Indesit MOON
From: Tom Martin

I know it’s hard to get excited about a washing machine but I just saw the Indesit MOON and was amazed it only had FOUR buttons.

It also has this little ring that works like a progress bar, so you can just glace and see how long the cycle has left.

You should spread the word that washing machines have become simple!

Simplicity In UX
From: Shawn Oster

Thought you’d enjoy this as Kynan Antos also subscribes to the less is more school of thought:

Simplicity In UX

4. Remove everything possible (this will be controversial, expect to work outside your comfort zone) (Things to remove – text, iconography, features, unnecessary configuration, or settings, etc…)

He’s also posting his early UI prototypes for the WHS project, nice to see the evolution.

Bad product design in everyday life
From: Jeff Patterson

Interesting thread on poor product design at Straight Dope.

There were many things there I had never thought to be irritated about, and now I am. Well done, SDMB.

New Highrise feature: Filter by multiple tags
Tonight we added one of the top feature requests to Highrise: Selecting multiple tags. Now you can filter your contacts and related notes by more than one filter. For example, selecting “Lead” and “2007” and “Design” will show you your contacts that match all three tags.

Hit End, Home, or Page Up/Down keys while dragging to save time
Mac OS X customers can use keyboard navigation while dragging items in Backpack in order to avoid scrolling. Hit the End, Home, or Page Up/Down keys while dragging and save yourself the hassle of having to scroll a lot.

Campfire helps Futuretrack5 collaborate across time zones
“What email is to mail, campfire is to teams. We connected on a whole new level. The simplicity of Campfire is ideal for group chat. Unlike IM which tends to be one-on-one, Campfire is like well…sitting around a campfire! Rather than roasting marshmallows, we burned through getting work done…We exchanged ideas, swapped stories & posted photos of ourselves (the way file sharing is implemented is incredible).”

Tag tab and streams in Highrise
Tags in Highrise are now accessible through the dedicated Tag tab and we’ve added streams that let you see all the notes from people tagged with a certain tag. This is a great way to get an overview of all the communication you’ve had with, say, “Leads” or people in “Marketing”. Tags now have their own permanent pages as well and will show up as tabs when you access them.

Netflix goes for phone over email support

“Netflix set up shop [for its call center in Oregon] a year ago, shunning other lower-cost places in the United States and overseas, because it thought that Oregonians would present a friendlier voice to its customers. Then in July, Netflix took an unusual step for a Web-based company: it eliminated e-mail-based customer service inquiries. Now all questions, complaints and suggestions go to the Hillsboro call center, which is open 24 hours a day. The company’s toll-free number, previously buried on the Web site, is now prominently displayed.”

Prototype JavaScript framework: Prototype 1.6.0 release candidate

“The first release candidate of Prototype 1.6.0 has arrived! The core team is continuing its tradition of bringing thoughtful incremental upgrades to the core APIs in addition to performance improvements and bug fixes. Keep reading for some of the highlights of this major release, or download it now for instant gratification.”

Why you should keep your landing pages simple

“In every case, landing page effectiveness and measured conversion increased significantly when choices and unnecessary distractions were eliminated — and the overall design and orientation of the page emphasized the call to action.”

Indian retailer succeeds with designed clutter

“So Mr. Biyani redesigned his stores to make them messier, noisier and more cramped. ‘The shouting, the untidiness, the chaos is part of the design,’ he says, as he surveys his Mumbai store where he just spent around $50,000 to replace long, wide aisles with narrow, crooked ones: ‘Making it chaotic is not easy.’ Even the dirty, black-spotted onions serve a function. For the average Indian, dusty and dirty produce means fresh from the farm, he says. Indian shoppers also love to bargain. Mr. Biyani doesn’t allow haggling, but having damaged as well as good quality produce in the same box gives customers a chance to choose and think they are getting a better deal. ‘They should get a sense of victory,’ he says.”

Tips on working from the most popular productivity bloggers

“Here are a handful of tips on working from the most popular productivity bloggers on the internet, along with bloggers on organization, the environment and more. Instead of blathering, we will summarize and then allow you to read more if indeed you think a point is up your alley.”

Some recent posts at the 37signals Product Blog:

Web Worker’s Daily: Time to give Backpack another look
“The new Backpack now lets you dump text, images, links into a single ‘Collection’ page when you’re in a hurry, and then relocate them item by item to organized pages when and how you prefer…It’s the primary reason I have now come back to the service.”

