Living as a Designer

This post from Adaptive Path sorta confused me at first. I dismissed it as sorta pointless to share but have come to realize it makes a good point about design and designers.

I like being a designer and – though I don't generally go around telling people this – think that design is more a calling than a job. A good designer is not just working on his interactive system nine to five, but lives design all the time. This means, they are not satisfied by poor design or rough experiences, and go seek better ways.

Sometimes this just involves being a nerd, and constantly searching for the best products. But sometimes you have to go make your own. This design-as-life sensibility has panned out for people I have worked with or employed as well. I sorta want to be able to live with prospective employees for a week, not to see if I like them, but to see how they deal with design and experience issues in their everyday life.

Back to wallets, I find them unacceptable also. But have gone a few steps further than the above link. All sorts of nylon gear makes me unhappy, so I've been modding or sewing my own for years now. I went ahead and just made up a prototype out of 1000d Cordura. I tend to think fabric will be superior for the Thin Wallet concept. And Cordura is basically indestructable.

Briefly, it's deadly thin, folds many different ways, and is designed to carry cards. No cash space per se, and I just tri-fold what little I carry to fit. Odd sized paper (or other size currency) will just fold differently.

My favorite bit was an accident of design. When folded as shown above, it is articulated. So it's about the footprint of a normal wallet, but with a center hinge. I often, even when seated, cannot tell it's in my pocket. Sometimes you luck out with design; I think I'll be wearing this prototype for years.

Now, back to interaction design.

I forgot one of my favorite sort of other examples. You don’t even need to be a designer to design your environment (whole discussion around customization, etc. can follow this). This is a favorite of mine:
http://www.vententersearch.com/
Read that as Vent Enter Search. A blog where fire/rescue folks share solutions. Often, it starts as a problem (how to store the saw, look at this weird door we found) but is never just a gripe. You have to post a valid solution, and often there are other solutions discussed in the comments also.

uh, the images return a 404 when clicked…but the wallet looks really nice!

Okay, fixed it.

Not sure what I was thinking there. I have this simple coding scheme. In this case:

L suffix for large, S for small. Somehow, I wrote the link as “N.” Not sure what my brain thought that stood for yesterday. More proof you need to test everything, I guess.