Design & Philosophy

The Invisible Computer: Why Good Products Can Fail, the Personal Computer Is So Complex, and Information Appliances Are the Solution

Technologies have a life cycle, says Donald Norman, IDSA, and companies and their products must change as they pass from youth to maturity. Alas, the computer industry thinks it is still in its rebellious teenage years, exulting in technical complexity. Customers want change. They are ready for products that offer convenience, ease of use, and pleasure. The technology should be invisible, hidden from sight.In this book, Norman shows why the computer is so difficult to use and why this complexity is fundamental to its nature.

Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things

Did you ever wonder why cheap wine tastes better in fancy glasses? Why sales of Macintosh computers soared when Apple introduced the colorful iMac? New research on emotion and cognition has shown that attractive things really do work better, as Donald Norman amply demonstrates in this fascinating book, which has garnered acclaim everywhere from Scientific American to The New Yorker.

The Design of Future Things

In The Design of Future Things, best-selling author Donald A. Norman, IDSA, presents a revealing examination of smart technology, from smooth-talking GPS units to cantankerous refrigerators. Exploring the links between design and human psychology, he offers a consumer-oriented theory of natural human-machine interaction that can be put into practice by the engineers and industrial designers of tomorrow’s thinking machines.

The Ice Palace that Melted Away: Restoring Civility and Other Lost Virtues of Everyday Life

With The Ice Palace That Melted Away, Bill Stumpf, the designer of the first ergonomic chair, addresses the symbiotic relationship between design and the way we live, the often deadening effect of technology, and his hopes for a more humane future. As a designer associated with Herman Miller, Inc., for more than twenty years, Stumpf has been thinking about the profoundly positive or negative effect design can have on our culture. He is both an idealist and a pragmatist, and his wry, anecdotal style gently reveals his shrewd observations about American customs and values.

White

White is not a book about colors. It is, rather, Kenya Hara's attempt to explore the essence of white, which he sees as being closely related to the origin of Japanese aesthetics—symbolizing simplicity and subtlety. The central concepts discussed by Kenya Hara in this publication are emptiness and the absolute void.

Designing Media

Mainstream media, often known simply as MSM, have not yet disappeared in a digital takeover of the media landscape. But the long-dominant MSM--television, radio, newspapers, magazines and books--have had to respond to emergent digital media. Newspapers have interactive websites; television broadcasts over the Internet; books are published in both electronic and print editions.

Designing Design

Representing a new generation of designers in Japan, Kenya Hara (born 1958) pays tribute to his mentors, using long overlooked Japanese icons and images in much of his work. In “Designing Design”, he impresses upon the reader the importance of “emptiness” in both the visual and philosophical traditions of Japan, and its application to design, made visible by means of numerous examples from his own work: Hara for instance designed the opening and closing ceremony programs for the Nagano Winter Olympic Games 1998.

Design Driven Innovation: Changing the Rules of Competition by Radically Innovating What Things Mean

Until now, the literature on innovation has focused either on radical innovation pushed by technology or incremental innovation pulled by the market. In Design-Driven Innovation: How to Compete by Radically Innovating the Meaning of Products, Roberto Verganti introduces a third strategy, a radical shift in perspective that introduces a bold new way of competing. Design-driven innovations do not come from the market; they create new markets. They don't push new technologies; they push new meanings.

Blobjects & Beyond: The New Fluidity in Design

Published in conjunction with a major exhibition at the San Jose Museum of Art, Blobjects and Beyond is the first comprehensive survey of the new fluidity in contemporary design. Whether hard or soft, cheerful or sinister, practical or conceptual, blobjects represent a decisive turn away from the hard edges and angles of conventional modernism. From the iconic iMac to Karim Rashid's evocative plastics to the ergonomic computer mouse, blobjects are the defining objects of our time, molding our visual vocabulary for years to come.

Pages