Vito Cassisi – Tech Blog Delving into technology

The elements of horrible tech aesthetics

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There's an abundance of utterly hideous equipment on the market, ranging from mobile phones to desktop computers to anything designed by a collection of stale engineers. Sometimes it's a subtle flaw, such as an upside-down logo on your laptop lid. Other times you'll come across something that's so insanely blemished, that you struggle to comprehend the fact that a living human being produced and released this device to the market - at least, not with a straight face.

With the aim of outing the design flaws which plague the consumer tech industry, I've written a few specific examples which clearly explain why some 'features' are best left to concept art.

Gloss
Perhaps the most prevalent, glossy paint jobs are used anywhere there's a need to cover cheap plastic and subpar design choices. It's as if designers look at the product, know it sucks, and think that gloss is the magical solution to the whole mess. Well, it isn't.
Glossy hardware is a magnet for body oils, including figerprints or residue from your lunch. It looks cheap when it's clean, and revolting when it's been used for five minutes. If a manufacturer is keen to go at a design with a gloss covered brush, at least make it resistant to prints. Otherwise, stick to matte.

Chrome, real and fake
Chrome is another ugly trend. Both real and fake scratch into an awful palette of circular scarring, the latter looking like a knock-off from the local two dollar shop. As with gloss, it attracts fingerprints, and breeds compulsive shirt wiping. And don't get me started on fake carbon fibre - c'mon, these things ain't cars!

Screen border
This one is a problem with portable devices, and to an extent, monitors. So many touch screen phones have an insane amount of plastic framing around the screen. With the advent of capacitive screens, your entire attention when using a modern phone is directed to the screen itself. Both control and display are all in one, so perhaps manufacturers should build the phone around the screen, not just shove it where it'll fit. An excellent example of this is the HTC Evo 4G.

Regarding monitors, the frame gets in the way of multi-monitor setups. For example, using Eyefinity for gaming would be much more attractive if the gap between screens was minimal.

Stickers
No one cares about what fancy features are part of their device - we already know, we bought it! At least make them remove easily, leaving a sticky mess isn't going to win you any favours.

Branding
If you're a small company, and want to make a name for yourself, don't plaster it all over your product! Sure, put it on there, but be subtle about it. If you're not a household name, then you'll probably find excessively branding your products will do more damage than good. There's only so many times people will put up with "What the heck is VuvuzelaTec?" every time they take their device out in public.

Cheap build
No one wants to pick up a product and feel it buckle under their moderate grip. It might be cheaper to skimp on structural integrity, but customers hate it. Are you building a product for people, or margins? It's particularly bad when you can see the warping of the frame, thanks to reflections in the glossy exterior!

There's a lot of odd design choices when creating products. What irritates you? Put your response in the comment section below! :)