As someone who is in the middle of a career change and soon to be looking for a design job, I was particularly interested in what Haney said about the kinds of people who work at fuseproject. One thing that he said struck me in particular: since there is basically an ample supply of people with the basic design skillset (drawing, ideation, software, etc.), individuals distinguish themselves through aspects such as teamwork ability, presentation skills, and business acumen. I was personally glad to hear this since I see myself as having a marginal basic skill set, which of course I am still working hard to develop, but strong in the other areas he mentioned based on previous professional experience.

Davis also spoke about the design process at the studio. Project teams are composed based on interest and skill specialization, with a large group initially working on the conceptual stages of the project together, and then smaller groups breaking off to further develop specific concepts. Each designer is working on multiple projects at once (I think he said that they currently have about 25 active projects and 29 total employees), with project lifespans from 10 days to 14 months. Overall, I got a very positive vibe from the collaborative atmosphere of the studio, which reminded me of some of the better days at the old dot-com shop.

Perhaps the most important thing that I took away from the visit in a practical sense was Haney’s emphasis of the importance of the design process book as a companion to one’s portfolio. He mentioned “inches thick” process books that he would refer to during interviews in order to back up and expand upon specific questions or comments arising from a review of the more polished portfolio booklet. This made me realize that my process materials (sketches, notes, clippings, ideas) need to be 1) much greater in quantity, and 2) better organized. I’ll have to place a lot more focus on this as I work through the final creative work project for my master’s degree.

This is a project for one of my design seminars, for which we were asked to create a 5″x7″ postcard that reflects our “cultural identity”. Rather than taking the obvious route of addressing my mixed ethnicity, I decided instead to focus on the parts of my identity that relate to hacker culture.

I still remember the day sometime around 1981 when my dad brought home our first home computer, an Apple ][+. One of the first things we did with it was to burn and install a custom video ROM EEPROM chip so that we could type using lower-case letters, which the default setup didn’t allow. Several years later I got my first modem, a “blazing fast” 1200 baud unit, which allowed me to explore the pre-Internet world of electronic BBS systems.

Contrary to the popular belief founded largely through mass media, the term “hacker” should not necessarily be taken to mean someone who is breaking through security systems and otherwise wreaking havoc on electronic resources. Originally, the term was meant to refer to highly skilled computer programmers and technicians who push the bounds of possibility in their craft. Incidentally, many hackers have historically turned at least part of their attention to pushing these boundaries in terms of gaining access to systems which would otherwise be closed to them, which probably accounts for the term’s commonly held negative connotations. This wikipedia article contains a good discussion of the subject.

At any rate, I spent a much of junior high and high school immersed in the hacker culture of the time, and while I never did anything particularly outrageous (or clever, for that matter), I still have a fondness now for those “good old days” before college and the Internet.

For the postcard, I tried to convey the sense that I had of what it meant to be a hacker during that time. I traced a photo of myself at a computer terminal, slouched back in a casual yet intent posture–this isn’t meant to represent someone working at an office, after all. The figure is intentionally placed in solitide, to reflect how I spent most of my time, yet connected via the various wires and cables as the sole conduits to the urban landscape (San Francisco, of course) above. I didn’t want to get too literal with the notion of being “underground”, so I hope that the composition doesn’t push it too far in that sense.

The single line of text on the piece is meant to look like a Unix command line, evoking the somewhat obfuscated feeling of the pre-Windows/Macintosh environment. The term “hacker 2.0″ is intended to represent the idea that while I certainly can’t make any claims to a member of the first generation of real hackers, my roots and experiences go back far enough that I might be able to make some claim to being part of “version 2.0″ thereof. Finally, the use of l33t-speak for the work “hacker” is an obligatory nod to the ridiculous way that we typed in those days.

In “Ethnography and Critical Design Practice”, Tim Plowman introduces ethnography as an anthropological research method that has also been adopted by designers working in fields such as industrial, graphic, and computer interface design. However, during this pragmatic importation process, ethnography and other social science theory and methods tend to be socially decontextualized and commodified. The design disciplines, Plowman observes, have typically followed a narrow path in this sense and make little use of the social theory upon which these tools are based (Plowman, 2003).

Plowman goes on to suggest that the insights of French social historian Michel de Certeau may be worth attention from those in the design profession. De Certeau’s theories focused on the ordinary practices of people in everyday life, in which each individual uses readymade objects to become the “producer” of his or her own unique lifestyle. This idea seems to strike close to the heart of open source design, a key precept of which revolves around the idea of the user being able to assemble collections of flexible and interconnectable components to create new, customized objects with specific uses. In fact, I was pleased to find that Plowman even muses, “how can we design artifacts so they radiate the degrees of freedom necessary to enhance the self-invention that de Certeau observed? Can the cross pollination between these professions move toward the introduction of emancipatory content into designed artifacts?” (Plowman, 2003).

