Design Lens

2017 BMW Motorrad Concept Link - The Reinvention of Urban Mobility on Two Wheels. 

At the Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este 2017, the BMW Group is presenting its vision of zero-emission urban mobility on two wheels: the BMW Motorrad Concept Link. Inspired by the BMW Motorrad Vision Next 100, the design study unites digital connectivity with the demands of urban mobility on two wheels. It treads new paths and moves beyond established conventions both with regard to design and technology. 

 “The BMW Motorrad Concept Link stands for a new understanding of urban mobility. It links the digital and analogue world and places the focus on the rider and his mobility needs. In the way it links functionality and digitalisation it performs both as a means of transport as well as a communication device.  For me the BMW Motorrad Concept Link, with its timeless and reduced style, is more than a concept – it is rather a symbol for a new era.” explains Edgar Heinrich, Head of Design of BMW Motorrad. 

 The special character of the concept vehicle becomes clear right away thanks to the completely new design language. “The BMW Motorrad Concept Link is not based on today’s concepts, but rather meets the basic functionality needs, the technical architecture and the digital reality of today’s users. The technical realities of electric drive – such as the flat energy packs in the underfloor and the compact drive on the rear wheel – allowed us to create a highly distinctive design which shapes a new segment. The resulting expressive power of the vehicle is absolutely new for BMW Motorrad and breaks with all conventional viewing patterns.” explains Alexander Buckan, Head of Vehicle Design at BMW Motorrad. 

The low-slung, stretched body and the flat seat combined with the diagonally rising front section create a modern yet distinctive silhouette. The use of colours emphasises this even further: the front trim in Liquid Metal Titanium contrasts with the semi-matt black body. The colours are oriented diagonally which underlines the dynamic potential of the BMW Motorrad Concept Link. 

The Hidden Geometry Ruling The World

PRINCETON ARCHITECTURAL PRESS REISSUES BRUNO MUNARI'SSQUARE, CIRCLE, AND TRIANGLE BOOKS.

During his prolific career, Bruno Munari expressed his creative vision through painting, sculpture, film, and photography, but books were his greatest medium. Three of his most famous publications are Square,Circle, and Triangle, which explore the world's basic geometric building blocks. Munari unpacks how mathematicians, designers, architects, and artists have used shapes from ancient times to today. In doing so, he demystifies why our environments look like they do.

"The square is the finest expression of a spatial idea complete in itself," Munari writes. "It's structural possibilities have helped artists and architects of all generations and styles by giving them a harmonic skeleton to which to apply an artistic construction." The shape was used as a basis for Babylonian cities, he reveals, and Egyptians used it to lay the groundwork for their art. The organic growth of shells follows a logarithmic spiral, which is derived from a square. A silver square was even worn during the Dark Ages because it was believed to ward off the plague.

Then there is the circle, the shape of all things spiritual. "While the square is closely linked to man and his constructions, to architecture, harmonious structures, writing, and so on, the circle is related to the divine," Munari writes. Consider the symbolism of rings and halos; how circles are used in folk dancing; how rotating discs create optical illusions; and how mathematicians have explored the proportions and ratios of a perfect circle.

Munari's final installment centers on the equilateral triangle: "the most stable form with its fixed structure of three equal sides and three equal angles. Its distinctive structure means we find it in lots of complex structures and in many mineral and vegetable forms and structures found in nature ranging from the clover to the oleander." The inside of a banana and cucumber are essentially divided into triangles; the shape is found in street signs and logos; and triangles are found in traditional Japanese weaving, among other places.

The bigger takeaway here is that geometry—typically a dry topic for anyone who's taken a high school math class—takes on new import when seen through Munari's culture-rich lens. Shapes draw out our shared experiences, telling us where we've been, and where we're headed.

Why White Space Is Crucial To UX Design 

WHITE SPACE ISN'T JUST ABOUT AESTHETICS, IT'S THE KEY TO SUCCESSFUL USER INTERFACES. HERE'S HOW IT REALLY WORKS.

WRITTEN BY Jerry Cao, Kamil Zieba + Matt Ellis

All good visual artists understand the importance of negative space, the empty area that draws attention to, and accentuates, the actual subject. Negative space (the artistic equivalent of a designer’s white space) is like the supporting cast whose duty is to make the star of the show stand out more by not standing out so much themselves. If you don’t think any part of your design should be intentionally blank, take a look at the World’s Worst Website Ever for an extreme example of the damage caused by too many objects competing for attention. In interaction design, white space isn’t just an aesthetic choice— it serves three essential functions.

