History of ID Week 12, Part 1: Electronics and Product Semantics

Watch as a desperate teacher tries to convert a live classroom experience into an online learning opportunity. 2020 Covid-19 management strategy. If you are here for class, hope you enjoy this. If you are just finding it on your own, PLEASE be kind. This is intended to solve problems in a time of crisis. It should live in a land beyond the reach of petty criticisms of my voice or mistaken pronunciation or differing interpretations that fill up so many comment boxes. Available to all because we need to work together and share resources. Feel free to use or share if this is useful in your own problem solving.

Matthew Bird, Industrial Design, Rhode Island School of Design, May 11, 2020

Links:
Clara Rockmore:

Antikythera Mechanism:

Jacquard Loom:

Curta Calculator:

Walkman Ad:

1984 Mackintosh ad:

Susan Kare:

Speak and Spell ad:

Kraftwerk Computer World:

1979 Walkman Ad:

Martin Cooper and Dynatac:

Ivan Sutherland’s Sketchpad demo:

Nina Hagen’s The Change:

[BrokebackBob]

I'm not one of your students though I wish I was. I'm just a 66-year-old retired IT professional who has always admired design and technology. I am totally hooked on your lectures. I'm going to watch all of them and I've watched many of them already, they are just so interesting instructive fascinating and engaging. You're a marvelous instructor.

[paulaeller]

Thank you, thank you, thank you!! You are a God-send!! You have explained everything in a way that i can understand and i am so grateful!

[leeharman]

First of all, thank you for this lecture series. I think I've watched all 12 weeks at this point, plus all the bonus content. I am enjoying this so much! Second of all, it's such a thrill to see Commodore computers included here. My father was an engineer there until they closed and was just telling me about the development process for keyboard specs!

[julianciccone]

Hi I'm a second year Industrial designer students from Canada. Thanks a lot for your amazing content love your videos! :)

[reniermassyn]

Second Year Industrial Design Student from Cape Town South Africa. Absolutely loved it! please upload more!

[pangkyuli]

I truly love your work and your STYLE pic and gif help a lot to remember all of them ) Sincerely hope can access more class from u .

[josieTheDuck]

As always, thanks for a great lecture! It would be interesting to see collection of items that you have behind you :)

[sandrawheeler]

Just found our Speak and Spell. Still works!

[seamlab]

I was a Secretary in the 80’s and used “Selectric” IBM, then “Word Perfect” which I hated because you had to memorize codes before you could type anything. Took to the Mac like a duck to water, all WISYWIG.

[lupinzar]

In regards to early computer equipment: Digital Equipment Corporation put a little bit of styling into their machines. Not a lot, but I love the switches on the PDP-11 models, even though they were before my time.

[HomeBuiltByHoward]

The original iMac was said to have been translucent because it allowed us to visually grapple with a technology we couldn't understand.

[MexTexican]

So informative and entertaining. Thanks for posting!

[fontenbleau]

Unfortunately Theremin have very dark secret, it used first as wireless alarm in USSR Gulag enslaving camps, inventor was able to sell it there first and only later made as musical instrument, maybe this becomes a curse for destiny of such device. Very good lecture, we need more. 👍

[HomeBuiltByHoward]

If you owned one of the Walkman TPS-2's your will remember deafening yourself constantly as you inadvertently slid the volume to 11.

[beanieweenietapioca]

When I look at consumer electronics from the late 70s on, I think there's an underappreciated modernist aesthetic to these plastic and metal boxes. I find it kind of reminiscent of International Style architecture--letting the form be dictated by a pure expression of function and materials. Stereo systems, VCRs, and desktop PCs were new objects, with no functional antecedent--so why try to make them look like something else by wrapping them in a decorative chassis? These are objects made from rectangular circuit boards and box-shaped modular components--there is a purity of purpose to put them into a metal or plastic box with the controls you need to touch up front, and the tangly bits--which you don't want someone tripping over--connected in the back. You could take the same components and put them in a sphere, or a teddy bear, or literally anything--but why?

Apple is the darling of designers, because their products scream out how designed they are. I think a lot of enthusiasts reacted negatively to that, not just from platform-war fanboyism, but because viewed from this functionalist sensibility many of them come across as pretentious, bloated, and chintzy. And the non-Apple hardware that aped that aesthetic was scorned even more.

Much like the International Style, of course, this "simplicity of purpose" also happens to conform with blatant, repetitive cheapness. So it's not without its own problems. 😁

[RD]

This guys is a star I tell ya', a STAR. I'm amazed that Matthew Bird hasn't been discovered by Hollywood yet ...

[TheSeventhSphinx]

Astonishing theremin performance! Thank you!

[Centerstagerentals]

Thank you for your videos they're awesome, I'm a design student in San Francisco theses videos have been extremely helpful!

[TheMissingxtension]

Even worse is the apple trackpad on the laptops, they are oversized, too hard (no good for long sessions), jagged, hard edges, and gets in the way of typing. I like the nibs and two separate buttons that actually give you feedback and friction. I don't like the finish on the apple trackpad, maybe some light sanding would make it usable.

[delusionnnnn]

A couple of notes about the Macintosh - the ads and introduction and sketches are for the original Macintosh, which was just called "Macintosh" which debuted in 1984. The Macintosh SE was from 1987, three years later, and was significantly improved from the original since it was their fourth model. The key differences are that the original Mac had 128K of memory, the SE had 1 MB, the SE had two 800K floppy drives instead of one OR one floppy drive and a 20 MB hard drive, whereas the original Mac only had one 400K floppy. The SE is said to have sold incredibly well pretty quickly.