Filtered for that which motivates form (Interconnected)
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Filtered for that which motivates form
12.50, Saturday 27 Jun 2026
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1.
It’s hot in London so I’ve been seeing a lot of handheld portable fans, usually with a strap so you can hang it round your neck.
My faves are the ones with thermoelectric coolers in the middle of the fan: a small plate that is so cold that it is covered with icy condensation. It’s the Peltier effect (the plate is really hot on the back) and the first time I’ve seen a thermoelectric cooler in the wild.
Here’s a thermoelectric handheld fan on Alibaba. Three quid each if you’re buying over a million.
A fan looks like a fan because of the mechanism used for the movement of air.
I’ve been meditating this week on what motivates form in product design.
Hey free concept: AirPods with built-in Peltier thermoelectric coolers so the buds are ice-cold in your ear holes.
2.
A fan moves air; electronic products move data. That can motivate the form just the same.
Durrell Bishop’s Marble Answer Machine (watch the video):
marbles dropping out of an answering machine could form an intuitive physical interface. This work later became the seed for a new movement called Tangible User Interfaces.
Each marble is a message that you can place in the player dish, put aside to keep for later, and so on. So sophisticated and so immediately understandable. (“Legible” as Durrell say.)
But what about when a product can do anything? Like a phone?
We end up with anonymous slabs of black glass.
3.
Before movie theatres there was the Kinetoscope (Wikipedia) an early motion picture exhibition device, designed for films to be viewed by one person at a time through a peephole viewer window.
The Kinetoscope came out of Thomas Edison’s lab and established the idea of reels of film, and also film as “content” to be manufactured and distributed.
But it was a single-viewer device: you leant down and put your eyes to the viewer.
The act of peeping – the form is motivated by the human interaction.
Or for the necessity of the affordance: a possible interaction that must been seen as a possible interaction. (Affordances as previously discussed.)
BTW:
I recently discovered via the sf journal [Foundation] (issue 152) that:
Thomas Edison, using his Kinetoscope, is credited with producing (though not directing) … the first filmed sneeze (1894), the first filmed kiss (1896).
4.
The egg timer that looks like an egg is the best product design of all time.
Here’s one on Amazon.
The traditional kind of hourglass timer that uses sand, on the other hand, is rubbish:
It is traditional
Its form is motivated by the mechanism
And it is legible because you can see the passing of time.
But what to do you use it for?
Measuring time, sure. A lot of stuff. It can do anything (related to waiting for a period of time).
But does an initial use come to mind?
You have to think about it – aha eggs! Or you have to learn it. Ultimate the sand timer is abstract.
Like an empty ChatGPT window?
AI can do anything too.
But I opened my ChatGPT just now, and look how hard they work to give you ideas of what to do. Mine suggests: Write an email, create a painting, give me ideas…
If the hourglass timer were designed like that, they would print on the side:
For eggs
For rice
For pasta
For reminding me how long I have till my program is on.
So cumbersome.
Whereas!
The egg timer that is shaped like an egg.
Form follows function – but also where and when and how.
And then once you have timed your eggs, you have in your mind this new hammer of “timing” and you see immediately everything else you can time.
So another motivation for form is to imply the first context of use, even if - and especially if - the product can be re-purposed or adapted for other contexts by the end user, once they have internalised the function of it.
It is genius. I aspire to design a product this perfect.
The egg timer shaped like an egg was invented and patented by Lucio Oliveri in 1982. U.S. Design Patent No. D276,705 (expired).
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