WHITE SPACE HAS BEEN PROVEN TO INCREASE COMPREHENSION UP TO 20%.

1. Improving Comprehension If cluttering your interface overloads your user with too much information, then reducing the clutter will improve comprehension. In fact, properly using white space between paragraphs and in the left and right margins has been proven to increase comprehension up to 20%, as pointed out by Dmitry Fadeyev, creator of Usauracf. The skill of using white space lies in providing your users with a digestible amount of content, then stripping away extraneous details.

White space can be broken down into four elements: visual white space (space surrounding graphics, icons, and images); layout white space (margins, paddings, and gutters); text white space (spacing between lines and spacing between letters); and content white space (space separating columns of text).

Medium Medium is a great example of striking a nice balance with all four elements of white space. First, think about the goal of the user from an interaction standpoint: users want to access interesting content as quickly as possible. The homepage immediately facilitates that goal by placing content front and center, with plenty of white space on either side to add emphasis. There is ample space around visuals and between lines of copy, although the padding around images could be more uniform (notice how the space to the left of each image is not consistent with space below).

WHITE SPACE HELPS CREATE MENTAL MAPS.

Beyond improving comprehension, white space also helps create mental maps. Minimal white space is used between the top navigation and content stream, since both serve similar functions in driving the user deeper into content (and similar functions should be grouped together). Because the right-side navigation focuses more on creating and saving content, more white space separates it from the content stream. In this case, white space helps users assign different functionalities to different parts of the interface. Once users click through to an article, white space helps them focus on what they care about most: the content. Notice how the extra spacing between each line of text improves readability.

THE LAW OF PROXIMITY STATES THAT IMAGES NEAR TO EACH OTHER APPEAR SIMILAR.

To learn more about white space, check out Smashing Magazine’s listing of 22 expert pieces and take a peek at these 21 inspiring examples.

2. Clarifying Relationships When observing how individuals organize visual information, Gestalt psychologists stumbled on what they call the Law of Proximity, which states that images near to each other appear similar. For example, take a look at this picture:

uxpin Almost everyone sees two groups of dots, rather than simply 20 dots. The dots are all identical and the only thing differentiating them is the white space that separates them. This behavioral observation has several important applications to interaction design, especially with regards to input forms. Here are two to remember:

Place labels closest to the relevant fields. As you can see in the below example, information is communicated far more clearly when labels are placed closer to the fields they relate to. As described in our ebook Web UI Best Practices, research has shown that even the slightest hesitation can hurt form completion. In this case, merely adjusting the spacing increases the user’s confidence in filling out the form, which of course improves completion rate.

Group related topics together. When dealing with long forms, the task of filling them out can seem so overwhelming, some users will quit before even trying. Breaking the information up into appropriate groups can help make it feel more manageable. In the form on the right, just categorizing the 15 fields into three groups makes the process feel easier. The amount of content is the same, but the impression on users is much different. Form fields usually present the most friction to users, but the same principles can also apply to navigation and site content. Instead of a top navigation menu with 20 items, you can create a dropdown menu with four to seven top-level items and the rest categorized under submenus.

3. Attracting Attention. As we noted above, the lack of other elements will only make existing elements stand out more. Our redesign for Yelp is a case in point. In the high-fidelity prototype, we added plenty of white space to separate the categories from the search function. In doing so, the category icons are much more noticeable (and less cluttered than their current vertical format). Combined with an animation-like color fill that’s triggered on hover, the category section now attracts even more attention while providing better feedback to the user. But because humans have a selective attention that leads to tunnel vision—like tuning out banner ads, known as "banner blindness"—you also need to know when spacing between content should be reduced and altered.

THE POWER OF WHITE SPACE COMES FROM THE LIMITS OF HUMAN ATTENTION AND MEMORY.

Ultimately, you need to understand that the power of white space comes from the limits of human attention and memory. Just compare the Yahoo and Google interfaces. Yahoo tries to get the user to consider too many actions at once. Google understands the bottom line that people just want to use search engines to find stuff. By being realistic about the user goal, Google’s design encourages more effective interaction.

Most designers subscribe to the "don’t make the user think" school of thought. It’s not that users are just lazy, it’s that they already have a lot on their mind, and cramming extra information just makes it harder to complete their tasks. The amount of strain an interface design creates is called "cognitive load."

Etsy Over the years, designers have developed strategies for minimizing cognitive load without sacrificing features. As complicated as the human brain is, its shortcomings are surprisingly predictable. In 1956, scientist George Miller released his findings that our short-term memory can usually retain data of between five and nine items—an average of seven—before forgetfulness sinks in. While the exact number has been contested (three to six items is the current ideal), Miller’s findings have proven effective and led to important IxD methods, including so-called "chunking," the practice of grouping relevant information together to make it easier to process and remember.

