Please, Come Right on in.

College Campuses are always doing their best to increase security for their students in their dorms.  Some require a lock and key.  Some require punching in a code.  Furman requires students to swipe their ID to get into any resident building and revokes that ability when students leave the resident halls to the apartments. This to me, seems like the securest way for students to feel safe in the dorm but a lot of this swiping goes to waste with the way that the buildings are setup.  For example in the lakeside dormitories near McBee hall we have this:

There are literal foot holes in the brick that allow even the most inept climber to make their way onto the roofing next to the balconies.  Once on the balcony, one can simply open the door and enter swipe or not.  This is the case with several of the residence halls.  Blackwell, Poteat, Geer, and Manly have not especially difficult ways of being scaled or climbed to be entered.  This only comes to mind because it is a privacy issue based around security of living space. There is no way that these places can be supervised all the time, so the only solution would be altering the design of the building or the doors.  Cleverly, the door on the balcony of Gambrell (the other side of lakeside) is locked from the outside disallowing any unauthorized entry.

DEsigning off,

Ahmed Mustafa

Hey a Post about Good Design

Well it was a friday and I was walking over a friend's room in one of the North Village apartments.  Looking to see some friends and perhaps share in some party shenanigans.  The issue was, I hadn't been to the apartment in what seemed like a month and couldn't remember the room number.  I knew it was on the end though, so I took a chance...upon entering the wrong apartment, which I immediately realized, I was greeted by questioning but amiable hellos.  Turns out I knew these people too so it was not so bad and they were having a more relaxing evening so when they invited me in, I was quick to oblige.
     It wasn't until I walked into the room did I see this beauty, " CAN I TAKE A PICTURE OF THAT FOR MY CLASS BLOG!"...uhhhh more or less it came out like that.  There was some laughter...realization i was serious and then a beaming smile of pride for their lovely couch table.  It looked like this:

Good GOD this thing was convenient.  The little arms on the sides go completely horizontal while there is a sturdy spring between the arms that pull them in making the side table adjustable to any size couch arm.  A thing of glory it is.  Though convenient, it isn't cumbersome.  The legs pull in slowly to fold underneath the table making it a convenient tray to carry around the room.  The size is also small enough so as to not interupt action in the chair, but large enough to accomodate some essential items you would want to put down if you were within table reach; i.e. a cup, a dessert plate, or even a laptop.  This design takes the user's activity as well as its own purpose as its first and foremost concern.  Many versions of this invention I'm sure exist or were even used to create this model in the past but this is the polished functional model that really brings it all together

DeSIGNING off,

Ahmed Mustafa

FB Files: Stacked Away into Infinity

In a large Facebook group like my service fraternity, Alpha Phi Omega, we have a bunch of stuff to post on the main feed for everyone to see.  A lot of these posts are documents like: Minutes from meetings, By-Laws, Flyers, and event information.  Facebook tries to accommodate this by providing a tab on the main page titled Files.  After you press the tab, this page shows up.

Now on face value this feature is very useful because it cuts everything out and essentially leaves you with an RSS type feed of all the documents the group but upon closer examination, and a hell of a lot of posting, we find that the files are placed in the files section as a stack.  Placed on top and then pushed down deeper into the depths of the page.  There is no organization or filtering on the documents.  Simply find the title of the document by scrolling through EVERYTHING.  I'm sure in a usability study, the user was not asked to find the FIRST file amongst many thus leaving this problem unchecked.  The system is reliable in that the documents are there...eventually but the user convenience is over looked.  The only attempt at further organization is this:

     In the top left there, you can see the All with a down arrow.  This was at first promising...that is until I clicked it.  The only options available were documents and files.  Essentially allowing you to filter all the files so that there are only word/text documents shown and then everything else.  Granted this halved the amount that we had to deal with, but it didn't quite give that edge a usability user would have asked for.

Designing off,

Ahmed Mustafa

The Sharpener that NEVER Gets to the Point

It was a late Wednesday night and a Midterm has just blown through...I was exhausted but also relieved...but most exhausted.  I decided to eat, take a nap, and then continue on with my studies for my Discrete test on Friday.  I pulled out my trustee pencil to find that its tip was broken.  No fear my roommate had a sharpener handy...literally the worst sharpener I have ever experienced in my life.  In fact, I deleted my last blog post just to talk about this pencil sharpener right now.  The sharpener would never sharpen my pencil to a point and halfway through the struggle, the sharpener GOT JAMMED WITH MY PENCIL SHAVINGS.  It would have been okay if that was it, but the dam thing broke my pencil.  Look below:

This is all that is left of my pencil...notice that the pencil...is still not sharpened to a point.  It does not do what it is supposed to do and it breaks what I love.  I hate this design.

Ping Pong Placement Busted

I was looking to buy some more ping pong balls for the ping pong machine in downstairs Plyler the other day, when I came upon this beaut. online.  

     Here we have Mr. Professional Ping pong player who has made his big break and been featured on Butterfly's Training Ball box.  Butterfly, if you don't know, is a very high end ping pong company and if you didn't notice this man has ping pong bosoms.  Honestly, thinking about any arrangment of the balls in the box, they would all look weird.  One would be a chest but it still would be weird and here the two is a subtle bust but three could potentially be a situation that is favorable to the advertising of the training balls.