Plowman’s application of de Certeau’s social theory to the design disciplines recalls the concept of “modularization” which Hewlett Packard emerging markets specialist Ami Mehta referred to in a recent discussion. Mehta spoke of the idea of technology sold in small units such that they could be connected together to make something bigger; these interoperable pieces allow the user to create his or her own products (personal communication, March 10, 2006).

Many in the so-called “maker” community, composed largely of technology enthusiasts who modify readymade products to upgrade their performance or perform new tasks altogether, propose taking the modularization concept one step further. Readymade products, they argue, ought to be accessible to those who want to open them up, take them apart, and see how they work, as opposed to locking the user out. Dale Dougherty, editor of Make magazine, recently suggested that product manufacturers should “look at the lessons of open source, which provides access to the underlying source code. When a system is open and easily modified, it anticipates adaptation to a variety of uses that were never considered in the product’s original design” (Dougherty, 2005). Another issue of the same publication contained a “Maker’s Bill of Rights” regarding product design, with directives ranging from “cases shall be easy to open” to “standard connectors shall have pinouts defined” (Jalopy, 2005).

The term “open source design” does not turn up much using conventional research methods, but I have been gradually been able to center in on a solid definition of the concept by drawing bits and pieces from the array of materials, experiences, and ideas I’ve encountered during my design education. I hope to have enough to write a formal journal article on the subject in the coming months.

References

Dougherty, D. (2005). Maker Friendly. Make, 3, 7.

Jalopy, M. (2005). The Maker’s Bill of Rights. Make, 4, 157.

Plowman, T. (2003). Ethnography and Critical Design Practice. In Design Artifacts, Culture and the Study of Imponderabilia (pp. 1-18). San Francisco: Cheskin Research.

Everest and Jennings’ dumping of low-quality, proprietary wheelchairs into third world markets over the last 50 years provides an illustration of how a product designed for the Western market, where paved surfaces are common and medical costs and expenses are high, can be completely inappropriate for foreign markets in poorer countries. As Ricardo Gomes of the Design Center for Global Needs and others point out, many of the products and services found in Western marketplaces have been designed for the standards of the (white, relatively wealthy) consumers who have historically dominated those markets cit_bf(1997)cit_af ref_bf(Ricardo Gomes 1997 ref_num99)ref_af. Often times, Gomes continues, it is the local, community-based organization (CBO) that is most able and motivated to respond to the needs of the local population, possibly laying the groundwork to attract private sector initiatives. This “bottom-up business approach” describes Whirlwind’s model, which focuses on providing designs and training to local manufacturers so that they can establish their own self-sufficient production facilities.

The core Whirlwind design has been customized to meet local needs in various markets and has reincorporated some of those changes into its own evolution. Examples include the development of a new kind of shaft bearing utilizing cut nails instead of metal balls in Africa, where bicycle bearings were prohibitively expensive, and a Russian design that allows the wheelchair to partially collapse while the rider is still in it to fit into narrow state-standardized elevator openings.

Such designs strike one as the sorts of innovations that could only have come from the designers having first-hand experience living in the target market. This calls to mind architect Christopher Day’s notion of an inhabitant of a place possessing unique and germane knowledge of that environment, knowledge which can be inaccessible to the outside observer or design professional cit_bf(2003)cit_af ref_bf(Christopher Day 2003 ref_num100)ref_af. Indeed, Day’s concept of participatory design seems to apply here as well; in a sense, Whirlwind may provide the core design and training to a new manufacturer, but from that point on acts as an equal participant in the customization of that design for the specific local market.

Whirlwind’s approach also brings with it important lessons in terms of design education. Design professional and educator Leslie Speer brings up the idea of phenomenology, in which a researcher tries to experience reality through the eyes of another, as an important possible component in preparing designers to design responsibly “for another culture, especially when it is so far away, and so different from the western culture that we live in” cit_bf(n.d.)cit_af ref_bf(Leslie Speer ref_num98)ref_af. By introducing students not only to the experience of working from a wheelchair, but also to the various practical local issues and problems posed in adapting the Whirlwind model to various markets, Hotchkiss’ project provides unique lessons to future product designers in preparing them to design “for the other six billion.”

References

Day, C. (2003). Why: Community Design and Practice. In Consensus Design: Socially Inclusive Process (pp. 9-30). Oxford: Architectural Press.

