State of the Art: A Rugged Camera, Despite Design Flaws

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Solving Problems for Real World, Using Design

While the projects had wildly different end products, they both had a similar starting point: focusing on how to ease people’s lives. And that is a central lesson at the school, which is pushing students to rethink the boundaries for many industries.

At the heart of the school’s courses is developing what David Kelley, one of the school’s founders, calls an empathy muscle. Inside the school’s cavernous space — which seems like a nod to the Silicon Valley garages of lore — the students are taught to forgo computer screens and spreadsheets and focus on people.

So far, that process has worked. In the eight years since the design school opened, students have churned out dozens of innovative products and start-ups. They have developed original ways to tackle infant mortality, unreliable electricity and malnutrition in the third world, as well as clubfoot, a common congenital deformity that twists a baby’s feet inward and down.

Those successes have made the D.school the envy of universities around the world. Sarah Stein Greenberg, a D.school alum and managing director, says she receives inquiries every week from universities looking to mimic the D.school curriculum.

The school has also become one of the most highly sought destinations at Stanford. Some of the most popular classes get four times as many applicants as there are seats available. To meet the demand, the D.school is adding full courses and so-called pop-up classes, which focus on a more narrow problem. “Where Did You Go Olympia Snowe?,” a recent pop-up class, challenged students to solve the seemingly most intractable problem of all: rekindling bipartisanship. Olympia J. Snowe, a former Republican senator of Maine, even made a brief guest appearance.

Mr. Kelley, who also started the design firm IDEO, says the goal is to give students — many of them analytically minded — the tools to change lives.

One emphasis is to get students to leave campus and observe people as they deal with life’s messy problems.

That is how Mr. Kothari, a mechanical engineering graduate student, started his ramen project. He spent hours at local ramen shops watching and talking to patrons as they inevitably spilled broth and noodles. Together with a group of other D.school students, he built a prototype for a fat straw that would let patrons have their ramen and drink it, too.

The school challenges students to create, tinker and relentlessly test possible solutions on their users — and to repeat that cycle as many times as it takes — until they come up with solutions that people will actually use.

An important element of the school, Mr. Kelley says, is having students start small, and as they gain what he calls “creative confidence” with each success, they can move toward bigger, seemingly intractable problems. It is not all that different, he said, from teaching someone to play the piano.

A recent boot camp class dispatched students to local hair salons to tackle that age-old problem: the bad haircut.

One group was surprised to learn that sweeping hair off the floor is the bane of many hairdressers. That group designed a prototype for a device that sucks up clippings before they hit the floor. A few courses later, the same students were asked to apply that same analytical process to the shortage of organ donors.

“It’s a guided approach to building that empathy muscle until, pretty soon, they are out there doing it on their own,” Mr. Kelley said.

One of the D.school’s most highly sought courses is “Design for Extreme Affordability.” Over two quarters, students team up with partners from around the world to tackle their real-world problems. So far, “Extreme” students, as they are called, have completed 90 projects with 27 partners in 19 countries. This year, students will work with partners in Cambodia, India, Nepal, Nicaragua, Senegal and South Africa.

One of Extreme’s more successful projects is Embrace, a low-cost miniature pouch, not unlike a sleeping bag, that helps prevent newborns from developing hypothermia. Embrace’s inventors say the pouch has helped prevent 22,000 infant deaths.

This year, Ian Connolly and Jeffrey Yang, D.school students, formed a partnership with Miraclefeet, a nonprofit based in North Carolina, to design a brace for children with clubfoot for less than $20.

Bits Blog: Tech Moves to the Background as Design Becomes Foremost

Stephen Lam/Reuters Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president for software engineering, discussing the redesign of its mobile software system.

In the last few decades, the computing industry has passed through several different eras. In the ’90s, the big tech companies were in a race for faster and more powerful computers. Then in the 2000s, the industry moved to mobile in a quest for slimmer phones with brighter screens.

Now, the industry is entering the era of design.

As I noted in my column this week, Disruptions: Mobile Competition Shifts to Software Design, tech companies are looking for ways to make sure the user interfaces of their products are unique.

Design experts I spoke with noted that many of the devices we use today look almost exactly the same, which explains the emphasis on the software that goes into that interface. Battery life and processing speed are only marginally different within product categories such as smartphones. But the look and feel of the software is what allows a competitor to leap ahead of the competition.

Cesar Torres, a former Apple designer who now works for Sidecar, a ride-sharing start-up, said on Twitter: “While I don’t agree with the stylistic choices in iOS 7, it excites me that ‘design’ is a term that shows up in major news site headlines.”

Design, it seems, is becoming a mainstream topic. And for those who have lived and breathed design for decades, it’s a refreshing change.

“In the ’90s when I would meet with investors, there was no return on investment for design. Yet today, 20 years later, every project I do is because design is seen as absolutely central,” said Yves Béhar, the founder of Fuseproject, a San Francisco design agency.

Mr. Béhar said that, now, directors, chief executives and investors often sit in meetings and ask about user interface, overall experience, and the look and feel of a product. Twenty years ago, most investors wouldn’t even know what those terms meant.

What the mainstream and the financiers are now starting to realize is that design is a doorway to something much more important.

“Design, even if you’re talking about Apple and their sexy devices, is a promise of quality,” explained James Victore, an award-winning art director, designer, and author. “It’s a promise that the public is not going to be let down.”

Gadgetwise Blog: An iPad 5 Case Hints at Design Changes

A Gumdrop Drop Tech Designer series case.

Shortly before the iPhone 5 was announced, the first case for that phone arrived at my desk. It was made by Gumdrop.

Not resting on its laurels, Gumdrop is even further out front this time, releasing covers for the iPad 5, a device that is not expected to be unveiled before this week, although some predict it will be much later than that.

The new case provides some clues about the design of the new iPad. If the size of the case is correct, the new pad will be thinner and narrower. Information tracked by MacRumors places the dimensions at 15 percent thinner and up to 33 percent lighter than the current iPad.

Gumdrop has posted a 360-degree view comparing the new and old iPads inside its cases, which also shows the new iPad to be narrower. The ports for buttons and cameras all appear to be in the same places as current models.

