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thinkdesign2

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Jun 23, 2010
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Anyone know?
 

thinkdesign2

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The OP saw a screenshot of the Moscone Center's list of upcoming bookings. And in this Air forum there was discussion of what such an "Apple" event, booked for a Sunday, might be. Some sort of employees-only event?
 

rdowns

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Jul 11, 2003
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The OP saw a screenshot of the Moscone Center's list of upcoming bookings. And in this Air forum there was discussion of what such an "Apple" event, booked for a Sunday, might be. Some sort of employees-only event?


Pretty sure it's an employee retraining. THey need to learn how to hold their iPhones. :D
 

thinkdesign2

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Jun 23, 2010
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Inquiring minds want to know: Was the tester guy who "lost" the prototype in the beer hall, left or right-handed?

Does Apple have enough left-handed testers? Not kidding. A good design should work equally well for both... perhaps by sensing which lower corner is getting gripped, to shift the antenna to the other side.
 

Huubster

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Mar 1, 2010
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Inquiring minds want to know: Was the tester guy who "lost" the prototype in the beer hall, left or right-handed?

Does Apple have enough left-handed testers? Not kidding. A good design should work equally well for both... perhaps by sensing which lower corner is getting gripped, to shift the antenna to the other side.

Euh I have read a lot of conspiracies and whatever and wanted to hit the reply button to send them into oblivion. And this is just one of them. However, I couldn't resist this time.

When a right handed person operates a touch screen phone the person holds the phone in its left hand.
 

thinkdesign2

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Huubster: Handedness may not refer to which hand holds the phone, but rather to which hand one decides to keep free, for other uses.

Some designs favor righthandedness, some don't. (The ones that don't, are sometimes called "universal".) If you haven't thought of that before... then when people trained in design do think of it... those 2 curcumstances together do not add up to "conspiracy".

One criteria by which any design can be evaluated, is, "How high is the percentage of the public that can use it?"

Hence, the design of a can opener that only 75% of the population is strong enough to use, might be evaluated as less good than the design of a can opener that 90% can use.
 

halledise

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Huubster: Handedness may not refer to which hand holds the phone, but rather to which hand one decides to keep free, for other uses.

Some designs favor righthandedness, some don't. (The ones that don't, are sometimes called "universal".) If you haven't thought of that before... then when people trained in design do think of it... those 2 curcumstances together do not add up to "conspiracy".

One criteria by which any design can be evaluated, is, "How high is the percentage of the public that can use it?"

Hence, the design of a can opener that only 75% of the population is strong enough to use, might be evaluated as less good than the design of a can opener that 90% can use.

lost me with that one … …:confused:
 

thinkdesign

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May 12, 2010
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Huubster: Saying a person is righthanded, is not intended to mean that they do everything from A-Z with the right hand (to respond to the 10:18 remark). Obviously, righthanded people tend to hold the phone with the left.

If (as has been reported), the new phone's antenna works better that way, than if held with the right hand (which some, not all, lefties might do)... then the phone design is asymetrical, or, it is "handed". It favors being held to the left side of one's face, more than being held to the right.

(Best to ignore the "inquiring minds want to know" attempt at humor. Obviously that set off a misunderstanding.)

Let's focus on the user's handedness, not which hand is in use at the moment:

If I designed a corded home telephone receiver which needed to be held in your left hand, and sometimes dropped the calls if held in the right hand ... you'd be amazed at how I managed to take an item which usually works equally well in either hand, and turned it into something that needs to be held in one particular hand; the left. Such a design would be considered inferior, a step backward, from the usual designs for corded handsets whose design doesn't care* which hand it's held in. (* sometimes called "universal"... such as a tool that is not made specifically/only for righthanded use.) Are U with me, so far?

---

People are mostly handed (i.e. not ambidextrous). But not always righthanded. So my point was... industrial design which accomodates those 2 facts, is better than industrial design which doesn't.

