JUST TOO MUCH

So many everyday products are conceived without a drop of design intelligence (e.g. paper cups, hair clips, printers, windows) that it seems rude to complain about objects that are over-designed. But as consumers become more design-savvy, brands are putting extra efforts into product design that don’t always add up.

A few years ago, when Apple launched their smart watches, the company had reached a point of design fatigue. After a string of inventive, innovative devices (i.e. the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad) the Apple Watch felt unnecessary, as if had been developed in response to market research rather than genuine need. It looked less like a technological instrument than an expensive amulet strapped to the wrist.

Like Apple, Dyson uses product design to elevate their products to the level of luxury goods, but their design ethos takes the opposite approach. While Apple uses a restrained palette and flush joinery to create an aura of opulent, intelligent minimalism, Dyson exaggerates the joining of disparate materials and parts to create an image of advanced mechanical functionality.

That sensibility is now approaching caricature. The brand’s Small Ball Multi Floor upright vacuum cleaner is cartoonish, with parts in unharmonious colors and awkward proportions. The design calls the user to marvel at the suction mechanism with an enormous clear canister, and the swiveling brush with an enormous purple ball joint. The brand would like to present the vacuum cleaner as an iconic machine, like a small car. What does this repositioning accomplish, if the object is so ungainly that one keeps it hidden in the closet?

Dyson Small Ball Multi Floor upright vacuum cleaner.

May 30, 2018 by Nalina Moses

Should a microwave oven look like a microwave oven, and, if so, what exactly is that? My graciously appointed office pantry has a Sharp Half Pint, a smaller-than-average microwave, about the size of a bowling ball, that’s perfect for dorm rooms, small apartments, and office pantries. But the oven mechanism – the bright white box where we set our leftovers and stale coffee to be irradiated – is wrapped in curved plastic panels that are trying very hard to make the appliance look like more than just a microwave.

There’s a recurring joke on 30 Rock about Jack’s half-cooked marketing schemes for GE microwaves. (In one episode his team makes the case really big and puts four wheels, four doors, and a steering wheel on it.) There must have been similar brainstorming sessions at Sharp. The earliest Half Pints have a simple, rectangular white plastic case that echoes the inner box. Then, in 2000, Sharp released a series with curved translucent cases in rainbow hues, similar to the colored iMacs. Today the oven is only available in opaque black. Our office Half Pint is a pretty, see-through, cornflower blue. Each time I open it I have to wonder what a microwave oven was meant to look like, because I doubt that this is it. Unlike the iMac, with its freely curving case, the Half Pint case remains squished and cubish; it sticks close to the contours of the oven inside. It’s nice to be able to see through the front panel to the sleek metal box within. Perhaps Sharp can engineer a microwave with a clear, orthogonal case, unsoftened by curves and color. That would be honest and also, maybe, unappetizing.

January 10, 2013 by Nalina Moses