For this week’s reading, I’d like to respond to principle 2.2 – “Design inside-out” and 2.3 – “Sometimes, function follows form”. These principles are highly correlated. Together, they state a philosophy where the designer respects the physical form, the medium, and the constraints therein, and use these constraints as the foundational ingredients upon which to expand ideas and invite functionalities. The important thing is to never force an idea that might not fit with the form, but rather to be super flexible with the functional goal, and aspire towards a functional design that almost seems like natural extensions of the aesthetic form.

Both the lighter simulation and the Ocarina are designs that respect the physical form of a phone (i.e. it’s size and shape, and how we handle it and interact with it ) and happily let the form itself inspire the designer. The designer’s control of the function is flexible: the designer might specify the topic or idea from a coarse granularity, but they’d rather let the form itself make the choice on the fine-grained level: in the case of lighter, I’d guess the topic is “physical simulation of a certain everyday object that’s capable of being playful.” Then, seeing the form and shape of a phone, the designer observes it is a natural metaphor for a lighter box and settles on that. In the case of Ocarina, the instrument is choose because the idea of fitting an otherwise larger instrument in a phone screen would create a negative sense of blunt transfer: people are holding a phone, with a few fingers to touch upon. Not only will the image of a large instrument risk conflicting with our perception of the small size of the phone, but also the mechanism of operating large instruments would be so complex it demands a level of control far exceeding what is naturally offered by multitouch on a phone screen. It is exactly based on these concerns, or constraints, that ocarina stands out as a natural fit with the phone, in both size and ease of operation. Here, the constraint of form on the functional aspect of design really ties back to principle 1.4 in the book – “expect no more precision that a subject naturally affords”. Ocarina was a success because the designer let the function freely follow the form, and prune away the many complexities of performing more complex instruments on a phone, that might otherwise ruin the simple-to-use experience. This is an occasion where good design aims to be less, not more.

I am also reminded of a phone game that lets you tap the virtual ping pong ball in the air – the bottom half of screen acts as the table tennis racket, while the top half acts as the ground and provides a sense of depth. The playing experience was impeccable – the size of the phone matches that of the racket, and the accelerometers can perfectly capture this sort of wrist movement. Indeed, it is almost as if the designer stares at the phone, and asks “what sports-related game experience can we offer that can be so naturally derived what we already have”?, and let the constraints guide them in the sea of ideas and lead them to the answer.