Gomes, R. (1997). Design Re-Defined: Profiting from Community and Social Change. Paper presented at the 3rd International Conference on Design Education in Developing Countries, Pretoria, South Africa.

Speer, L. (n.d.) Walk a Mile in Their Shoes: Cultural Immersion and the Design Process. Unpublished manuscript.ref_end

Since I have a third machine running linux and MythTV that is on all the time anyway, I decided to set up a Samba share on that machine and make that my work files’ primary repository. An added advantage of the Samba configuration is that I can use rdiff-backup for easy remote backups of the repository. Configuring Samba was relatively painless, and far simpler than I remember it being from a few years ago.

Problems arose when I attempted to set up Offline Files on my laptop to create a local mirror of the files on the Samba share. For some reason, once I activated Offline Files on the laptop, it had trouble consistently connecting to the file server on my home network. Often it would only show the cached, offline version of the share even though it was clearly connected to the network and able to resolve and ping the file server. Restarting the laptop solved the problem about half the time, which suggests to me that the problem may have something to do with a race condition between connecting to the wireless network and/or Samba, and determining the Offline Files state upon startup.

Offline Files comes with a couple other annoyances that made it a less than optimal solution. For one thing, the local cache is kept in a folder at the root of the C: drive, which can only be relocated using a special tool on the Windows administrator tools CD. Since I normally keep my OS and program installations on C: and all data on D:, I don’t care for anything that keeps user data on C:. In addition, Offline Files has a habit of being somewhat noisy when it can’t find a network share, which can be distracting when you’re away from your home network. There is a way to change behavior based on which network interface is being used, but that didn’t help me since I use the wireless interface both at home and at school.

Ultimately I gave up on Samba in favor of a free (for personal use) piece of software called GoodSync from Siber Systems. Siber makes RoboForm, a very useful and well-regarded Windows tool for password management. I chose GoodSync (despite it silly name) because I am generally happy with the way RoboForm works, and so far it has fit my needs perfectly. And ever since I turned Offline Files off, my laptop has had absolutely no problem connecting to the Samba share at home.

GoodSync has a number of options for both one-way and bidirectional synchronization, and supports sophisticated options and filters for which files get synchronized. It is entirely transaction based at a file level and keeps its own database of states and changes instead of just looking at modification dates. The “analyze” feature tells you exactly what changes will be made upon synchronization, which is helpful when configuring complicated jobs. Synchronization can be set up to occur automatically similar to the way Offline Files works, but for now I’m doing it manually whenever I know a synch is necessary.

The only issue I’ve had is that GoodSync leaves _SYNCAPP directories at the bases of the file hierarchies that it’s synchronizing. Presumably this is where it keeps its internal database. While this may have been the best solution in terms of organizing and protecting the database, the presence of these files is distracting. A quick change to my Samba configuration allowed me to hide these directories automatically. However, I’m still not sure whether they ought to be included in the repository backups.

Update 3/08/06: I contacted Siber to ask about this and received a reply in broken English that didn’t really answer my question, just saying that the _SYNCAPP folders were important. I’m going to have to do some tests on my own to see if the metadata is rebuilt automatically if lost.

The real reason I chose the Dell, though, is the screen. It’s a 15.4 inch widescreen WUXGA LCD panel, which has an outstanding resolution of 1920×1200 pixels, which until only recently was unheard of for any consumer-priced LCD display, much less one on a laptop. I don’t know how Dell did it, but they were offering the WUXGA screen as an option for only $150 more than the default 1280×800 screen, which for me was a no-brainer.

I had been somewhat concerned that the high resolution would make text too small considering that most screens of the same physical size only support 1280×800, which provides approximately 72 DPI. This screen is fitting 50% more pixels in the same length on each axis, which bumps the DPI up to 108. Then again, I’m one of those relative old-timers brought up on UNIX workstations running X-windows on gigantic high-resolution displays, so I don’t mind tiny text in exchange for screen real estate.

My worries were put to rest as soon as I fired up the machine, however. Although the text is tiny to be sure, it’s perfectly readable for my eyes and very sharp. The screen’s brightness seems very good overall, and I haven’t detected any dead pixels. Dell pre-sets the default Windows installation to enlarged screen fonts for high resolution displays so that text comes out looking more like 72 DPI size, but I got rid of that setting as soon as I reinstalled Windows, which happened about five minutes after I first powered up the new machine.

Who put all this crap on my laptop?

