The Woman Who Invented the Modern Kitchen
Article about Lillian Gilbreth, who used her expertise in motion studies to reinvent the kitchen in 1929.
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Why Procrastinators Procrastinate
The original blog post of Tim Urban’s viral TED talk about how a procrastinator’s brain works.
Inside TikTok’s Algorithm
The Wall Street Journal dives into how TikTok customizes your feed to create the seemingly uncanny accuracy of the app’s recommendation algorithm.
How the Dumb Design of a WWII Plane Led to the Macintosh
Wired Magazine provides an excerpt from the book User Friendly by Cliff Kuang with Robert Fabricant. It tells the tale of how experimental psychologist Paul Fitts was brought into the Air Force to research recurring crashes in the B-17 Flying Fortress. Instead of “pilot error,” he saw what he called, for the first time, “designer error.”
Participatory Design History
A chapter of the Routledge International Handbook of Participatory Design on the Heritage (aka history) of participatory design.
Hauling New Treasure Along the Silk Road
Fascinating article from NY Times documenting the travel of a container of laptops from China to The Netherlands via railways.
Dieter Rams
Learn about the head of design at Braun and one of the most influential industrial designers of the late 20th century.
Dieter Rams is briefly featured in Genius of Design I
How Humans Became ‘Consumers’: A History
Article from The Atlantic about the history of humans as consumers.
Zehn Thesen für gutes Design
Dieter Rams asked himself: what makes a design a good design? His answer was formulated in 10 statements that together make the basis for a well designed product. We are linking to the German version, because this is the original language Dieter Rams used. Feel free to switch it to the EU version if it is hard to read.
A Designer’s Code of Ethics
Mike Monteiro, co-founder and design director of interactive design studio Mule Design, elaborates on the ethics of design.