Man-Machine Interfaces. Learning From the Death of Air France 447.

Mai 10th, 2012 • Tech, Tools
Tags: Air France, Design, Flying, Interfaces, Planes, Strategy, Tech, Tools, UI, UX, World

I don’t like to fly. Being constantly quite anxious in planes I once started to try to understand plane crashes. The objective: to get to the roots of my fear. I was particularly moved by and interested in the horrific crash of Air France 447 in 2009 that cost 228 people’s lifes.

After recovering the lost flight recorder after months of desperate search from the depths of the Atlantic one thing became terribly clear: the series of flaws, mistakes, and misconceptions that lead to the disaster were connected (among other things) with the user interface design of the super modern Airbus Airbus A330-200.

At heart, the problem was one of feedback. In a world of flight dominated by computers, Airbus designs its planes with less tactile response (in the name of pilot comfort) and less potentially overwhelming information (in the name of clearer pilot decisions). In the case of Flight 447, some of the plane’s ducts froze up, removing the information of airspeed, and forcing the plane out of autopilot. In response, a pilot named Bonin pulled up on his stick, gaining a bit of altitude to, presumably, safely keep the plane in the sky. (via)

He didn’t.

The story of this fatal flight should make anyone interested in user interface design think.

Time to share four recent links on this topic – one of them is actually an interview with a friend of mine who is a pilot himself.

• Fastcodesign: How lousy cockpit design crashed an Airbus killing 228 people
• davaidavai.com: Hooked. Alex Wipf and his theory of flight.
• Worldhum: Malcolm Gladwell on Aviation Safety and Security

Just another chapter in the neverending story of how we expect technology to be fail-proof. Most of the time it is. Up to the point where technology and humans interact. Titanic anyone?

Anrealage. An 8-Bit Showroom in Tokyo.

Oktober 10th, 2011 • Experimental, Retail
Tags: anrealage, Cool, Creativity, Design, diesign, Experimental, Fashion, Ideas, japan, Kunihiko Morinaga, Lifestyle, People, Presentation, Retail, tokyo, visual, World

8-Bit? Yawn. We have seen pretty much everything in 8 Bit already. Except a store concept. Experimental Japanese designer Kunihiko Morinaga has built this showroom for the F/W collection of his label Anrealage in Tokyo. I think 8-bit is pretty close to getting buried very soon – but I think Mr Morinaga’s showroom is a fantastic final scream.

Read more »

Best of Delicious. My favorite Design Pattern Gallery Links.

Oktober 5th, 2011 • Links
Tags: Delicious Stacks, Design, Design Patterns, Links

Did I ever say how much I love delicious and how happy I am that it was saved from Yahoo? The latest moves by the new owners Hurley and Chen point into the right direction: An overhaul for one of the oldest social bookmarking platforms is more than necessary. And the new Stacks feature (=a social bookmarking playlist) is great. It just needs an embedding and commenting function.

So after saving a million links on delicious I would like to share some of my favorite marketing/tech/digital-related ones here. Today I would like to share my Design-Pattern-Stack with whoever is interested in it. I guess most of you know what Design Pattern are: Standard design solutions for standard interaction problems. So feel free to check out my most favorite links to Design Pattern solutions saved as a Stack. And I am happy if you comment which links I have missed.

My Blog of the Week: The Art of the Menu.

August 9th, 2011 • Blogs
Tags: Blogs, Cool, Creativity, Design, visual

It was always an underrated communicative discipline: The Art of the Menu Art has now become a topic for a blog run by Under Consideration. The guys usually chronicle corporate and brand identity work. But I guess the Art of the Menu is very related. Check out the site here…

Graphic Design. How would you like yours?

Juli 31st, 2011 • Allgemein
Tags: Design, Diagram, Truth, World

The following diagram is also valid for any other service (via tastefullyoffensive)

Soulbot 3000. Looks great, safely contains human Souls.

Juli 20th, 2011 • Experimental
Tags: Cool, Creativity, Design, Experimental, Future, Ideas, Presentation, products, video

They say that we all lose 21 grams at the exact moment of death. They say that it’s the weight of the human soul. Soulbot 3000 is now able to contain this amorphous mass: The Soul. Thanks to Andreas Wannerstedt for making Soulbot 3000 possible.

(via Fubiz)

Sweet. Sagres sculptures a Chocolate Website.

Juni 15th, 2011 • Experimental, We like
Tags: Beer, Brands, Cool, Creativity, Design, Funny, Ideas, Interface, Sagres, visual, We like, Website

I am not entirely sure how I should feel about a chocolate-flavored stout. But at least it’s a novelty – both as a product as well as an interactive experience. Portugese brewer Sagres has just launched a website made of real chocolate to promote its new “Sagres preta chocolate”. To make the interactive experience become as choco as possible the whole website was designed and sculptured by chocolatier Victor Nunes before it was photographed to become components for the online venue. (via adweek)

Here is the making of

Here is the beautiful result.

HORT. An Interview with Eike Koenig.

März 14th, 2011 • Friends, Interview, We like
Tags: Agencies, Berlin, Cool, Creativity, Design, eike koenig, Friends, hort, Interview, People, We like

Many of my readers probably know Eike Koenig and his Berlin-based design studio HORT. And some of you may probably know Eike personally. Eike hasn’t just created one of the most innovative design studios in Europe, he has also created a professional creative playground for himself. An extremely interesting guy to have a conversation with and definitely one of the most fearless designers in Europe.

This is an interview of Latvian design blog Plikums with Eike who visited Riga’s Latvian Art Directors Club and talked a bit about his aspirations in work and design (via Better taste than sorry).

Interface Design. A Day in 2014.

September 6th, 2010 • 5 comments Tech, Tools
Tags: Case Study, Cool, Creativity, Design, Experimental, Future, Ideas, Interfaces, Media, Mobile, Prediction, Presentation, Study, Tech, Tools, Touch, Usability, UX, visual, World

We all love interface design studies, don’t we? Notorious Swedish UX company TAT.SE has conducted an experiment in open innovation of User Interfaces. And the winner is this little case study staging a possible day in 2014. Nice one. I want the mirror (via).

Comic Sans. There is absolutely nothing left to say about it anymore.

Juli 20th, 2010 • 8 comments Underway, We like
Tags: Comic Sans, Cool, Design, Funny, Truth, Underway, World

Thank you reddit for linking to this wonderful pic on Passiveagressivenotes.com. I am afraid there is nothing left to add.