I had heard tales of Dell’s prolific preinstalled bloatware, but I still wasn’t ready for the sheer volume of crap that commenced in pummeling Windows performace during and after boot-up. The barrage of application windows and configuration popups could only be described as comical. I knew I’d be reinstalling Windows when I ordered the machine, however, since I can get Windows XP at a substantial student discount. I wished I’d been able to order the machine with no OS at all, but settled for the least expensive option of XP Media Center Edition instead.

A clean install of Windows XP Pro went smoothly, and was greatly aided by Dell’s resource CD, which detects the peripherals and launches the appropriate driver installers.

Industrial and interface design

For the most part, I prefer the Inspiron’s 6000 design over the more common black Dell laptop (Latitude?) design. The outer enclosure is metallic silver plastic with white plastic trim, which while less preferable than a metal alloy material still feels relatively well constructed. I do feel as though the glossy white trim detracts from and cheapens the design by some degree. It sort of looks like the designers were going for an iPod aesthetic but it just doesn’t work in this case. The trim does break of the visual mass of what might otherwise be large portions of the enclosure, however when the laptop is closed I think the striping effect may cause it to look a bit thicker.

The keyboard provides good tactile feedback and is easy to type on, although a few times I have been thrown off by the placement of the page up/down cluster, which is separated from the arrow keys. There is no numeric keypad, although you can hit Num Lock and hold down Fn to use a cluster of the regular keyboard as a numeric keypad instead (good luck getting that to be anything but completely awkward, though). Excessive heat underneath the spot where one’s wrists rest while typing does not seem to be a problem.

The touch pad seems to work well for the most part, although I almost always use a small USB wireless mouse instead. The vertical scroll section on the right edge is a nice touch and feels very natural to use, although I question the value of dedicating the real estate for a horizontal scroll counterpart on the bottom.

An attractive round power button is centrally located above the keyboard, with the standard caps lock, scroll lock and num lock indicators on a small panel to the left. These indicators are joined by indictors for the wireless network interface and Bluetooth, both of which I presume to mean that the interfaces are powered on but not necessarily connected. These indicators could be helpful in terms of power management. I would have liked to see a wireless on/off hard key, however–instead, Dell provides a soft key control for the wireless (Fn+F2). Unfortunately, in my experiments I have not been able to get that control to work until the Windows logon screen appears. In most cases this wouldn’t be a problem, but a hard key without dependence on Windows drivers would be preferable on airplanes and in other environments in which it’s important for the wireless receiver to always be turned off.

A set of media buttons are present on the front bezel between the speaker grilles, and are accessible even when the laptop is closed (I suppose this is so that you can use the Latitude as a gigantic iPod?). They look good for the most part, although the icon for the leftmost button, mute, is badly designed and unclear. What’s more, the volume control and mute buttons don’t appear to work until after Windows has already started and you’ve logged in, which doesn’t help if you’re trying to suppress the initial Windows startup sound. Fortunately, an alternate method of muting (Fn+End) does seem to work at the login screen (before the Windows sound plays). This was surprising to me, since it implies that the hard keys are more reliant on Windows than the soft controls.

I should note that the observations above about the wireless and sound controls were made after I had already reinstalled Windows. Although I’m pretty sure that I properly reinstalled all the Dell device drivers, it’s still possible that the controls would behave differently on a stock Dell installation.

The various I/O ports on the sides and back of the machine seem generally well placed. I appreciate the fact that there are two separate pairs of USB ports, one on the back and another on the right, since many USB peripherals (keychain drives, mouse dongles, etc.) block the adjacent port when plugged in.

There is a complete absence of legacy ports (serial, parallel, and PS/2), which helps to reduce clutter and eliminates the need for one of those flimsy rear port doors. This lack of legacy ports may need to be taken into consideration by those expecting to be able to use older peripherals, machinery and engineering equipment, however–for example, I’m not going to be able to connect directly to our 3D scanner and some CNC equipment at school, which still use serial RS-232 connections despite being recently manufactured.

The high-resolution screen, as I mentioned earlier, is beautiful. The whites are whiter than my (cheap) desktop LCD monitor, and brightness seems relatively good when running off wall power. The screen’s surface falls in between my previous laptop’s glare-reducing matte finish and the ultra-glossy screens found on newer Toshibas. Text and graphics are visible from a wide degree of angles. I have not yet tried to use the machine outside, but I don’t expect good contrast in sunlight since that is an inherent caveat to TFT technology.

Performance

I’m going to leave the hardcore benchmarking and battery timing stuff to other reviews; suffice it to say that performance is quite sufficient for the CAD and graphics tasks for which I bought this machine. SolidWorks, the Adobe CS2 suite, and Office all seem to run well. I ordered the least expensive 512MB configuration because Dell seems to overcharge for RAM, and I’m planning to swap out one of the 256MB sticks for a 1GB stick from Newegg.

