This weekend I saw the CNN profile of Yves Behar, whose firm Fuseproject has helped design various Jawbone products, the One Laptop Per Child computer and countless other products. In my upcoming book I have sections on Jonathan Ive, Apple’s master of industrial design and Robert Brunne,r who has worked on the Kindle, Nook and several other innovations. I also included how Lexmark designed the vertical, piano black look of its Genesis. In my last book, I profiled Darrin Caddes, lead designer at Plantronics. On the New Florence blog I have profiled designers like Mauro Porcini
The common thread in these designers is how effortlessly they can move from one product to the next. In Caddes’ case he used to design cars and motorcycles and after an accident turned to designing gorgeous headsets. Porcini is responsible for style at 3M, which has over 60,000 products.
We are living in product design heaven. You can see it is a glass half-empty or half-full. There are better days ahead for UX in Enterprise Software. Or, time to yell again - why the heck is taking it so darn long after so much investment?
