Journal: News & Comment

Friday, October 04, 2002
# 12:59:00 AM:

Pretty and functional

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Designing things people use -- from teapots to aircraft to Web sites -- is no easy thing. Some objects are designed only for some kind of practicality, and are consequently ugly. Think of a car's brake drum, or an intravenous drip bag, or a traditional carbon-paper airline ticket. Others are designed purely for aesthetics, and are either hard to use or actively (and attractively) useless: windchimes, tongue piercings, and lava lamps, for instance.

True beauty comes where the two meet, when, as Donald Norman writes, "attractive things work better."

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