How does Gumdrop know what size the new iPad will be? As I had written previously, the Gumdrop covers, like the Apple products, are made in Shenzhen, China. Manufacturers there swap information, which has been described as a communal strategy to attract companies to employ Shenzhen manufacturers.

So far Gumdrop’s batting average is .500, having bet incorrectly once on the date of the iPhone 5 introduction and design, before getting the launch and design right nearly a year later.

If you are of a mind to take a gamble, Gumdrop is offering three case designs for the iPad 5: the Drop Tech series, the Drop Tech Designer series, and the Bounce cover. They range in price from $35 to $60.

Currents | Q&A: Geoff Manaugh, the New Editor of Gizmodo, on Adding Design to the Tech Blog

Those opportunities and others have been the fruits of BldgBlog, the Web site Mr. Manaugh created nine years ago as a way to explore his interest in the built environment. From a military base in the California desert designed to look like a town in Afghanistan to a tribute to Lebbeus Woods to a post about the video game Parallax, the blog’s subjects are wide ranging and its tone an academic geek-out.

Last week, Nick Denton, the founder of Gawker Media, announced that Mr. Manaugh was taking his curiosity and high-minded approach to Gizmodo, the popular tech blog known for its focus on digital gadgets and scatological tone. As its new editor, beginning in September, Mr. Manaugh will focus more on design, architecture and urbanism, along with technology.

He spoke with a reporter this week about the new role.

Q. How will Gizmodo be revamped under your editorship?

A. We want to push what technology means. It’s not just about gadgets you carry around in your pocket. The city itself is the largest gadget that humans have made. You can talk about the ways cities are managed, the way governments function.

We’ll be focusing a lot more on athletic technology, including gear in emerging sports like wilderness hiking. We’ll be looking at military technology, everything from biofuels to stealth materials, not just how iPhones are made.

Q. Gizmodo readers appear to like the coverage of Apple and new gadgets.

A. You might come to Gizmodo expecting to read about an Apple conference, and we will still cover that sort of thing. But if you see a compelling article about 3-D printing or elevator design, I think you’ll be interested in that.

It’s taking all of the things Gizmodo is good at and has an audience for, but it’s adding urbanism and architecture and design. You’ll see interviews with architects, coverage of building projects around the world. It’s treating gadgets as design objects.

Q. How do design and technology fit together as subjects?

A. They’re always related. Most technical innovators or inventors are pretty explicitly aware of design. People are constantly encountering design, whether it’s the newest laptop or clothing or all the weird new cooking gear that’s coming out and turning kitchens into chemistry sets. It goes back to showing people how technology and design work together.

Q. With BldgBlog, you can cover any subject that interests you. How will you respond to Gawker Media’s more page-view-driven approach?

A. It’s an exciting challenge. But my experience with BldgBlog is that following your voice and the things you find interesting actually does work and does find an audience. It underestimates audiences to say you have to dumb everything down or make it sarcastic. You can share off-kilter ideas with tens of thousands, if not millions, of people.

Q. What things won’t you cover in the remade Gizmodo?

A. We’ll be doing fewer gear-intensive reviews of consumer gadgetry. That coverage is being done by so many people today. The idea will be to talk more about the culture of that technology.

We’ll also be spinning off the more gossipy stuff about Silicon Valley to another blog, Valleywag.

And we’ll create a tone that will not be as juvenile as previous iterations of Gizmodo.

Q. Why do you think Mr. Denton wanted to shake things up?

A. If Nick wants to reinvent Gizmodo, in a way he’s more ambitious and wants to reinvent how technology is written about online. Tech blogging is at a bit of a lull right now. People are looking for something that isn’t just more reviews or sarcastic posts written from technology conferences in San Francisco. Something that shows a more wide-ranging approach.

App Smart: Home Design Apps Let You Experiment With Colors and Décor

Home Design 3D ($7 on iOS) is one of the better ones. It turns a two-dimensional view of your home into a three-dimensional graphic that you can view from any angle and even walk around as if inside. It is so sophisticated you could use it as a starting point for designing a house, rather than just tweaking your interior design.

You start in two-dimensional construction mode, adding rooms and adjusting their size and shape to match your place. You can add measurements and drop in items from a database, like a water fountain or a grand piano. There’s a host of options for doorways, windows and other openings, and you can choose to color walls or floors with textures that look like wallpaper, carpet or wood or simply a uniform color.

When your design is done, you click on the 3-D button to turn it into a 3-D version. While the app tries to be as intuitive as possible, with clear icons for control and some attractively designed screens, it has a steep learning curve. The fact that you have to pay for access to some textures and pieces of furniture might also frustrate you.

Build App Pro is a similar Android app that costs $6. The app also has a plan-view design mode that lets you set out the layout of rooms and furniture items, plus a 3-D graphical view. Like Home Design 3D, the app tries to make design simple — it uses icon-driven menus and easy-to-learn gestures.

But it has a small number of 3-D furniture models and a tendency to crash.

A far simpler app is Houzz Interior Design Ideas, free on Android and iOS, which will probably be more useful in the early stages of any redesign plans. The app’s main feature is an extensive catalog of photos, listed by categories like Family Room, Wine Cellar and Exterior. Tap on a category, select a subcategory like Modern or Tropical and scroll through the photos. You can bookmark designs you like in your own idea book, or export them to Twitter or through e-mail. The app also has lists of products for sale and professionals who can help you realize your design.

If you’re just thinking about changing the color of your furniture or walls, there are many apps to help. The best-known color matching system is Pantone, and it has an official MyPantone app for iOS.

The app’s main feature is a representation of the famous Pantone color swatches. Scroll through the rainbow of options by dragging and then tapping on a color you like. This brings up a new page of data on that color, including its official Pantone code number and a tab for “harmonies.” This tab takes you to a graphical display of colors that complement your initial choice. If you are inspired by a color you see in real life, you can snap a photo of it and have the app recommend the closest Pantone color. You can save your favorite colors for a visit to a store to find matching paint. The downside is that the app costs a steep $10.

Quick Call

Swype has been a popular alternative text-entry system for Android. It speeds typing on an on-screen keyboard because you simply glide your finger to the next letter in the word you want to type. Now the app has come out of its beta test mode, and has hit Google’s Play store for the first time, priced at $1.

