Comment by godelski | Hacker News Reader

Comment by godelski | Hacker News Reader

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> Looks so simple, but I guess that's a sign of good design.

I find that this is tends to be the rule, not the exception and it's really reworked how I view things. I've started to almost (more jokingly than seriously) believe that the less novel something appears the more it actually is. The real mark for a good work seems to be "wow, how did you spend so much time on that? It's so fucking obvious" combined with "why has no one else done this?" But it is also easy to post hoc attribute something to being "well that's just x and y, so not really novel." But far too many things can be trivialized that way.

I wanted to say this because I think especially in engineering circles we have this wild novelty paradox. Where we can understand how our work, despite all outward appearances, is exceptionally nuanced and has minor details that are critical but when we judge others' works we don't consider such details. I think this is because most details are baked in when you learn of the new thing. But we got a good litmus test: is anyone else making/producing/doing this "super simple blatantly obvious" thing. If no? It's probably deceptively complex. (It's also why you should laugh at anyone who starts a sentence with "It's so simple, you just...")

I used to embarassingly think that design was merely a matter of aesthetics until I read The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman, which opened my eyes to how much thought goes into seemingly simple things. Really changed the way I look at human-designed objects.

My favorite anecdote due to its simplicity and ubiquity that I never thought about previously was the anecdote about the idea of making top surfaces slanted in public spaces to keep people from placing empty drinking cups and such on top of them. So damn simple and inconspicuous, but so effective and now I see it everywhere!

> idea of making top surfaces slanted in public spaces to keep people from placing empty drinking cups and such on top of them

That's a low-key example of hostile architecture, isn't it? Other than preventing people from leaving cups around, this decreases the utility of public space. Everyone sometimes finds themselves suddenly needing a flat surface other than pavement for a couple of seconds or minutes. Say you've grabbed multiple coffee cups wrongly, or packed your groceries badly, and need to repack. Or something fragile you carried broke. Or you need to make a note on the spot. A raised flat surface nearby is godsend in such situations.

I agree that those flat surfaces would be great, except you'd have to shift other peoples' sticky leftover cups and bottles out of the way first. :(

It is an interesting thing though. Why did the design lead too people leaving the cups behind? I get the hostile part as they do not want to clean up other peoples trash. It is something I think about a lot on the way to work. I see gum on the ground. Not like one or two here and there but hundreds of little blobs on the sidewalk. What is causing people in these particular spots to leave their gum behind and then putting the chore of cleaning it up on someone else. I even see it when there is a trash can nearby many times. What is causing the issue? So yeah so sometimes there is no 'clear fix' but making it seriously inconvenient to do something is an option for those who have to pay to clean it up. So we all suffer because of that.

Yep. The primary fault lies with the too-many people who abused the non-hostile system. "This is why we can't have nice things"--because trust is too costly in the societies where hostile architecture is prevalent.

I get that and agree. But why is the 'easy path' to leave the garbage even in conditions where there is a garbage can right there? Shame and motivation probably seem like the wrong tools here. It seems like something is lending it to us just not doing it the right way. It is like something in the architecture lends itself to people just ignoring the obvious way. My wife was telling me about a 'gum wall' at an amusement park. I immediately saw that as a way for the park to basically hack people to not throw their gum on the sidewalk. Basically a weird reward for keeping your gum and putting it on that wall. The architecture and mythos encouraged people to not do it.

Or you are my wife, didn't realize it wasn't flat, and now your plastic bottle is bouncing down the mountain side and part of the trash littering the place.

She labels her prototypes in the video on the Kickstarter page and the one that either ended up being the final design or very close to it was prototype number 134. So it did take her quite a long time to arrive at the solution.

It's never a linear path either, I am sure she branched down paths not used in the final design and spent many hours solving small parts of solutions she never actually used.

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