I did install World of Warcraft and tried the 1920×1200 display mode, which looked beautiful but was a bit sluggish–by no means a slideshow, however. A lower resolution widescreen mode (1280×800, I think) still looks very good and runs smoothly. Normally I don’t like to run games at anything but an LCD monitor’s native resolution, but the WUXGA screen’s DPI is so high that I hardly notice that the image is being scaled up.

Conclusions

Pros:

• Industrial design is a step up from the plain black Dell notebook, although the white trim detracts somewhat
• Well organized and uncluttered I/O ports
• Dell Resource CD makes it easy to install device drivers after reinstalling Windows
• Quiet and efficient cooling system avoids hot-spots under palms
• Beautiful, high-resolution WUXGA display available as an inexpensive upgrade

Cons

• Amount of bloatware crap installed by default verges on comical; reinstalling Windows is imperative
• Wireless interface and mute/volume controls appear to rely on Windows drivers
• No legacy ports, which is really only an issue if you need to attach to certain types of equipment and can be considered a plus otherwise

Finally, I should note that I got a good amount of useful information both before and after my purchase on the NotebookReview.com Dell forum. There seem to be some well-informed folks there who respond to questions patiently and quickly. NotebookReview also has a Dell coupons page, which can save you quite a bit if there happens to be a good one available.

Product design professor Simon Bolton notes that the rapid rise of Asian markets and production power is having an enormous effect on global competition, in effect neutralizing western companies’ traditional market advantages. He writes, “to compete on a global scale, companies will have to leverage an advantage by creating and exploiting intangible intellectual assets such as brand name, knowledge bases, product-related services and innovative responses to customer needs.” Design, he argues, will play a critical role in this transformation, making it imperative for designers to acquire “a sound understanding of cultural differences so that we can develop product experiences that are appropriate for different cultures and can adapt to local issues” (2004, p. 26).

The idea of adapting a core design to the needs of specific users or markets seems to be a common theme among writers addressing recent changes in design philosophy. Citing Marco Diani’s 1992 text Immateriality Takes Command, design professor Ricardo Gomes explains that the practice of design is shifting from emphasis on one single finished form to that of an initial form plus a broad field of modifications and customizations, “accentuating ‘flexibility versus complexity’—few ideas, many variations” (1997, p. 1). Historically, Gomes argues, products introduced into the so-called global marketplace have brought with them a standard “global identity” which overshadow the unique values and identity of products that represent smaller, non-western countries, and “leave no place for cultural variance” (p. 2).

Bolton and others seem to argue that if for no other reason, this western-dominated approach to global product design and marketing is threatened by the rise in influence and manufacturing power of emerging markets such as China. The question is whether the rise of these non-western global players will alter the globally homogenized industrial product archetype, or merely become a part of it. Gomes, Diani and Bolton each suggest that designers in the new, post-industrial society will focus more on product “customization” rather than “standardization” as in the old industrial society.

This scenario also seems to fit in well with the increasingly popular notions of universal design. As Imrie and Hall explain in Inclusive Design, advocates of universal design prefer that a product be designed with accessibility at its core rather than being added on as an afterthought to the core design; the latter, so-called “compensatory” design method acts to draw attention to the user’s disabilities (1991). While one might argue that the “customization” approach of post-industrial design is more conducive to the former model of adding accessibility to a preconceived core design, I would suggest that the contemporary designer must instead take universal design principles into consideration when developing the core design itself; this, in turn, will make the subsequent customization and localization for various user groups all that much easier. Indeed, “a remit of universal design is promoting the flexibility, adaptability and interchangeability of fittings and fixtures to ensure ‘an adaptable environment, one that can be easily adjusted to meet the needs of any person’” (Imrie et al., 1991, p. 16).

I believe that the combined influences of globalization and the need for universal design will push successful designers to incorporate flexibility and adaptability into their core designs. This will allow products to meet both the needs of diverse global markets as well as those of individual users with special needs in those markets.

References

• Imrie, R., & Hall, P. (1991). Inclusive design: Designing and developing accessible environments. London: Spon Press.
• Gomes, R. (1997, April). Liberating the cultural variance of global design. Paper presented at the IDSA Design Education Conference, Washington, D.C.
• Bolton, S. (2004, Winter). Asian influence on European design education: Same recipe, different flavors. Innovation, 25-29.

The series is available at Newgrounds as well as on David’s homepage. Not recommended for children.