Bits Blog: The Flattening of Design

Examples of Web sites and interfaces, including Microsoft, Twitter and the Interactive Advent Calendar, that use flat design, including Microsoft, Twitter and lorenzoverzini.com.

It might sound audacious to think that Microsoft, the arbiter of uncool, was at the forefront of design a few years ago. But it was.

It turns out the company’s decision to focus on “flat design,” a type of visual scheme where everything has a smooth and even look, was a few years ahead of the rest of the technology and user interface industry.

While Microsoft was flattening its interfaces as if it were a child pushing down on a bulge of putty, its competitors – including Apple and Facebook — were focused on skeuomorphism, a type of look in which, say, a note-taking feature on a Web site or in an app would look like a spiral-bound notebook, a reference to the real world look of a notebook.

Now everyone seems to be following in those flat footsteps.

Facebook Tom Waddington, a graphic designer, has been tracking Facebook’s shift to flat designed icons.

As my colleague Nick Wingfield and I reported last year, Apple is expected to flatten its operating system interfaces in a major overhaul later this year. Facebook has been slimming down its site design for a while, slowly changing its complicated and intricate iconography to flat and legible shapes. Last week the company updated its main “f” logo, flattening the icon and removing an unnecessary light blue bar along the bottom.

These companies aren’t simply following Microsoft’s lead in the quest for flat. There are cultural and technological reasons for this new look and feel.

Steven Heller, co-chairman of the M.F.A. Design Department at the School of Visual Arts and author of more than 150 books on design culture, said that part of the push toward flat design was to try to escape the overabundance of design that looks digital, where things “have started to look cliché.”

“Every so often there is a new fashion that comes about in design for any number of reasons, not the least of which is technology, and now there has been a reaction to mechanistic-looking design where you press a button and get a specific look,” Mr. Heller said. “In response, designers have started to turn to flatness.”

One of the biggest drivers for this stylistic change is being forced upon designers by the constraints of smartphones.

Justin Van Slembrouck, design director at Digg, the social news site, said that while some design decisions were made as stylistic choices, “it is increasingly being driven by mobile, where you’re designing for the lowest common denominator so you can’t load a site up with heavy graphics.” He added, “The end result, with flat design, is that it all feels less cluttered.”

In some respects, flat graphics can be seen as a nod back to early print, specifically Russian propaganda war posters. At the time, before computers — yes, there was such an era — designers were forced to create flat images because of printing constraints. Now it seems to be happening again, but with screens.

When today’s graphics are too busy — layered with gradients and elaborate typography — people are forced to try to navigate a clutter of information in a very small space. On a smartphone screen, for example, a flat icon of a musical note can tell a story much quicker than an intricate picture of a shiny sparkling CD.

“It’s that whole notion of ornamental decoration with excess baggage, which the Modernists wanted no part of because it wasn’t a pure design,” Mr. Heller said, noting that he calls overly ornate typography and design the Cult of the Squiggly. “It’s clear if you put too many things on a page you’re going to cause a distraction. In a small screen environment, you can’t do that either. You can’t afford distractions.”

Bits Blog: I.B.M. Research Points to Circuits That Mimic the Brain’s Design

A nanofluidic circuit would operate by passing ionic fluid, shown in green, through conduits fabricated on top of a planar oxide surface, shown in orange.

I.B.M. scientists said Thursday that they had developed a fluidic electronic system that mimics the circuits in the human brain and potentially offers a new direction for ultra-low-power microelectronics and artificial intelligence.

A group of researchers at the company’s Almaden Research Center in San Jose, Calif., reported in the journal Science that they had pioneered a novel mechanism for transforming an insulating material into a metallic conductor by placing it in contact with a charged fluid. In contrast to conventional semiconductors, which use electric currents to switch materials between insulating and conducting states, the new method uses what the researchers describe as “ionic currents” — mobile charged atoms rather than electrons — as a switching mechanism.

“I’m particularly excited by our findings,” said Stuart Parkin, a physicist and I.B.M. Fellow, “because a lot of how the brain operates is by the flow of ions and ion channels. In some sense what we want to do is mimic those components of the brain.”

While the individual components of the brain work far more slowly than modern microelectronic transistors, the brain’s circuits are arranged in three dimensions and operate in parallel. That allows the brain to do complex computing using only a fraction of the energy of today’s computers.

The I.B.M. researchers hope that their approach could be used to build more brain-like computers.

The advantage of the new method is that it is both nonvolatile — it requires only a small amount of electricity to change the materials from one state to another, and they then remain in that state — and is potentially reversible, meaning that it could be used to build a device like a transistor.

The researchers noted that while the switching speed of the new materials might never match the raw speed of today’s transistors, their biological-like qualities might make them appropriate for building a new generation of sensors or memories.

Although the initial I.B.M. results are based on simply exposing oxidized materials to fluids, the researchers said that if systems were built upon the new mechanism, they could exploit fields that are known as nano- or microfluidics. These technologies use tiny channels and pipes to control and mix fluids for a variety of industrial and scientific applications.

The next step for the I.B.M. research team would be to make “fluidic” circuits in which it would be possible to move the charged fluids over surfaces to change their properties, much as a conventional microelectronic semiconductor is switched “on” and “off.”

“We could form or disrupt connections just in the same way a synaptic connection in the brain could be remade, or the strength of that connection could be adjusted,” Dr. Parkin said.

Analysts said I.B.M.’s announcement was likely to touch off broader interest in the field within the scientific community.

“This could have applications from fluidics to nonvolatile electronics to chips that are immune from radiation,” said Richard Doherty, an analyst at the Envisioneering Group, a technology research firm.

Dr. Parkin said the I.B.M. scientists were still considering which direction to pursue with their new materials. “Probably initially we’ll build a small memory array or something like that,” he said.

The I.B.M. research is in a field known as correlated electron systems, which explores a wide range of materials that exhibit unusual electronic or magnetic behavior.

Design: What Constitutes Good and Bad Web Design?

A similar thing happened when I logged on to Tate’s redesigned site hoping to book tickets for a film screening at Tate Modern. Trawling through the site to find that particular screening turned out to be unexpectedly complicated. Nor are Tate and Centre Pompidou the only offenders. Just think of how often you feel irritated or flummoxed by an inexplicably confusing Web site.

