Software Physics

I’ve recently been trying to understand design better; not software design but the ability to build things (pages, machines, whatever…) that are easy (a joy?) to use. I’ve started reading about graphic design and, while I’ll never be any kind of artist, there’s not as much black art there as I had thought, just purposeful and disciplined application some fairly straightforward principles.

Anyway, I just bought an iMac at least in part because of Apple’s attention to design. One thing really impressed me the other day.

The iMac has a little remote control used to adjust the volume and navigate some of the out-of-the-box apps like iTunes. I had it sitting on my desk and thought “there should be a little holder for this on the side of the computer”. While I was thinking this, I was sliding the remote on the side of the machine visualizing that the holder should be somewhere about…here. The remote stuttered as I was moving it and I could feel a little magnet inside the device catch some hidden piece of metal under the plastic casing just where I thought the holder should be. I let go and it stuck right where I wanted it. Not only had they anticipated the need to stow the remote but they had done it in a way that didn’t add an ugly clip or extra clutter to the case and was so natural/right to use that I discovered — what’s arguably a fairly non-obvious feature — without instruction. Maybe I’m easily impressed/amused but I thought that was really great.

I want the stuff I build to be more like that.

FWIW: A book I’ve started with is “The Non-Designers Design Book, Second Edition“. It’s short and concise and has some really useful information.