John Loss joins David Mettler and Timothy Keirnan to talk about his book Not Always Homeless, created from ethnographic interviews with local people who lost their homes. Its subtitle is “The personal stories of 13 people who survived and escaped a life on the streets”.

Mr. Loss was our wood shop teacher in junior high and taught us fundamentals of design for any project, including writing a plan and “measure twice, cut once”, plus the importance of an attractive visual presentation. In this 60 minute episode, we discuss how John published this first book at age 80 based on thorough research with 13 people in the Niagara Falls area of New York State. He then created a 501c3 charity with some fellow concerned citizens to help local people without homes build a more stable life for themselves, called Help and Hope for the Homeless. Why and how do people in America become homeless, and what kinds of assistance have proven to work successfully long term?

John is a living definition of a UX designer’s “empathy” ideal as he presents insightful research and personal anecdotes from helping people in his community. His compassion and expertise as a teacher are  in full view on this new project as he continues to be a positive force of faith and change in the lives of others.

Not Always Homeless… can be purchased on Amazon.

The Niagara Gazette published this article about John’s book and charity.

Five years and 50,000 miles in the making, this critique of the 2016 Scion FR-S (aka Subaru BRZ or Toyota 86) puts the long in longitudinal review! Cohosts Eric Penn and Ryan Malcolm return to help Tim discuss the complete customer experience with the car from encounter, to decision, to purchase, to initial use, to longitudinal reflection.
The “Toyobaru” is in our opinion one of the most successful user-centered car designs we’ve ever experienced. Toyota and Subaru aimed this car at a finely focused customer base and created something with an enthusiastic following and enough sales to continue the model into a second generation. It never tries to be all things to all people. Rather, it creates passion and loyalty in its customers’ hearts by focusing tightly on what they value in a small, lightweight, rear wheel drive sports car that is affordable.
This episode is way longer than usual at 100 minutes, so here are the segment timings:
00:00-51:00 Encounter, Decision, Purchase, Initial Use
51:00-1:07:34 Longitudinal Use and Final Year
1:07:35-1:21:19 Second Generation Improvements
1:21:20-1:40:33 Special Guest and Conclusion

A design this pure, with a customer profile so well-defined, is proof that large corporations can delight customers if an executive champion and a dedicated team work in concert to achieve their customer-centric goal.

Pinar Guvenc, a partner at Sour Studio, joins Tim for a discussion on how this consultancy does their Architecture, Interior Design, Product Design, and Public Spaces work. They are a hybrid design studio with the mission of addressing social and urban problems through sustainable and inclusive methodologies. We discuss Sour’s use of co-creation panels and extended collaboration with all the diverse stakeholders on their projects, as well as a case study in public space design they did in Taksim Square in Istanbul, Turkey. Sour is proud to say they work “with” clients and stakeholders, not “for”.

Check out their work on making accessibility a priority in product design with their Degree Inclusive antiperspirant packaging and their ADA 1.0 clothing form that helps retailers make fashion accessible to people with disabilities.

You can find Sour at
https://www.sour.studio/

Read some information about Taksim Square as well as view some photos.

Instructional designer Brian Duck joins Tim to discuss two topics:

• Why are designers of all types still having to persuade  some companies that we need access to end users on our projects in 2021?
• Why is Sony’s ultra portable digital audio player UX so bad compared with Samsung’s player from 15 years ago. Doesn’t anyone benchmark anymore?

00:00 – 08:00  We commiserate on the need in 2021, in some companies, to explain the fundamental need for early access to the end users of our projects rather than accept what managers dictate as “What the users need”. Too many places still think requirements can be determined without proper stakeholder involvement.

08:00-40:00 We discuss the lack of progress in portable digital audio player UX by contrasting the superior UX of Samsung’s 15-year old YP-U2J design with Sony’s recent NWZ-B183 design that Tim is disappointed by. Brian tries each player for the first time to provide “newbie eyes” in this informal discussion (this is not a usability test, just a quick gut check with Brian on these to players’ designs). We discuss the importance of benchmarking a product category’s UX among competing products before starting a project, and ensuring that those benchmarks are met or exceeded. We don’t have any inside knowledge at Samsung or Sony about these two projects, but the glaring UX mistakes in the Sony are difficult to understand in 2021.