Shoddy Web site design is a curse of modern life. The more dependent we have become on the Internet for information, the likelier we are to suffer from its design deficiencies. Bad design can be infuriating, inconvenient or damaging in any field. But it is especially frustrating in areas like this where many of us find the technology so inscrutable that we tend to blame ourselves for being baffled, because we feel unable to judge whether the design is at fault. So what does constitute good and bad Web site design?

In principle, a well-designed Web site needs to deliver the same things as most other examples of good design by fulfilling its intended function efficiently and engagingly. On the efficiency front, given that the most important purpose of most Web sites is to enable us to access information, helping us to find it effortlessly is essential. Straightforward though this sounds, dispiritingly few sites manage to achieve it. A common mistake is to prioritize style over substance. Fashion and luxury brands often do so by using animation software, which produces luscious visual images that can take ages to upload. Louis Vuitton’s site is a particularly irksome example.

Other sites fall prey to what we could call “technologyitis.” Their designers insist on using sophisticated technologies, which look dazzling when they show the sites to clients on their state-of-the-art computers, but considerably less so on older, cheaper machines with slower Internet connections, or on the cramped screens of phones.

But the principal problem with many Web sites is that their designers were neither rigorous nor imaginative enough in planning the way we will navigate them. Ideally, they should anticipate all of the individual items of information that we will wish to find, and how we might choose to combine them. They must then organize the site so that the requisite data is delivered promptly. If you find information swiftly and easily on a Web site, its designer has succeeded. But if you need to click on an inordinate number of buttons and links, or dither over what to do next, the designer has failed. Amazon’s site scores highly for navigational efficiency, but poorly in terms of the second criterion of good Web design, because it is far from engaging.

One site that combines both qualities belongs to the London restaurant Quo Vadis — www.quovadissoho.co.uk. The home page looks like the front page of an old-fashioned newspaper, and you simply click on the relevant section, like “Today’s Menus” or “Reservations,” to retrieve the information. The charm of the site, which was developed by the Web design group Thumbcrumble and the graphic designers Irving & Co., is that it shares the witty illustrative style of Quo Vadis’s menus, bills and the other elements of the visual identity it has adopted since the Scottish chef Jeremy Lee took over a year ago.

All of the illustrations are by John Broadley, who has, as Mr. Lee put it, “an amazing sense of humor and a wonderfully dark streak.” He began by illustrating Quo Vadis’s menus in a cartoonish style of black and white figurative sketches depicting different aspects of the restaurant and the pleasures of eating. Dozens more drawings have since been made for the Web site, including illustrations of Quo Vadis, harvest rituals and decadent feasts.

Beguiling though Quo Vadis’s site is, it contains relatively little data and has a limited number of clearly defined functions. The more information a site has to hold, the more challenging its design will be, especially if that data is complex in nature and time-sensitive: All of which makes the new Web site of the Milwaukee Police Department particularly impressive — www.milwaukeepolicenews.com.

Designed by the communications group Cramer-Krasselt and the Web design consultancy LISS Interactive, the site condenses a labyrinth of archived information and breaking news about the M.P.D. into five sections. “The Source” is a live news feed on local police work, and “The Stats” features striking visualizations of crime statistics, like the murder rate and number of guns seized. “Most Wanted” is an interactive version of the traditional posters filled with mug shots of police suspects. “The Heroes” illustrates the impact of the M.P.D.’s work on Milwaukee, and “About” relays practical information like how to pay parking fines and file incident reports.

Stylistically, the site combines the crisp, no-nonsense typeface Helvetica with color photographs of the M.P.D. at work. As well as being an easily accessible source of useful information for local people, it presents a dynamic, yet realistic depiction of their police department in action.

As I began by grumbling about museum sites, it seems only fair to end by praising a promising one: the new Web site of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, which is to reopen in April after 10 years of renovation — www.rijksmuseum.com.

Juxtaposing images of the building and of masterpieces from the museum’s collection with the spruce typography of its new visual identity developed by the Dutch designer Irma Boom, the site looks stunning. It is also organized so thoughtfully that it is remarkably easy to navigate. Let’s hope it stays that way as more information is loaded in the approach to the reopening.

Design: Who Made That Universal Product Code?

On a Sunday afternoon in 1971, an I.B.M. engineer stepped out of his house in Raleigh, N.C., to consult his boss, who lived across the street. “I didn’t do what you asked,” George Laurer confessed.

Laurer had been instructed to design a code that could be printed on food labels and that would be compatible with the scanners then in development for supermarket checkout counters. He was told to model it on the bull’s-eye-shaped optical scanning code designed in the 1940s by N. Joseph Woodland, who died last month. But Laurer saw a problem with the shape: “When you run a circle through a high-speed press, there are parts that are going to get smeared,” he says, “so I came up with my own code.” His system, a pattern of stripes, would be readable even if it was poorly printed.

That pattern became the basis for the Universal Product Code, which was adopted by a consortium of grocery companies in 1973, when cashiers were still punching in all prices by hand. Within a decade, the U.P.C. — and optical scanners — brought supermarkets into the digital age. Now an employee could ring up a cereal box with a flick of the wrist. “When people find out that I invented the U.P.C., they think I’m rich,” Laurer says. But he received no royalties for this invention, and I.B.M. did not patent it.

As the U.P.C. symbol proliferated, so, too, did paranoia about it. For decades, Laurer has been hounded by people convinced that he has hidden the number 666 inside the lines of his code. “I didn’t get the meat,” Laurer said ruefully, “but I did get the nuts.”

CODE BREAKER
Bill Selmeier runs the ID History Museum, an online archive dedicated to the bar code.

You worked at I.B.M. in the 1970s and then helped promote the U.P.C.?
Yes, I started the seminars where we invited people from the grocery and labeling industry into I.B.M. We were there to reduce their fear.

What were they afraid of?
They were afraid that anything that didn’t work right would reflect badly on them — particularly if it was only their own package that wouldn’t scan. The guy from Birds Eye said, “My stuff always has ice on it when it goes through the checkout.” So we put his package in the freezer and took it out and showed him how it scanned perfectly.

