Comment by thrav | Hacker News Reader

Comment by thrav | Hacker News Reader

“There’s no functional purpose for wearing a watch anymore.”

This could not be further from the truth. If anything, the advent of tech watches has made it even more clear to me how valuable a watch that runs forever and never needs to be removed is. To have certainty that 24/7/365, I can look down and immediately know what time it is has been tremendously helpful, and the design of that watch is incredibly important to that end.

I wear a dive watch with a nato strap, because it’s light, durable, and comfortable enough to have completely disappeared years ago. It never comes off.

I disagree with most of this video. He uses incredibly minimalist high heels as an example of counter-minimalism, presumably asserting that they should be flats, which ignores the entire purpose of heels. Heels are a tool used to achieve a certain posture, appearance, and an associated response. They’re designed to do a job, as are the basketball shoes he keeps showing, which are functionally reinforced in certain areas, but otherwise fairly minimalist too.

I saw an employee at a hardware store yesterday with a full sized iPhone strapped to his wrist like a watch. It's just such a convenient place for information that people are going to keep using it, whether we design products for that or not. I bet that people keep using virtual watches on their wrists in AR.

it's actually already a pretty common method to place important information for the user on his virtual wrist in VR.

Examples: - Half Life Alyx - Lone Echo - Fallout VR

And Fallout's PipBoy is pretty much a smartphone strapped to the wrist, just with a bulkiness and physical interface that seemed realistic when the first game released in 1997

Not to mention the Wrist Link used throughout the galaxy in Star Wars.

https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Wrist_link

Yeah, when he argues that a marble sculpture is "dishonest" it started to look like he was grasping for outlandish examples to make a point.

I generally eschew videos like this anyway — fall into the “writing about music is like dancing about architecture” category.

I prefer not to expound on and on about what is good design and what makes it good design. I know it when I see it.

He's saying it's dishonest according to the principle that the materials used to build something should not be hidden or made to look like other materials. I think it's a bad example, because, as he admits, it's art and not design, but his next example about Dieter Rams wearing plastic glasses made to look like tortoise shell is more persuasive.

I think his point is that each of the "principles" is one side of a coin, and that Dieter Rams might be famous for one side of each coin, but he deals in both sides, because the preference for one over the other is not absolute. It's a fair point.

> I know it when I see it.

Design is not only about how things look. In most cases, design is about function as well, so you need to actually use the thing to have a clue whether it's a good design. The most aesthetically pleasing design is completely useless if it inhibits the users' ability to do what they want. I'll take something without any aesthetic qualities if its easier to use

That is very true.

He's saying that heels and basketball shoes are great because they do not adhere to minimalism. If they strictly adhered to just doing their job they would be less decorative than they are. We want these objects to also be expressive, and so we design them to be so. He's suggesting this expression is good, and shouldn't be constrained by an adherence to minimalistic design.

I hear you, but my point is the broad definition of shoe = “thing that protects your feet” shouldn’t be applied to either, anymore than “thing used to drive other things into things” should be applied equally to hammers, sledgehammers, mallets, and fence post drivers.

Yeah, they all do that, but they all do it in different ways and for different reasons and are adorned to match the specific outcomes they’re after, not just as superfluous ornamentation.

Look closer at the high-tops he shows (https://cdn.flightclub.com/TEMPLATE/152035/1.jpg). They are reinforced around the ankle, heels, and toes, because that’s where they are most stressed by a basketball player. They have vents, so the players feet don’t get too hot. Those are necessary design elements. The only thing that could be simplified, and still do the job as well, is the color scheme and Nike logo.

That’s why they’re timeless, which is exactly what Rams was saying. If you shift the category from shoe to running shoe, or ballet shoe, the essential elements shift, and the ideal design shifts with them.

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