DEsigning off,

Ahmed Mustafa

The Light that Never Lit Anything

We got a lamp from the good will pile of trash last semester, my roommate and I.  It worked really well and actually matched another lamp that my roommate so we went ahead and grabbed it despite it not having the shade on one of the bulbs.  So this is what it looks like:

Unfortunately as soon as I turned it on I realized the error in our ways.  The lamp light, unhindered by the lamp shade was just a blossom of light that when pointed up blinds those who are walking around:

 and when pointed down blinds those who are sitting.

I thought well thats not the designs fault as much as it is just a missing piece.  After using the fully functional lamp I noticed that the issues though less severe persisted...this second lamp head needs to have had lower wattage or something.

Lean of Death

     So in the Computer Science department labs, there are a bunch of these all over the floor:

The idea is that there are cords that you can run underneath the floors that will have outlets where these holes are.  Unfortunately, the design did not take into account the general area where these things would be used nor did it take into account the possibility that the caps to these holes, which are loose extra pieces would come off.  The result of this negligence is the LEAN OF DEATH

my suggestion would be to make it a solid plug that fills in the whole with little sections that slide open to unveil the outlet that is supposed to be there.

A Spot of Bad Design

I was over in downtown Greenville, actually doing some user observations for the FOMO problem, and stopped by the tea cafe Tealoha.  I looked around for my subject scoped the spot I would sit at and ordered my tea.  When it was brought to me at my table, I was already doing user observations so I didn't really notice.  I reached out for the handle of the cup and lifted it to my lips...except I felt a small stabbing pain where my fingers were touching the handle.  The culprit?  Bad design Exhibit A:

Connected both sides of the handle was a middle ridge that acted as a seem on the outside of the handle.  The two pieces of glass created a sharp edge to pickup and since the whole glass was made from glass, I couldn't just grab the cup without burning my hands.  I ended up holding the cup from the top most edges of the circular part of the cup.

Sincerely,

Ahmed Mustafa

WATCH out for the new Iphone 6

http://cdn.gottabemobile.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/iwatch2-ios-smart-watch.jpeg

The design of the iWatch was nothing short of incredible!! Not only did Apple take advantage of the dying market of watches but they also were able to intuitively integrate their iphone touch screen technology into their design as well as include the magsafe technology from their apple MacBook technology.  All things that users of their projects are familiar with but presented in a new and innovative way.

Down in the Dumps

Hello Blog,
     Today I will tell the story of how bad design annoyed me throughout my MayX course.  During MayX I lived NVA with my friend Matt and if you were't aware NVA has the smallest parking lot on all of campus (smaller than the trone zone).

Picture from Furman Parking Map

     Well throughout my time living there, the parking was always so limited that I was forced to either park in the parking lot next door or in the worst cases in front of NVC.  Seeing as parking is so scarce in this lot it straight up baffles me as to why anyone would do this:

Right beside this lovely dumpster is a wooden gate with a GIANT DUMPSTER IN IT, but apparently that wasn't enough.  The trade off here is just not worth it here.  You get a little more dumpster space for the price of two places of prime real estate parking.  Worse yet, the amazing design of the dumpsters and trucks are wasted on this design.  I've always thought it was great ingenuity to have dumpster trucks able to lift entire dumpsters and dump them in the back of the truck.  Since this dumpster is placed so closely to the narrow opening of the lot, a dumpster truck clearly would not fit and in the past I have seen the truck just pass the dumpster up or go in and empty it by hand.
     This dumpster just has no awareness of the context in which it is being placed.  The artifact is well designed but holistically its not being used to its full potential and I doubt there are any instructions for users to ensure that its used to its full potential.

deSIGNING off,

Ahmed Mustafa

Earhole Choker

Hello blog,

     Today I will tell the story of when bad design caused my little brother to go to the emergency room this summer.  Before we can get into the details we need some background.
     Growing up my little brother has always had ear problems.  In fact, he had to get a tube put into his ear because his eardrum was too close to his ear bones and getting stuck to it.  He had been in and out of emergency ear visits and custom ear plugs from a really young age.  For the last 3-4 years though he hasn't had any real issue aside from the occasional infection which is normal for those of us with non-tubular ears.  That said, we can return to the story.
     So here I am laying in bed sleeping when my little brother busts into my room at around 3am saying that he is deaf in one ear.  Unfortunately for him I was mid-REM and only the good graciousness of Allah got me to situp in bed and blearily look at his ear.  From what I saw there was nothing...so I told him to ask Mom and went to sleep.
     Two hours later I was in the car taking my increasingly more pained brother to the emergency room.  He goes in and gets checked out only to find that he had the plastic bit of an ear bud stuck in his ear!!

Instant relief...from the pain that is.  The design though...has stuck with me like a thorn in my side.

Its true that these ear buds did follow the principles of good design understanding the task and goal of the ear buds was to conveniently transit sound to a person in more readily available and compact way.  The design is sleek and accounts for constraints such as ear hole size by providing removable tips that accommodate for all different kinds of ear shapes but despite this I can't help but feel that their means of executing this holistic view fall short when trying to make informed tradeoffs.
     By adding this versatility to accommodate one ear phone for all ear types, of course this is more cost efficient but it also causes the earbud to fall out of the ear more often or causes the bud to detach from the headphone causing loss of bud or even an ear choke-down.  The trade-off wasn't worth it in my opinion.  I would have iterated back to Protoypes in the approach and try again until they had a proper headphone fit for portable and exercise use but also safe for heavy use.


     The question I leave with this blog entry is whether or not the versatility and cost efficiency of the exchangeable headphone earbud heads are a worthy tradeoff for the integrity of the earpiece if they were made as single pieces in different sizes?


Designing off,

Ahmed Mustafa