Reducing cognitive load will make the UI not only more usable but also more enjoyable to use, and it’s white space that will help creating this sense of harmony and fluidity throughout the user’s experience.

This excerpt from Interaction Design Best Practices: Mastering the Tangibles was republished with the authors' permission. 

Demystifying the Unicorn: Experience the power of a bookbook™ 

by IDEA

While the logo remains the same as it was in 2011, when Bruce Mau Design redesigned it, the identity around it has been, in their own words, remixed. It's hard to judge without a before but there is no doubt this is a party, regardless of existing or past appearances. And since this is about sound, it's appropriate. At times it gets a little scattered in rave-like directions but I like how they exploit the palindrome structure of the name to create patterns and a continuous strips of SONOSONOSONOS…

This Is Material Design by Google Design:

By David Sherwin at Frog Design / Design Mind - March 6, 2014

We've been seeing an intense pressure on businesses to rapidly make sense of customer needs and demands, then incorporate that feedback into new or existing products. For today's designers, it can be challenging to make well-informed decisions about the large and small details that comprise these products, especially when working within the constraints of an agile/scrum methodology.

At frog, one of the methods we turn to regularly to identify and incorporate user feedback into products is participatory design. Participatory design aims to bring users into the design process by facilitating conversations through the creation and completion of a wide range of activities. We create activities to facilitate sharing and conversation with users, providing them with materials to descriptively discuss their personal experiences and express their desires for ideal solutions. By doing this, we are able to work directly with current and future users of products and services, quickly discovering important criteria to fold into the next iteration of a product, service, or experience strategy.

In the past year, Erin Muntzert and I had a chance to teach our approach for conducting participatory design to UX designers in workshops globally at Interaction 13, UX London, and UX Week. Based on the feedback from participants in those workshops, we wanted to publicly share the slide deck we used in the workshops, which delves into how Erin and I plan, construct, and facilitate participatory activities to incorporate user feedback into product and service solutions.

This workshop was informed by our own practice in designing and conducting hundreds of participatory design sessions, paired with additional input from other leaders within frog's design research practice. Along with frog's open-source Collective Action Toolkit, which Erin and I helped co-author, this workshop is part of our hope to better share the tools and skills that designers use with individuals and organizations around the world.

A New Car UI: How touch screen controls in cars should work

by Matthaeus Krenn

The Problem

Several automotive companies have begun replacing traditional controls in their cars with touch screens. Unfortunately, their eagerness to set new trends in hardware, is not matched by their ambition to create innovative software experiences for these new input mechanisms. Instead of embracing new constraints and opportunities, they merely replicate old button layouts and shapes on these new, flat, glowing surfaces. So even controls for air condition and infotainment - which are commonly used while driving - now lack any tactile feedback and require the driver's dexterity and attention when operated. Considering that distracted driving is the number one cause for car accidents, this is not a step in the right direction.

The Proposal

I propose a new mode that can be invoked at any time: It clears the entire screen of those tiny, intangible control elements and makes way for big, forgiving gestures that can be performed anywhere. In place of the lost tactile feedback, the interface leverages the driver's muscle memory to ensure their ability to control crucial features without taking their eyes off the road.

Music Soundtrack by "A New Day Begins" by Joan Tay (https://soundcloud.com/pinkunousagi/i...)

Design is One : The Film || Linear Genius, Bold and Transformative

By MIRIAM BALE nytimesheadline

“Every time we take the subway in New York, we’re in Vignelli-land,” says Paola Antonelli, senior curator of architecture and design at the Museum of Modern Art, in the new documentary “Design Is One.” Ms. Antonelli is referring to the Italian couple Lella and Massimo Vignelli, whose firm designed many graphic elements for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Mr. Vignelli created a 1972 subway map that the designer Milton Glaser refers to in the film as a conceptual breakthrough.

The couple came to the United States in 1957, after Mr. Vignelli received a fellowship from Towle Silversmiths to design knives, forks and spoons. But, he says in the film, “I would have come with a Sanitation Department fellowship — anything to come here.” American designers like Saul Bass and Charles and Ray Eames were his inspirations. Like them, he wanted to work in diverse fields with a unifying aesthetic.

This smart documentary is occasionally clunky technically, but the directors, Roberto Guerra and Kathy Brew, include perceptive visual details: Lella’s laugh lines and Massimo’s hands, for instance. The information-rich film is enlivened by the charm of the intelligent, eccentric couple at its heart.