Basecamp messages now include year of posting
Do you have a project in Basecamp that has been running for a year or more and need to know exactly when a message was posted? Now you can. On the permanent/comments page for a message, we’re now including the year in the date stamp as per popular request.

Now you’ll always know the year a message was posted.

Highrise hits 2,000,000
Highrise was released less than five months ago and today turned 2,000,000. Huh? Collectively, our Highrise customers have entered over 2 million contacts entered into their accounts. We’re thrilled to see such rapid uptake and thank everyone for their continued support.

Save time with To-Do List Templates in Basecamp
Are you a Basecamp customer who performs the same tasks regularly for different projects? If so, save time by using To-Do List Templates. This handy feature lets you create to-do lists and then add them easily to any project.

Fans turned photographers at indie rock shows

Band of Horses' Ben Bridwell on fans who take pictures at the band's shows: “You see it getting progressively worse. It’s almost like the skateboarding community, where everyone’s a fucking photographer now. You look at shots, and it’s hard to keep the photographers out of the shot, you know? It kind of seems like the same thing with indie rock; everyone’s got a fucking camera in their hand and, I don’t know, is there no sanctity left for live performance with going to a show and seeing it with your own eyes and remembering it? Do you have to tape every second, or even just your favorite song?”

The “Xylophone” wine & food tasting method

“Xylophone is a useful analogy for thinking about wine and food pairing…Before sitting down to taste, arrange your wines in a manner inspired by the percussion instrument of graduated wooden bars: from light-bodied to full-bodied, using the wine’s alcohol level (low to high) as an estimate. When taste-testing wines of similar alcohol levels, you might line them up by color (yellow to pink to red), which can suggest a crescendo of flavor intensity. Either way, it’s then easier to make generalizations about the styles of wine you enjoy best with certain foods: often lighter wines with lighter foods, and fuller-bodied and -flavored wines with heavier foods. Prepare a tasting sheet for taking notes. Listing the wines down one side of the page and the foods across the other, create a simple grid. Into each of the boxes, note your impression of each pairing using a five-point scale, from +2 (perfect) to 0 (neutral) to -2 (awful). After a few glasses of wine, you might skip numbers in favor of smiley or sad faces, a technique we learned from restaurateur Danny Meyer: The broader the smile or frown, the more intense the judgment.”

Design lessons from the kitchen

“Chefs organize their cooks and their space with a few key principles in mind: maximizing consistency of product, ensuring creative freedom to experiment, and encouraging effective problem solving under incredibly stressful conditions… For those who manage creative organizations, the professional kitchen can provide inspiration for how to balance these principles effectively.” [via AP]

iPhone fix request list

“The Macworld editors have all weighed in with a list of things they’d like to see the iPhone do or, in some cases, do better…It’s these consensus items that appear below—and that will make a great mobile device even better.”

BusinessWeek: The Best Product Design Of 2007

“This year’s awards run the gamut from ‘split-head’ hammers to ultralight jets to savings plans for shoppers.”

Some recent posts at the 37signals Product Blog:

PackRat 1.3 supports new Backpack and adds in some more features too
The latest version supports the new Backpack and adds in some new, exclusive features too.

Use Backpack as a source control system for writing
“Backpack has become the equivalent of a source control system for my writing. Before I leave in the morning, I send myself the content of my pages. While I’m on the subway or waiting in a movie line, I edit the text and give it a new title (‘CodeZoo 2.0 rev. 4’) and then send it right back to Backpack. At the end of the day I delete the stale versions.”

Ta-Da List for iPhone: “Brilliant”
“It’s fantastic. The pages have been built to fit so well on the iPhone’s screen that you forget you’re on the web – it feels like a stand alone application on the iPhone. If you’re a GTD freak (and even if you’re not), you ought to check this out.”

Raves pouring in for new Backpack
“We recommend Backpack more than ever for anyone from casual users who need a simple web-based locker for storing bits and pieces of their daily adventures, to power users with a serious case of GTD or project management on their back.”

Jeep is iconic but “crap”?
From: Will Duderstadt

Thought you guys would enjoy a retort to the Jeep being called “crap” in an MIT publication: Branding Lessons from Jeep: Designed For A Purpose.

He recognizes that the look, feel, and design of a Jeep is iconic, but fails to see those traits are only responsible for a fraction of its status. The Jeep has become an icon because you aren’t just buying a steel tub with removable doors, you are buying into an experience, an adventure, a lifestyle.