Our summary of UX advice for the portable digital audio player design space is what Samsung did right in 2006:
* Employ high contrast for easy reading in dim light and for users who have difficulty with fine print both on screen and on the body of the player.
* Employ large enough text for the same reasons both on the player and in the screen.
* Provide an asymmetrical cap shape and make sure it fits tightly to protect the USB port from being damaged.
* Provide an asymmetrical shape of the player itself to make it easy for users to operate by feel without eyes on. This includes the headphone jack location for players that are not solely bluetooth.
* Provide large enough and easily recognized hard buttons for basic function like Play, Next, Back, FF, REV.
* Ensure the firmware operates the hard buttons consistently as on the Samsung–the Sony unit changes the direction of the Next and Back buttons based on which menu screen a user is navigating, infuriating!

Here’s a positive review of the Sony DAP that contrasts with Tim’s disappointment.

Here’s a very quick YouTube video of a delighted Samsung customer whose YP-U2J still works great after 15 years. Build quality matters as well as UX!

Gordon Olson, CEO of Torii Industries, joins Tim Keirnan for a discussion about a new design of tank-less water heater. Tank-less water heaters remove the need for a large water tank to be heated 24 hours a day for occasional hot water use. Besides being inefficient use of energy, traditional tank water heaters can fail catastrophically, and provide large amounts of landfill waste after their useful life is over.

The Torii solution will replace the old centralized water heater with a tank-less model that uses a carbon foam inside the pipes of the unit to heat water very quickly for use on demand, without exposing metallic components to the hot water that leads to oxidation and subsequent wear. Sensors and software will monitor the components and enable part replacement before any failures occur, which will reduce the need for recycling due to continual part replacement.
You can visit Torii Industries at https://toriiway.com/

And this article about carbon foam is pretty interesting from 2002.

Dr. Laura Bix from the Michigan State University School of Packaging returns to the show! Her latest project was researching the packaging of medical supplies used by EMTs in the field as they stabilize patients and transport them to the hospital in the ambulance.

Dr. Bix describes how most medical supplies are normally packaged for the highly controlled Operating Room environment and how they might not work as well in the field and in ambulances. From initial investigation ideas, to recording ambulance environments on closed tracks, to constructing an ambulance simulator usability lab for testing the opening of packaging with EMTs under repeatable conditions, Dr. Bix talks about all phases of the project.

Here is an article on Dr. Bix’s work at the school, including the study we talked about in this episode–and from which I used two excellent photos for these shownotes, thanks MSU:
https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/packaging-the-industry-no-one-thinks-about-but-saves-lives

There is a donation drive going on now to renovate the School of Packaging building. The last update to the facility was in 1986 and it’s time for some improvements. Check it out and contribute if you can to this excellent department that does so much to train some of the best professional packaging designers in the world. NEWS FLASH: Dr. Bix just told me the school received a 10.8 million dollar grant donation. Great news!

More links about the MSU School of Packaging:
https://www.facebook.com/MSUPackaging
https://www.linkedin.com/company/msupackaging/
https://www.instagram.com/msupackaging/
https://www.instagram.com/msucoppac

Tim Keirnan interviews author David Loehr and designer Greg Swenson about the new memoir That’s How Strong My Love Is: From Rock and Roll to James Dean. This book is unique in that David, the world’s foremost archivist of James Dean’s remarkable life and career, saved so many artifacts from his own interesting life experiences to document them, including ticket stubs, posters, autographed photos, clothing from various periods, photos, badges, pins, stage designs, newspaper clippings, and more. It’s a good thing he did, as some of the stories in this memoir are pretty amazing and might have encountered skepticism without the evidence at the end of each chapter. Greg worked with David to design the presentation of the memoir text and the appropriate artifact photos and scans, plus the cover.

The book is a delightfully detailed ride through the pop culture and counterculture of rock and roll music, its scenes, and its people, from the 1960s forward. The legend of James Dean, both the acting and the person, is a continuous reference point. David’s writing is marvelously free of the ego some memoir writers indulge in, and his encounters with household names in entertainment are fascinating yet down to earth. Some anecdotes are humorous, some are frightening, all are interesting. If you were there in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, or if you are just discovering those decades in pop culture history as a younger person, this memoir has something for everyone.

David’s memoir is on sale at the following places:
The James Dean Gallery (well worth visiting in person)
Ebay.com
Amazon.com

Greg’s cookbook, Recipes for Rebels, is another book design triumph and is available at the following places:
The James Dean Gallery
Recipes For Rebels site
Amazon.com

Watch the incredibly good 8-minute documentary Lenny’s Shirts about Lenny Prussack’s fashion design career. It has some wonderful scenes of Fairmount, IN, in an intimately hypnotic blend of images, video, and Lenny’s unique voice recounting his amazing career. Independent filmmaking at its best. Lenny’s current fashion designs can be found at his Etsy store.