Why are you still so interested in the history of the U.P.C.?
Let me put it this way: What bigger impact can you have on the world than to change the way everyone shops?

Apple Shake-Up Could Lead to Design Shift

There, behind a list of text messages, missed phone calls and other updates, is a gray background with the unmistakable texture of fine linen.

Steven P. Jobs, the Apple chief executive who died a year ago, pushed the company’s software designers to use the linen texture liberally in the software for the company’s mobile devices. He did the same with many other virtual doodads that mimic the appearance and behavior of real-world things, like wooden shelves for organizing newspapers and the page-flipping motion of a book, according to people who worked with him but declined to be named to avoid Apple’s ire.

The management shake-up that Apple announced on Monday is likely to mean that Apple will shift away from such visual tricks, which many people within the company look down upon. As part of the changes, the company fired Scott Forstall, the leader of Apple’s mobile software development and a disciple of Mr. Jobs. While Mr. Forstall’s abrasive style and resistance to collaboration with other parts of the company were the main factors in his undoing, the change also represents the departure of the most vocal and high-ranking proponent of the visual design style favored by Mr. Jobs.

The executive who will now set the direction for the look of Apple’s software is Jonathan Ive, who has long been responsible for Apple’s minimalist hardware designs. Mr. Ive, despite his close relationship with Mr. Jobs, has made his distaste for the visual ornamentation in Apple’s mobile software known within the company, according to current and former Apple employees who asked not to be named discussing internal matters.

This may seem like little more than an internal disagreement over taste. But Apple venerates design like few other companies of its size, and its customers have rewarded it handsomely as a result. Apple’s decisions can influence how millions of people use and think about digital devices — not only its own but those made by other companies that look to Apple as a standard-setter in design.

Axel Roesler, associate professor and chairman of the interaction design program at the University of Washington, says Apple’s software designs had become larded with nostalgia, unnecessary visual references to the past that he compared to Greek columns in modern-day architecture. He said he would like to see Mr. Ive take a fresh approach.

“Apple, as a design leader, is not only capable of doing this, they have a responsibility for doing it,” he said. “People expect great things from them.”

Steve Dowling, an Apple spokesman, declined to comment.

Apple’s customers do not seem to have serious qualms about the design choices the company has made as they continue to buy iPhones and iPads at a healthy clip. But within the circles of designers and technology executives outside Apple who obsess over the details of how products look and work, there has been a growing amount of grumbling in recent years that Apple’s approach is starting to look dated.

The style favored by Mr. Forstall and Mr. Jobs is known in this crowd as skeuomorphism, in which certain images and metaphors, like a spiral-bound notebook or stitched leather, are used in software to give people a reassuring real-world reference.

In contrast, Microsoft, not known as a big risk-taker, has been praised recently for taking greater creative risks in the design of its software than Apple has. It has come up with a visual style that is now used throughout its computer, mobile and game products. It relies heavily on typography and sheets of tiles that provide access to programs and are updated with photos and other online information. It is not yet clear whether this approach will be a hit with people who do not spend time thinking about design.

Bill Flora, a former Microsoft designer who created the earliest prototypes of its new visual style, said Apple had not been innovative enough in the design of its software. “I have found their hardware to be amazing and sophisticated, and I have found their software to be kind of old school,” said Mr. Flora, who now has his own design firm, Tectonic, in Seattle. “Their approach really wasn’t what I was taught as a designer in design school.”

Design: Who Made That Escape Key?

Jens Mortensen for The New York Times“It’s the ‘Hey, you! Listen to me’ key,” says Jack Dennerlein of the Harvard School of Public Health. According to Dennerlein, an expert on how humans interact with computers, the escape key helped drive the computer revolution of the 1970s and ’80s. “It says to the computer: ‘Stop what you’re doing. I need to take control.’ ” In other words, it reminds the machine that it has a human master. If the astronauts in “2001: A Space Odyssey” had an ESC key, Dennerlein points out, they could have stopped the rogue computer Hal in an instant.

The key was born in 1960, when an I.B.M. programmer named Bob Bemer was trying to solve a Tower of Babel problem: computers from different manufacturers communicated in a variety of codes. Bemer invented the ESC key as way for programmers to switch from one kind of code to another. Later on, when computer codes were standardized (an effort in which Bemer played a leading role), ESC became a kind of “interrupt” button on the PC — a way to poke the computer and say, “Cut it out.”

Why “escape”? Bemer could have used another word — say, “interrupt” — but he opted for “ESC,” a tiny monument to his own angst. Bemer was a worrier. In the 1970s, he began warning about the Y2K bug, explaining to Richard Nixon’s advisers the computer disaster that could occur in the year 2000. Today, with our relatively stable computers, few of us need the panic button. But Bob Frankston, a pioneering programmer, says he still uses the ESC key. “There’s something nice about having a get-me-the-hell-out-of-here key.”

I, KEYBOARD

Joseph Kaye is a senior scientist at Yahoo! Research.

Why do outmoded keys, like ESC, persist? Our devices have legacies built into them. For more than a hundred years, when you wanted to write something, you sat down in front of a typewriter. But computers look different now — they’re like smartphones. It will be interesting to see whether in 10 or 15 years the whole idea of a keyboard will seem strange. We might be saying, “Remember when we used to type things?”

How would we control computers in this future-without-typing? Think of the Wii and Kinect, or even specialized input devices for games like Guitar Hero or Dance Dance Revolution. All might be bellwethers for the rest of computing. We might see a rise in all sorts of input, like voice recognition and audio control — think about Siri.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: October 7, 2012

An earlier version misspelled Joseph Kaye’s surname as Kay and misstated his employer. He is a senior scientist at Yahoo! Research not Nokia Research Center.

Design: Who Made That Escape Key?

Jens Mortensen for The New York Times“It’s the ‘Hey, you! Listen to me’ key,” says Jack Dennerlein of the Harvard School of Public Health. According to Dennerlein, an expert on how humans interact with computers, the escape key helped drive the computer revolution of the 1970s and ’80s. “It says to the computer: ‘Stop what you’re doing. I need to take control.’ ” In other words, it reminds the machine that it has a human master. If the astronauts in “2001: A Space Odyssey” had an ESC key, Dennerlein points out, they could have stopped the rogue computer Hal in an instant.

