Understanding Industrial Design

The lines between physical and digital world are blurring. Everyday items such as a clocks, maps and books are available to people in both a physical and digital form.

As the digital and physical worlds of products combine, UX designers and Industrial Designers benefit from collaboration. Designers of digital and physical must understand aspects of both to create a product that embodies the best of both worlds.

Understanding Industrial Design: Principals for UX and Interaction Design by Simon and Kuen Chang is a helpful introduction to industrial design. This book discusses factors such as material selection, sustainability, weight and sense of touch. Just about every page on this book has super cool example of industrial design. Each product is accompanied with a color photo and an explanation for why the product was built that way.

OP-1 Synthesizer – with 3D Printable Replaceable Parts

The book covers industrial design fundamentals such as endurance, clarity of purpose and sustainability. It also illustrates the importance of aesthetic beauty, playfulness and thoughtfulness in design. The authors advocate for creating beautiful designed products for people who need assistance with daily activities and medical devices.

Lilly Savvio Huma Pen for Insulin

Researchers found that diabetes patients view their insulin pens as “a tangible expression of their medical condition and therapy”. When dining out, people prefer using an insulin pen that blends in like other accessories. A pleasing design, like this, conveys different social and emotional messages to the patient and those around them. Providing patients with beautiful, thoughtful devices that they appreciate and enjoy is a sign of respect.

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Visualizing World Health

Hans Rosling’s 200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes is a great example of an entertaining and informative visualization!

Designing Future Healthcare

Dr. Eric Topol, just came out with the book- “The Patient Will See You Now: The Future of Medicine is in Your Hands”. If you are interested in how healthcare is changing (for better or worse) in the coming years this book is a must read.

The Patient Will See You Now  empowers its’ readers to take charge and improve their own health, and is chock full references and specific examples of how medicine is affected by technology.  There are amazing tech advances that are lowering healthcare costs and making procedures much better and less invasive.

Dr. Topol explains why the stethoscope should be replaced by a smartphone, and the benefits of knowing your own personalized GIS. Smartphones can capture blood pressure, heart rhythm, respiratory rate, oxygen concentration, galvanic skin response, body temperature, eye pressure, blood glucose, brain waves, intracranial pressure, muscle movements and much more.  Smart phones can be enabled to diagnose certain cancers through patient’s breath. Nano chips, pocket devices for ultrasound and x-rays (cheaper and less radiation), genome sequencing (cheaper and better too)…

It explains topics like “Open Access” in Medicine. Open Access medicine speeds up finding cures and courses of treatment, lowers costs, and improves patient treatment and outcomes.

For all the benefits listed, the book also delves into the problems (and some solutions) associated with each new technology such as privacy problems associated with “Open Access” Medicine.

This book brings up a treasure trove of problems that will need to be solved in order to make the tech work best for people.

Thinking about Thumbs

Luke Wroblewski tweeted 3 links about Designing for the thumb:

1. Designing for Thumb Flow  features video that shows how you use polar with one thumb.

2. Scott Hurff explains how the “thumb hook” gesture used often in Facebook’s new Paper app might drive the sale of arthritis medication in a few years. He then shares a Thumb Zone template to use when designing for the most comfortable area for one handed touch.

3. Michael Oh demonstrated the Vice Versa UI pattern that bisects the screen diagonally and allows for a more natural thumb motion. This works best for two choices that are the opposite of each other.