The Death Of Industrial Design And The Era Of Dull Electronics
The Death Of Industrial Design And The Era Of Dull Electronics
hackaday.com
The Death Of Industrial Design And The Era Of Dull Electronics
33 comments
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Picked a great time to follow my dream as an industrial designer, only to graduate during COVID and realize that not a single company actually cares to improve the user experience of their products or systems.
Feels like I got a more exclusive and more expensive art degree.
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Calling the big grey bezels of old TVs stylish is certainly an interesting take.
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Yeah, and personally, I don't feel any wish to go back to skeuomorphism. It is funny to look back to and feel some nostalgia, but I think it would look cheap now if they did it like 15 years ago. Maybe iOS' glassy-ui will create some elements that people like about it, but they luckily did not move back to busy ui element backgrounds.
I do partially agree with his buttons and app-points. I dislike how we are forced to download apps for everything, including the questionable tracking software.
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Look at an old colorful iMac running an early version of Mac OS X. The decisions made in its appearance were unnecessary but pleasant. The aqua interface was functional but pretty. It played with textures in fun ways that weren’t distracting, like pinstriping in menus that matched the machine itself, shiny jelly buttons and icons that looked more alive and interesting. While it can be said that they leaned in too heavily to this sometimes (brushed metal and stitched leather were…a lot) the overall experience was engaging. People were trying new things and there was variety, even from a company demanding a uniform market like Apple.
Now look where we are in 2025. We have Liquid Glass, which is just loud and in my way, inefficient and less functional. We have AI everywhere which does everything we could already do but without any accountability or responsibility so there’s no consequences when it fucks up like if a human did. We have companies competing against eachother to see who can most effectively suck the life out of their customers rather than who can make the most appealing product the get customer buy in.
Nobody cares about the consumer anymore. It’s all just a big money laundering operation for shareholders. Business majors ruined the world.
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I do partially agree with his buttons and app-points. I dislike how we are forced to download apps for everything, including the questionable tracking software.
I also agree with this.
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While your average early/mid 2000's CRT TV is certainly not stylish, I do appreciate the buttons and convenient access to a set of inputs and the headphone jack. Today's TVs are all form over function, which is especially annoying since the form is just a black slab.
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Seems like a good time to plug one of my favored youtoobers, famed former NBA player Drew Gooden:
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Booo. Thought it was legit.
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Drew is legit. No, he never actually played in the NBA. The name confusion is just one of his long-running jokes.
Edit: clarity
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dude admits that it took him a week of suffering to go to the tv setting. no wonder tech is no fun for him.
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Flagship stuff is just optimized.
You probally wouldn’t be surprised to find out a bunch of interesting designs of the past had durability and longevity issues.
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Nah, flagship stuff is overpriced. 3x the price for a bit better camera AI and a glass back that breaks after a drop from 10cm.
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Yeah people often mention the funny phone designs from the 2000's but they also praise the Nokia 3310 for its reliability.
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I'm 50/50 on this one. On one hand, yes, absolutely. On the other, there's lots more to the design than just its outline. Materials used, touch and feel, hardware switches... I remember holding a very new but compact iPhone a few years back. It felt so fucking good. Sturdy. Those rounded corners were actually a metal band going all around the phone. Not too big, not too small. Not too thin, either.
I also sorely miss the Nokia N9 in this picture - another of these devices you have to actually hold in your hand, or know a little more about, to appreciate the design. I mean the design is cool to even look at, but the shell is also carved out from a hard plastic block. That's beyond sturdy, and feels very good in your hand.
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Function > durability > cost > tons of other things > "interestingness"
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Its good. Just how laptop has been solved so is smartphone right now. I like my tiny black bricks, keep your corporate style to yourself.
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Smartphone where almost a solved problem til LG stopped making the V20 and made the next one with a sealed battery.
Combine the hardware features of an LG V20 and grapheme is, and you might have a phone actually fucking worth using. I want my DAC and 16 screw disassembly back, fuckers.
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Samsung Gleam. That was peak cellphone.
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My favorite of all the phones I have owned:
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Ulefone's got your back for weird phones.
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Rather Unihertz. They basically have just the unusual phones.
Currently I have Ulefone Armor 24, but I'd want something like Oukitel WP100 Titan. Even larger and crazier.
Look at that 33Ah thing:
Almost brick size now. It's so ridiculous I want it. After all, what I have now isn't far from if, it's just that this is even bigger.
3.6cm (1.4 inch) thick, 877g (1.93lbs) heavy.
But somehow it still can't fit a headphone jack and MicroSD card slot, so that's a no for me.
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“Kirk to Enterprise…”
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Many years ago Nokia made a couple prototypes of an official Star Trek communicator phone
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3EN05faZVU
I would do some seriously regrettable things to have one of these that works with modern networks.
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team moto razr here!
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shows crt with speakers and buttons
Now THIS was design
Idk I kinda like modern minimal / flexible, assuming it works. It's often easier to customize something in an app than with a bunch of dials. Stuff like hue has shown it possible to make physical buttons to control smart devices, if you want them
Meanwhile he glosses over the fact that Samsung has all the foldables now, and that's a pretty extreme industrial design in the modern era
33 comments
Boring is cheap. Look at the way houses and apartments are being built now. Soviet Bloc Block Housing. No need for architects if the preexisting plans are pre-approved.
Yay capitalism.
Edit: a lot of people are missing the nuance. Surprise.
except at least the commie blocks were affordable lol
"cheap to build" meant "cheap to rent", not "our housing company is making record-breaking profits! 😃"
Blame minimum parking requirements. An 800 ft2 2-bedroom apartment is really 1200 ft2, when the zoning code requires one parking space per bedroom.
It’s funny to think that when everything is made more cheap, the more they cost.