The key was born in 1960, when an I.B.M. programmer named Bob Bemer was trying to solve a Tower of Babel problem: computers from different manufacturers communicated in a variety of codes. Bemer invented the ESC key as way for programmers to switch from one kind of code to another. Later on, when computer codes were standardized (an effort in which Bemer played a leading role), ESC became a kind of “interrupt” button on the PC — a way to poke the computer and say, “Cut it out.”

Why “escape”? Bemer could have used another word — say, “interrupt” — but he opted for “ESC,” a tiny monument to his own angst. Bemer was a worrier. In the 1970s, he began warning about the Y2K bug, explaining to Richard Nixon’s advisers the computer disaster that could occur in the year 2000. Today, with our relatively stable computers, few of us need the panic button. But Bob Frankston, a pioneering programmer, says he still uses the ESC key. “There’s something nice about having a get-me-the-hell-out-of-here key.”

I, KEYBOARD

Joseph Kay is a senior scientist at Nokia Research Center.

Why do outmoded keys, like ESC, persist? Our devices have legacies built into them. For more than a hundred years, when you wanted to write something, you sat down in front of a typewriter. But computers look different now — they’re like smartphones. It will be interesting to see whether in 10 or 15 years the whole idea of a keyboard will seem strange. We might be saying, “Remember when we used to type things?”

How would we control computers in this future-without-typing? Think of the Wii and Kinect, or even specialized input devices for games like Guitar Hero or Dance Dance Revolution. All might be bellwethers for the rest of computing. We might see a rise in all sorts of input, like voice recognition and audio control — think about Siri.

Beyonce’s Design Team Came Up With VERY HOOKER . . . The New NETS CHEERLEADERS Uniforms

We can’t hate on Jay and them for getting as MANY CHECKS AS POSSIBLE out of the NBAs Brooklyn Nets. This latest check goes to Beyonce though. We’re told that her “design team” helped draw up the designs for the Nets Dancer Outfits.

Iphone 5 Design Thrills Partners, but Will Cost Users

The Lightning port, as Apple calls it, is smaller and shaped differently from the old one, instantly rendering obsolete the millions of spare charging cords, docks and iPhone-ready clock radios that its customers have accumulated over the years.

While irritating to some, the Lightning connector could be a boon to the hundreds of companies that sell accessories for iPhones and iPads.

“Apple is testing the patience of its fans,” said Tero Kuittinen, an independent analyst and a vice president of Alekstra, a company that helps customers manage cellphone costs.

“A lot of Apple fans have a lot of different accessories and use the old systems, so this is going to be a fairly expensive shift for a lot of them,” Mr. Kuittinen said. Makers of iPhone accessories are likely to be ecstatic, he added.

Apple, which is selling Lightning cables and $30 adapters that will connect the new phones to many but not all older accessories, is, of course, poised to profit from the design change as well. Apple said the smaller connector allowed it to make the phone thinner and use space inside the device more efficiently.

Accessories for Apple products are already a vast and lucrative business. In the last year, iPad, iPod and iPhone add-ons, including speakers, cases and power chargers, generated $2 billion in sales in the United States alone, according to the NPD Group, a research firm.

To stay on top of the market and avoid building products that will soon be out of date, accessory makers have to watch Apple as attentively as any technology journalist or analyst. Apple, which is known for its culture of secrecy, generally keeps accessory makers in the dark before it unveils its new hardware. The companies rely instead on leaks from Apple’s manufacturing partners in Asia, or on rumors about the devices that surface on Apple-focused blogs. On the day of an Apple hardware announcement, they watch reports of the event and wait for data sheets to come from Apple with details on the devices before they crank up manufacturing in China.

Griffin Technology, a company in Nashville that makes Apple accessories, said that moments after Apple introduced the iPhone 5, its employees were making final design tweaks in its prototyping shop, where 3-D printers turn out mock-ups of future products. Many Griffin employees had already traveled to China from the United States to be there when the iPhone 5 was introduced.

“Kind of like everyone else, we’re at the same starting line in the race to the peg,” said Mark Rowan, Griffin’s president.

Similarly, employees of Incase, a maker of iPhone cases based in San Francisco, crowded into a conference room to watch online reports of Apple’s presentation, said Dave Gatto, the chief executive. Employees in China were waiting at factories for final design specifications so they could start making cases.

Occasionally a rare few in the business get a peek at an Apple prototype, according to Jeremy Horwitz, editor in chief of iLounge, a Web site that reviews Apple accessories. Much as some software developers get to use a new Apple product in advance so they can have software ready to show off on Apple’s stage, he said, some accessory makers have had access to Apple devices before their unveiling. Mr. Horwitz said these devices were typically locked down to prevent theft or leaks.

Some companies take unsanctioned routes to get ahead of the game. Hard Candy Cases, a case maker, sent iPhone 5 cases to journalists before Apple even introduced the phone. Tim Hickman, chief executive of the company, said manufacturers in Shenzhen, where his cases are made, sent around design information for unreleased iPhones to attract case makers like himself.

“The factories have gone from, ‘Shhh, hey, buddy, look at what I have for you,’ to making it part of their presentation,” he said.

Mr. Hickman said he did not buy information from leakers in Asia. Instead, he said, he made a deal with a factory that had told him it could make cases for the iPhone 5 and asked him to send designs that it would then modify to fit the new phone. He said his iPhone 5 cases for sale to customers would arrive in the United States in about three days.

IHome, a New York company that is one of the biggest makers of iPhone clock radios and other Apple audio accessories, tries to plan for Apple’s announcements but does not assume anything is fact until the company unveils its new hardware, said Ezra S. Ashkenazi, its chief executive. He called the Lightning change “a unique circumstance” because it was the first time Apple had changed the connector since it was introduced.

There are already iPhone clock radios made by iHome and other companies in hotel rooms around the world. Kathy Duffy, director of public relations for the Marriott hotels in New York, said that if many patrons seemed to be getting the iPhone 5, the company would probably stock up on adapters or buy new accessories. “We’d have to evaluate it and see what the demand is,” she said.

