Industrial Design & User Experience

Sometimes, automakers can't help but try to reinvent the wheel, and that's exactly what is happening with gear shifters these days. Gone are the days of conventional PRNDL shifters on the column or in the center console. In their place are knobs, balls, joysticks and even touchscreen controls. People aren't thrilled.

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Great video article from the Wall Street Journal WSJ interviews Dyson's  founder at Dyson’s headquarters in Singapore to discuss failure and the tension between innovation and profitability.

How did the creator of the iconic round robot vacuum—which has sold more than 50 million units—get into this mess?

Although there’s of course more than one answer to that question, a major factor seems to have been an ill-fated focus on dreaming up ways to move beyond the vacuum into new product categories—all the while failing to keep up with new competitors in its core business.

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First entered into the U.S. Congressional Record in 2015 by U.S. Rep. Gerald E. Connolly, National Industrial Design Day declares that industrial designers “improve our lives in every way and are worthy of our recognition.” That day in 2015 marked the 50th anniversary of the founding of IDSA, which is now headquartered in Herndon, VA, part of Connolly’s 11th Congressional District just outside Washington, D.C.

In the United States, product design and related services generate billions of dollars in sales and the number of U.S.-awarded design patents has reached an all-time high.

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Eduardo Jiménez, director of technology at Colgate-Palmolive, carries buckets of toothbrushes to meetings. He studies the angle of bristles and their corresponding scrubbiness. He pores over data from focus groups about the width of the handle and the all-important gripping point where a user’s thumb and fingers hold the brush. Sometimes he brushes at his desk.

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What better way to get the cel phone out of drivers' hands? Not only does this make building the car cheaper and more likely to be operated cheerfully for many years to come, but it takes the cell phone right out of the hands of the millions of distracted fuckers driving around in two-ton death machines staring at ticky tocks instead of the road.

“Despite the technological advances in online retailing, the human touch continues to be essential to relationships between retailers and customers,” the study’s authors wrote. Improving its app is another step Starbucks says it’s taking as part of its comeback, but a simple analog solution could also prove useful. Might what works for online retailers prove equally successful for selling Iced Brown Sugar Oatmilk Shaken Espressos? Starbucks certainly hopes so.

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That was until earlier this week, when Pentagram—arguably the most storied graphic design firm in the world—debuted Performance.gov, its first public work built in-part through the image generator Midjourney. Designed atop a library of 1,500 icons that were the result of Midjourney image training and prompting, the work has divided the design world into two camps.

As head injuries became more common, people started seeking out head protection. But the first bike helmets were very different than helmets of today.

Personally, I love the retro-inspired design and comfort of Thousand bike helmets, highly recommended!

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Bypassing 90 years of heritage and unashamedly looking unlike anything else on the road, the brand’s radical relaunch EV could be as polarizing as the ad campaign that preceded it.

For Pantone Color of the Year 2025, we look to a mellow brown hue whose inherent richness and sensorial and comforting warmth extends further into our desire for comfort, and the indulgence of simple pleasures that we can gift and share with others.

Tesla owners across America are looking to distance themselves from company boss Elon Musk after the Tesla CEO has become increasingly right-wing and, basically, batshit crazy. To do this, they’re doing the only thing any normal person would: they’re buying loads and loads of bumper stickers.

Jaguar’s new logo – and the associated new brand-image campaign – and look at the reactions it’s inspiring, almost none of which are positive. This is feeling like a logo disaster.

Jaguar making a radical and bold change is absolutely a good thing, don’t get me wrong. The brand has been stagnant for some time now, and in desperate need of some sort of reboot. Sure, they have a fantastic history and a legacy of truly iconic cars, but that doesn’t help them sell new cars, which I’m told carmakers enjoy doing. So the idea that Jaguar needs to make a dramatic change is something I absolutely agree with.

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Mr. McCory took an existing product, a lightweight, frameless pack used for short hikes, and added a reinforced bottom, nylon zippers and other tweaks to make it campus-friendly. He decided to leave the leather swatch, originally used for lashing poles to the bag, on its back panel — someone might want to attach an umbrella, he figured. Today, the patch, though rarely used, is a signature element of the JanSport look.

Companies have spent nearly two decades cramming ever more functions onto tappable, swipeable displays. Now buttons, knobs, sliders and other physical controls are making a comeback in vehicles, appliances and personal electronics.

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The original rocket-shaped but confusingly named Bomb Pop was first invented in 1955 by D.S. “Doc” Abernathy and James S. Merritt, for Kansas City, Missouri's Merritt Foods. The iconic red, white, and blue stack was flavored cherry, lime, and blue raspberry. When Merritt Foods eventually shut down operations in 1991, Bomb Pop manufacturing was sold off to Iowa-based Wells Dairy/Wells Enterprises. The frozen confections are still made today in La Mars, Iowa.

The odd part, to the engineers, was that [none of these problems] appeared in their data. That presented them with two options. They could tell the players that they were wrong. Or they could trust the players and examine whether the problem was with their numbers.

Six experts gathered to make a list of the most influential chairs, sofas and tables, as well as some less obvious household objects, from the past century.

People are surprised to learn how designers sometimes "borrow" design elements from the world around us (we actually do it all the time...) Great story from one of the world's foremost car designers offers good advice if you get caught:

She came to fame in the fashion world in her 80s and 90s, and her wildly eclectic closet of clothes formed a hit exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Calling herself a “geriatric starlet,” Ms. Apfel in her 80s and 90s set trends with clamorous, irreverent ensembles: a boxy, multicolored Bill Blass jacket with tinted Hopi dancing skirt and hairy goatskin boots; a fluffy evening coat of red and green rooster feathers with suede pants slashed to the knees; a rose angora sweater set and 19th-century Chinese brocade panel skirt.

EU regulators are proposing new rules that would mandate the use of in order for cars to receive the top safety rating available

Writing, counting, and calculation are all bound up in the same histories, peoples, and places that crop up over and over again. This shouldn’t be surprising. We’re all human, after all, and humans like to acquire information, record it, and manipulate it. That’s exactly what writing and math are for. The most important inventions are the ones that relate to the human condition, and they crop up over and over again.

Just a photo and a design observation today... IMO the C Pillar trim on the Kia Carnival is truly revolutionary in the world of auto design. Like it or not, I can't think of another car with patterned, highly textured metal surfaces like this (aside from Kia's other models). If you know of other examples please comment below, thanks!