Now, the average Joe never says to himself, “Gosh, I wish I could take the doors off my BMW 750i”. But ask the next fella you see in a Jeep what summer means, and “top down, doors off” is going to rate very high on that list.

Dyson Airblade
From: Paul Campbell

With your previous Dyson posts, I thought you might be interested in the Dyson Airblade [hand dryer for bathrooms] – apparently it’s a rip of an earlier model from mitsubishi, but I “experienced” it tonight and it was a trip!

Blogged about it here: The Dyson Airblade – out XLing the XLerator

The device works by shooting a thin stream of air ( apparently .3 mm ) at 400mph. It claimed my hands would be dry in 10 seconds, but it took far less than that. The other bonus was that because you put your hands in rather than under, there’s no pool of water underneath.

Continued from Part 1.

Poetry speaks to many C.E.O.’s

Sidney Harman, founder of Harman Industries: “I used to tell my senior staff to get me poets as managers…Poets are our original systems thinkers. They look at our most complex environments and they reduce the complexity to something they begin to understand.”

The 105% Rule: Word of mouth is generated by unexpected highlights

“Call it the 105% Rule. From a word-of-mouth perspective, it’s virtually impossible to discuss an experience that is 5% better than the norm on all dimensions. People don’t talk like mystery shoppers, reporting diligently on each relevant feature. People talk about the exceptions, the unexpected, the highlights…Fostering the conversation you want customers to have about your products should be an explicit part of product development.”

Heat Maps are “the new visualization vogue”

“Lets you see trends at a glance. Heat maps are useful for everything from where to place your Google ads to sussing out rent prices in your city. They sometimes even approach the level of art.”

Black panel

“One Saab innovation, inspired by the company’s roots in aeronautics, was the ‘Black Panel’ feature (also known as Nightpanel). This allowed most instrument panel lights to be extinguished at night at the touch of a button, permitting less distraction during night driving. While Black Panel was active, other instruments could illuminate themselves as required to gain the driver’s attention.” [tx Derick]

Coke cans go on a diet

“Ever since its introduction, Coca-Cola Classic has had an ever-increasing need to cover its labels with extraneous seals, bubbles, stripes, bevels, edges, shadows, doodads, gizmos, what-have-you. Its a (pardon the pun) classic example of destroying a beautiful and timeless logo, but typical of what happens in packaging and advertising with the need of marketing departments to pack everything they can into whatever they can. (“Add this! Jazz it up! Make it pop!”) How this new label made it past all the approvals is beyond me, but it boldly projects confidence and respect for the Coca-Cola logo and brand as a piece of American culture that should not be adulterated. Kudos to Coke for having the balls to go with such a clean design.” [image via gedblog]

Some recent posts at the 37signals Product Blog:

Real Estate agents use Basecamp to sell homes
ActiveRain is an online community for real estate professionals designed to help them promote and grow their business. They recently reviewed Basecamp and called it “the ultimate online project collaboration tool.”...The review includes a description of how a realtor could use Basecamp to help sell a home.

Simply Invoices helps you invoice the time you log in Basecamp
Simply Invoices is a new web-based invoicing tool built to work with Basecamp. If you’re looking for a quick and easy way to invoice your Basecamp time, Simply Invoices is worth a look.

OpenID screencast features Basecamp and Highrise
If you’re still wondering exactly what OpenID is or how it works with apps like Basecamp and Highrise, check out ScreenCastsOnline’s free, 15 minute screencast about OpenID. The video includes a section that demonstrates how to obtain an OpenID (using MyOpenID as a provider) and then shows how to use it to access both Basecamp and Highrise.

Wake Interactive stays in the zone with Basecamp
Basecamp solved the biggest counter-productive aspects of email communication in project management…Basecamp has helped us earn our clients’ trust in our approach to web design. We can have less meetings and give them more frequent updates. Most importantly it makes our clients feel comfortable working with a group of remote consultants.

Switching to OpenID is easy
Have you caught OpenID fever yet? It’s the secret sauce behind the new 37signals Open Bar…These guides will make your login switch a breeze.

Avalanche is a free Yahoo Widget for Basecamp customers
Avalanche connects users to Basecamp in an efficient, compact application called a widget. It uses the Yahoo! Widget Engine to run the application, which allows access right from your desktop. You can access messages, to-do items, time entries, contact information, and the next upcoming milestone from Avalanche for each of your Basecamp projects.

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