous busyness. The hours of the day will be ever-shifting, non-linear, and dangerously pliant.

When you are only a text message away, the inhibition exhibited by some in contacting you is slowly abolished. People text you, wanting to know what you are up to, and then you must interrupt what you are up to in order to tell them that, yes, you are up to something. And then they ask you how it is, and you say, “gr8”. Then they ask if you want to hang out at the movies in an hour.

And now you have a choice.

You can continue to do an activity you enjoy with someone you enjoy being with, or you can leave that activity to hang out with another person whom you enjoy being around and doing things with. And worse, you alone are the deciding factor in making the decision. Your friend can’t look at you disapprovingly while you answer a private text the way they can when you are audibly waffling over the phone over whether or not to alter your evening plans. This choice would not have existed had you simply turned your phone off and directed your full attention to the activity at hand. Not only have you now spent time answering a text, but you have taken time out of a joint activity to do something private. You might as well have pulled out a GameBoy for five minutes.

BRB, person I’m hanging out with!

The choices you make regarding your time should cost you something. Opportunity costs should abound over the course of how you decide to spend your day. These costs are oppressive enough, but when you add in the ability to change what you are doing into every waking second of the day, things can become hectic. Moreover, planning an activity, at least in my experience, results in heightened anticipation for the event to transpire. This past Christmas, my mom gave me a ticket for the "A Prairie Home Companion" show last Saturday. I had to wait two months for the show, and every minute of the hundred-and-twenty that I sat in the Fitzgerald Theater was worth the wait.

When you make plans on the fly, however, there are no anticipations and, therefore, your enjoyment of the new activity that you spontaneously decided on is, more often than not, a merely average experience. It was something you did because you didn’t have anything else to do. Or maybe you did, and you thought the new activity was going to be better, in which case you now have to compare two activities that you were perfectly happy doing in order to make sure that you made the right choice. You have unknowingly heightened the chance of you regretting your own decision.

A few weeks ago I was making plans on Facebook with a friend, whom I hadn’t seen in months, to hang out. It was in the afternoon, and I asked, “How does tomorrow morning sound?”

To which I received the reply, “I don’t know, I might have plans. I don’t have anything at the moment, but something might come up.”

!!

My attempt to make a plan was being subverted for fear that something, no doubt something more fun, might spontaneously demand my friend’s full attention! Here was a guaranteed activity - hanging out with me in the morning for a hour or so - that was left hanging because other plans might need to be made in the next twelve hours. (We did actually hang out the following morning.) And to think that I used to plan accountability lunches, with two or three other people, weeks in advance! What was I thinking!?

Now all this flexibility, like I said before, is not all bad. We can multitask, stay in communication, and stay active with people. However, I left one part of my story out. I don’t text or Twitter. And when a large part of organizing social life goes on in that realm, and it will increasingly do, those who don’t participate in the technology, like me, will be left out of the loop. It is akin to the last townsperson without a phone showing up at a town meeting that was moved to the evening before. The poster on the bulletin board still says tonight, but everyone else got a phone call about the change.

Now, that is progress - phones definitely make things a lot easier. But how easy do they need to be? This brings me back to the point about planning an event adding to its significance and expectation. I was perfectly able to organize my social life over Facebook and the telephone. I made plans, I showed up for appointments, and I even was flexible when if a friend phoned telling me that he was running late or couldn’t make it at all. But now I have to wonder, is that the truth, or did he just get texted a “better” offer?

_DZ