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Design in the 21st Century: A Coffee with Barry Katz (Part 8)

Posted on Thursday, May 22nd

SM: To me 20th Century art looks like the ‘anti-beauty’. Is that reasonable? Today I look at the products people are lapping up and they are beautiful objects. Are we returning to appreciating beauty? BK: I am not going to disagree with you completely, although I will refrain a bit.

Design in the 21st Century: A Coffee with Barry Katz (Part 7)

Posted on Wednesday, May 21st

SM: What is your interpretation of what is going on in Steve Job’s head that allows him to do something really interesting and leapfrogging with design every time? BK: I don’t think it is every time. Apple has cultivated a mystique of the ‘magic Job’s touch’. SM: He did look outside of America to get

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Design in the 21st Century: A Coffee with Barry Katz (Part 6)

Posted on Tuesday, May 20th

SM: Previously we talked about cell phones and the problems that have developed over time with their hazard to driving. Could the Mendini analysis be applied to cell phones? BK: The Harvard Medical School has concluded that cell phone drivers kill 2400 people a year in the United States which is serious. Several states have

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Design in the 21st Century: A Coffee with Barry Katz (Part 5)

Posted on Monday, May 19th

SM: The human factors movement then becomes a definitive note in design history? BK: The human factors movement becomes a very big deal. Part of the reason is the increasing rise in competition from China, India, and other parts of the world after the turn of the millennium. Silicon Valley design services are getting extremely

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Design in the 21st Century: A Coffee with Barry Katz (Part 4)

Posted on Sunday, May 18th

SM: Did the design tools come about that time as well? BK: Design tools came just a little bit earlier. I believe IDEO was the first consultancy to make a really major investment in CAD and CAM. They developed a culture of rapid prototyping, which CAD supports well. IDEO policy was such that you never came

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Design in the 21st Century: A Coffee with Barry Katz (Part 3)

Posted on Saturday, May 17th

SM: Is that how they got the idea for the roller ball itself, or were they prototyping an existing concept? BK: The idea for the roller ball preceded them; they were just trying to figure out how to make it work. Back in the 1960s, when Doug Engelbart was working for SRI, he built this

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Design in the 21st Century: A Coffee with Barry Katz (Part 2)

Posted on Friday, May 16th

SM: While you were going through your career transformation, design was also transforming. I am not going to ask you to go through 20th-century design in two seconds, but what was going on with design at that time? BK: Good, because that would take at least four seconds! Design has been meandering for about 120 years.

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Design in the 21st Century: A Coffee with Barry Katz (Part 1)

Posted on Thursday, May 15th

It’s 8:45 in the morning and I have just sat down for a cup of coffee and a chat with Barry Katz. A bit whimsically, he describes himself as a “dyed-in-the-wool humanities guy”; however, it is very easy to see past his humility and recognize his tremendous passion and intellect within. He is a historian

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