If as reported, the new phone's lower left corner is the antenna... that implies an asymetrical antenna design. Which isn't cooperating with ergonomic reality. Cutting to the chase -- If the phone had a similar antenna in the other corner, it might be designed to sense which corner is covered by one's grip, and switch the antenna function to the uncovered corner.

It would then work equally well, held to
the left or right side of one's face.

Which would be better design, than one whose ability to not drop a call requires advice like -- hold it differently (unrealistic - ain't gonna happen, always), or buy a rubber case (shouldn't be necessary).

=====

Ergonomics is an interesting subject. After a burst of activity in the 1950's... it seems to have reached a low level of acceptance among companies that hire the services of industrial designers. For example, look at any anthology on industrial design from the last decade or two, and see if even one chapter integrates ergonomics into the author's overall views on design.

I noticed a few years back, the Spon press (UK) had a couple of titles in print on ergonomics... but that isn't the same as seeing it widely accepted as an integral & necessary part of the overall idea of "design".

I wonder... has Jon Ive (or Jobs) ever said the word "ergonomics" or "ergonomic" in any interview?
 

thinkdesign

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May 12, 2010
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Bottom line -- a phone's design shouldn't drop more calls or less calls, depending on what side of one's face it is held up to.

And a phone design's performance shouldn't need to be rationalised, with statements like "You're holding it wrong.", or "buy a case."

So, this problem something that some future design revisions of many brands of cell phone, may improve upon someday. (Depending in part on what level of prioritisation the companies do or don't assign to it.)

(Please ignore the original post's "inquiring minds" part. I'm learning here that certain kinds of humor that work in a face-to-face conversation, can stir up misunderstanding in the limited format of a blog.)
 

jdechko

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Jul 1, 2004
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Inquiring minds want to know: Was the tester guy who "lost" the prototype in the beer hall, left or right-handed?

Does Apple have enough left-handed testers? Not kidding. A good design should work equally well for both... perhaps by sensing which lower corner is getting gripped, to shift the antenna to the other side.

I'm not sure it matters all that much as the prototype was in a case. But if I had to guess, I'd say he was right-handed.

1) Most people in the world are right handed.
2) Right-handed > left-brained > Engineer as opposed to left-handed > Right-brained > creative.

Just sayin' ;)
 

thinkdesign

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List of creative lefthanded people I haven't met that come to mind: Paul McCartney. List of creative left-handed people I have met: none.

I think all the hormones-levels-in-the-womb and other bio (and other) factors makes this R/L stuff more complex. As does the behavioral phenomenon of righties following that inclination... more consistently than lefties who sometimes learn to, or have to make exceptions. (i.e. - a leftie won't stick out his left hand to shake hands with a stranger, because s/he knows that most are righties. If driving an American left-wheel car means shifting with the right, then - no choice).

Of course all cell phones have a left/right to the controls' locations. Volume on the left, etc. No mirror-image versions are sold for lefties, AFAIK. Anyone seen any?

Years ago computer-prosteletizers (sp?) claimed that computer-controlled mass production would usher in an glorious age of mass-customisation. For example, instead of tables from big manufacturers being all standardised at 30" high, a special order for 29" or 31" height would be "easy" to accomodate, for no extra charge. (So said Bruce Hannah, very sucessful industrial designer and former chair of one of the Industrial Design schools, 1998, at the International Contemporary Furnitute Fair / ICFF, New York. The naive design students in the audience all went "Ooooh!")

Baloney. I'm still waiting to see a single example of that happening. Heck, decades ago it was not uncommon to walk into a car dealer and order your car custom-built, with the inside and outside colors exactly as you wanted, and the exact list of options you wanted. My folks even did this with Dodge's cheapest-of-the-cheap econo model in 1964. Now, do any car makers offer to do that? The trend is towards "pick from what's here on the lot." ... so getting a color you don't want, or options you didn't want, is par for the course. Another computerisation prediction bites the dust. I'll have to CC Mr. Lanier on that :eek:
 

jdechko

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Jul 1, 2004
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For clarification, I was just kidding around with my post. I know several creative people who are right handed, my wife included.
 
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