Roy Furchgott contributed reporting.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: September 14, 2012

An article on Thursday about the altered design of Apple’s latest iPhone misspelled the name of the chief executive of Incase, a company with an intense interest in the phone’s new shape and configuration because it makes iPhone cases. He is Dave Gatto, not Gotta.

Iphone 5 Design Thrills Partners, but Will Cost Users

The Lightning port, as Apple calls it, is smaller and shaped differently from the old one, instantly rendering obsolete the millions of spare charging cords, docks and iPhone-ready clock radios that its customers have accumulated over the years. While irritating to some, the Lightning connector could be a boon to the hundreds of companies that sell accessories for iPhones and iPads. “Apple is testing the patience of its fans,” said Tero Kuittinen, an independent analyst and a vice president of Alekstra, a company that helps customers manage cellphone costs. “A lot of Apple fans have a lot of different accessories and use the old systems, so this is going to be a fairly expensive shift for a lot of them,” Mr. Kuittinen said. Makers of iPhone accessories are likely to be ecstatic, he added. Apple, which is selling Lightning cables and $30 adapters that will connect the new phones to many but not all older accessories, is, of course, poised to profit from the design change as well. Apple said the smaller connector allowed it to make the phone thinner and use space inside the device more efficiently. Accessories for Apple products are already a vast and lucrative business. In the last year, iPad, iPod and iPhone add-ons, including speakers, cases and power chargers, generated $2 billion in sales in the United States alone, according to the NPD Group, a research firm. To stay on top of the market and avoid building products that will soon be out of date, accessory makers have to watch Apple as attentively as any technology journalist or analyst. Apple, which is known for its culture of secrecy, generally keeps accessory makers in the dark before it unveils its new hardware. The companies rely instead on leaks from Apple’s manufacturing partners in Asia, or on rumors about the devices that surface on Apple-focused blogs. On the day of an Apple hardware announcement, they watch reports of the event and wait for data sheets to come from Apple with details on the devices before they crank up manufacturing in China. Griffin Technology, a company in Nashville that makes Apple accessories, said that moments after Apple introduced the iPhone 5, its employees were making final design tweaks in its prototyping shop, where 3-D printers turn out mock-ups of future products. Many Griffin employees had already traveled to China from the United States to be there when the iPhone 5 was introduced. “Kind of like everyone else, we’re at the same starting line in the race to the peg,” said Mark Rowan, Griffin’s president. Similarly, employees of Incase, a maker of iPhone cases based in San Francisco, crowded into a conference room to watch online reports of Apple’s presentation, said Dave Gatto, the chief executive. Employees in China were waiting at factories for final design specifications so they could start making cases. Occasionally a rare few in the business get a peek at an Apple prototype, according to Jeremy Horwitz, editor in chief of iLounge, a Web site that reviews Apple accessories. Much as some software developers get to use a new Apple product in advance so they can have software ready to show off on Apple’s stage, he said, some accessory makers have had access to Apple devices before their unveiling. Mr. Horwitz said these devices were typically locked down to prevent theft or leaks. Some companies take unsanctioned routes to get ahead of the game. Hard Candy Cases, a case maker, sent iPhone 5 cases to journalists before Apple even introduced the phone. Tim Hickman, chief executive of the company, said manufacturers in Shenzhen, where his cases are made, sent around design information for unreleased iPhones to attract case makers like himself. “The factories have gone from, ‘Shhh, hey, buddy, look at what I have for you,’ to making it part of their presentation,” he said. Mr. Hickman said he did not buy information from leakers in Asia. Instead, he said, he made a deal with a factory that had told him it could make cases for the iPhone 5 and asked him to send designs that it would then modify to fit the new phone. He said his iPhone 5 cases for sale to customers would arrive in the United States in about three days. IHome, a New York company that is one of the biggest makers of iPhone clock radios and other Apple audio accessories, tries to plan for Apple’s announcements but does not assume anything is fact until the company unveils its new hardware, said Ezra S. Ashkenazi, its chief executive. He called the Lightning change “a unique circumstance” because it was the first time Apple had changed the connector since it was introduced. There are already iPhone clock radios made by iHome and other companies in hotel rooms around the world. Kathy Duffy, director of public relations for the Marriott hotels in New York, said that if many patrons seemed to be getting the iPhone 5, the company would probably stock up on adapters or buy new accessories. “We’d have to evaluate it and see what the demand is,” she said.
Roy Furchgott contributed reporting.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: September 14, 2012
An article on Thursday about the altered design of Apple’s latest iPhone misspelled the name of the chief executive of Incase, a company with an intense interest in the phone’s new shape and configuration because it makes iPhone cases. He is Dave Gatto, not Gotta.

Iphone 5 Design Thrills Partners, but Will Cost Users

The Lightning port, as Apple calls it, is smaller and shaped differently from the old one, instantly rendering obsolete the millions of spare charging cords, docks and iPhone-ready clock radios that its customers have accumulated over the years.

While irritating to some, the Lightning connector could be a boon to the hundreds of companies that sell accessories for iPhones and iPads.

“Apple is testing the patience of its fans,” said Tero Kuittinen, an independent analyst and a vice president of Alekstra, a company that helps customers manage cellphone costs.

“A lot of Apple fans have a lot of different accessories and use the old systems, so this is going to be a fairly expensive shift for a lot of them,” Mr. Kuittinen said. Makers of iPhone accessories are likely to be ecstatic, he added.

Apple, which is selling Lightning cables and $30 adapters that will connect the new phones to many but not all older accessories, is, of course, poised to profit from the design change as well. Apple said the smaller connector allowed it to make the phone thinner and use space inside the device more efficiently.

Accessories for Apple products are already a vast and lucrative business. In the last year, iPad, iPod and iPhone add-ons, including speakers, cases and power chargers, generated $2 billion in sales in the United States alone, according to the NPD Group, a research firm.

To stay on top of the market and avoid building products that will soon be out of date, accessory makers have to watch Apple as attentively as any technology journalist or analyst. Apple, which is known for its culture of secrecy, generally keeps accessory makers in the dark before it unveils its new hardware. The companies rely instead on leaks from Apple’s manufacturing partners in Asia, or on rumors about the devices that surface on Apple-focused blogs. On the day of an Apple hardware announcement, they watch reports of the event and wait for data sheets to come from Apple with details on the devices before they crank up manufacturing in China.

