Seamlessness
A seamless texture. It makes my eyes freely flow over it. It gives me that sense of endless.
Whenever I go to a mall I stop by the cutlery section and I love looking for tureens with no welded joints. The Westfield Mall in San Francisco, on the ground floor, has a huge cutlery section. It’s design heaven to me :) I also like to pick up knives to figure out if they feel balanced in my hand. I am fascinated by theses tools. Then the designer side of me kicks in.
- how long was the design process?
- how many times they changed their mind?
- how many prototypes they have built to get to the final result?
- did they let people try them?
Nevertheless, not everything seamless is great. Sometimes I pick up forks that look cool, have no joints, but are balanced pretty badly. I’d probably never use them to eat.
I am pretty good at spotting the presence of seams. When your car’s wipers are on, if you turn off the engine I notice if the wipers finish their job and go to the rest position or if they stop wherever they are. I know, it’s a small detail, but it tells me how much care the designers put into that product.
Do you remember the presentation of the first iBook? Steve Jobs spent two minutes talking about the absence of a latch. He wanted to stress the message “we care”.
I keep these thoughts in mind these days, when I am redesigning some parts of my products, to favor the osmosis between my caring intentions and the final product.