Griffin Technology, a company in Nashville that makes Apple accessories, said that moments after Apple introduced the iPhone 5, its employees were making final design tweaks in its prototyping shop, where 3-D printers turn out mock-ups of future products. Many Griffin employees had already traveled to China from the United States to be there when the iPhone 5 was introduced.

“Kind of like everyone else, we’re at the same starting line in the race to the peg,” said Mark Rowan, Griffin’s president.

Similarly, employees of Incase, a maker of iPhone cases based in San Francisco, crowded into a conference room to watch online reports of Apple’s presentation, said Dave Gatto, the chief executive. Employees in China were waiting at factories for final design specifications so they could start making cases.

Occasionally a rare few in the business get a peek at an Apple prototype, according to Jeremy Horwitz, editor in chief of iLounge, a Web site that reviews Apple accessories. Much as some software developers get to use a new Apple product in advance so they can have software ready to show off on Apple’s stage, he said, some accessory makers have had access to Apple devices before their unveiling. Mr. Horwitz said these devices were typically locked down to prevent theft or leaks.

Some companies take unsanctioned routes to get ahead of the game. Hard Candy Cases, a case maker, sent iPhone 5 cases to journalists before Apple even introduced the phone. Tim Hickman, chief executive of the company, said manufacturers in Shenzhen, where his cases are made, sent around design information for unreleased iPhones to attract case makers like himself.

“The factories have gone from, ‘Shhh, hey, buddy, look at what I have for you,’ to making it part of their presentation,” he said.

Mr. Hickman said he did not buy information from leakers in Asia. Instead, he said, he made a deal with a factory that had told him it could make cases for the iPhone 5 and asked him to send designs that it would then modify to fit the new phone. He said his iPhone 5 cases for sale to customers would arrive in the United States in about three days.

IHome, a New York company that is one of the biggest makers of iPhone clock radios and other Apple audio accessories, tries to plan for Apple’s announcements but does not assume anything is fact until the company unveils its new hardware, said Ezra S. Ashkenazi, its chief executive. He called the Lightning change “a unique circumstance” because it was the first time Apple had changed the connector since it was introduced.

There are already iPhone clock radios made by iHome and other companies in hotel rooms around the world. Kathy Duffy, director of public relations for the Marriott hotels in New York, said that if many patrons seemed to be getting the iPhone 5, the company would probably stock up on adapters or buy new accessories. “We’d have to evaluate it and see what the demand is,” she said.

Roy Furchgott contributed reporting.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: September 12, 2012

An earlier version of this article misspelled the name of the chief executive of Incase. He is Dave Gatto, not Gotta.

Bits Blog: Design and Drama Mark First Day in Apple-Samsung Trial

Michael Nagle/Getty Images

Apple’s hallowed design process was the topic of the first witnesses the company called in its high-profile court case against Samsung over smartphone patents.

In his testimony before a jury in a federal courthouse in  San Jose, Calif., Christopher Stringer, a longtime Apple industrial designer, provided a colorful account of the secretive methods by which Apple conjures up products like the iPhone and iPad. His testimony is part of an effort by Apple to show that Samsung swiped Apple’s patented inventions for use in its own electronics devices.

Wearing an all-white suit, Mr. Stringer, who was instrumental in crafting the first iPhone and iPad, described his job in poetic terms. “My job is to imagine objects that don’t exist and guide the process that brings them to life,” he said in a British accent.

The day concluded, though, with expressions of frustration by an Apple lawyer, Harold McElhinny, and the judge in the case, Lucy H.  Koh, over the public release by Samsung of evidence that Judge Koh had ordered excluded from the case. Samsung’s lawyer, John Quinn, had argued that the evidence would help it show that the iPhone was inspired by Sony product designs.

Mr. McElhinny called the release an “intentional attempt to pollute the jury.”

Judge Koh demanded to know who on Samsung’s legal team had authorized and drafted the press release and asked to speak with Mr. Quinn, who was nowhere to be found. Samsung’s legal team said he was headed to a dinner in Los Angeles.

In his testimony earlier, Mr. Stringer said that Apple’s design team consists of 15 or 16 designers who work around a small kitchen table, a sharp contrast to Samsung’s 1,000 designers.

Asked whether Apple had factored manufacturing costs or component requirements into the design of the iPhone and iPad, Mr. Stringer came across as indignant. He testified that Apple’s designers were in full control of the design process and made all decisions based purely on design.

“The world had never seen anything like this — there were legions of phones available — but none satisfying. This broke new ground. It was more than a phone,” Mr. Stringer testified.

He called the iPhone a “cultural icon.” The iPad, he said, was a “breathtakingly simple device.”

Mr. Stringer was particularly blunt about Samsung. “We’ve been ripped off by everyone, Samsung in particular,” said Mr. Stringer. “We’re offended.”

When asked whether he paid attention to what competitors were doing, he said “on occasion” and “very rarely.”

Later, a lawyer for Samsung showed an e-mail dated Jan. 19, 2011, from Mr. Stringer to another Apple employee that seemed to undercut his earlier comment about watching rivals: “Paul, I need your latest summary of our enemies for an ID brainstorm on Friday,” the e-mail read. “If you have any more data beyond this please could you update the chart? I wonder if there’s anything worth noting about the HP/Palm leak.”

The e-mail contained a spreadsheet listing the core features and dimensions of iPhone competitors.

Asked again whether he  paid attention to Apple’s competitors, Mr. Stringer said: “We were interested in understanding the feature sets of our competitors.”

Apple’s lawyer had one follow-up question: “Was that used to design some new Apple product?” Mr. Stringer responded: “Absolutely not.”

One other witness from Apple, Philip Schiller, the company’s senior vice president of worldwide marketing, briefly took the stand before the court adjourned for the day. He was asked about influences on the company’s products.

“We don’t use any customer input in the new product process,” Mr. Schiller said. “We never go and ask the customer, ‘What feature do you want in the next product?’ It’s not the customer’s job to know. We accumulate that information ourselves.”

Mr. Schiller is expected to testify again on Friday.