In this video, we explain the intricacies of product design using calculators. Drawing from our extensive product design experience, we explore what makes a product truly successful. Discover the four fundamental rules of product design: functionality, intuitive use, user enjoyment, and manufacturability. Learn how these principles apply to real-world examples, and see how good design can make or break a product. Whether you’re a designer, manufacturer, or simply curious about product design, this video is packed with insights to enhance your understanding and skills. Don’t forget to like, comment, and subscribe for more in-depth content on product optimization and manufacturing.
#ProductDesign #FunctionalDesign #IndustrialDesign #UserExperience
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Eh, I just have a drawer full of button batteries and they all have the size engraved on them. Not sure what the gripe is. Not putting them on a shopping list is a personal problem, not a product design problem.
I will note that memory buttons are definitely useful if you want to do more complex math or math with long numbers. Can you remember an 8 digit number in your head? Do you think you can remember a number for a bunch of minutes, especially if you get interrupted during the task? They are always there because yes, there is a use for them and yes, people use them.
Excellent video; it's like a year of product design courses in less than half an hour. I will be watching this again 🤓🤓.
PD: Art is the conscious and constant search for perfection. So, engineering and design can be art – and anything, really, as long as you're striving for perfection.
1+2+3+4=10
I used the equal key once, but the plus key three times 🤨
Ce is clear error. Which allows you to clear an erroneous input without losing your entire equation. It's probably the most important button on a calculator if you have fumble fingers LOL
Better term than simple: elegant
I've been finding more and more that there's a big difference between simple and elegant. But they often look the same outwardly.
8:29 While it's true having an angled display is more expensive, there are so many options nowadays that I'd say it's hardly a manufacturing concern. It's mostly only a cost related consideration. You can run a lcd off of 4 wires, those can be a ribbon, or you could use 2 fancy connectors and something flexible in between. Heck, you could go for a flex rigid pcb, and save yourself assembly time. 🤷♂️ Casio is obviously the cheapest, but being cheap nowadays is often not the best way to sell most profitable.
Dieter rams and Philippe Starck would probably add nuance!
I love how he slowly descends further and further into madness
Coin cells are the worst!
As an industrial designer, who specializes in Design for manufacturing. I have never screamed “YES” so many times at a screen.
Observations.
There is no reason for either an on, or an off button on a solar powered pocket calculator. When you take it out of your pocket, it gets enough light to turn itself on. When the panel stops getting light, it turns off. A microcircuit could be included that allows the calculator to retain enough of a capacitive charge to handle a few calculations, in a room that's too dim to power the calculator on, but is bright enough to read the display, but that should be limited to 10 seconds of display after the "=" button is pressed.
C button (power on in low light state, but this should be a buffered action for any button. If the calculator is in error, it functions as a CE or Clear Error. button If you're in the middle of a calculation, say 1+10, and you intuit that it's going to be 11 w/o hitting the = button, it clears the 10. and displays a '+' for the current 'function, and '1' for the first value. Press C again, it clears the display to a '0' no function.
Agree on dropping the 'Mr, M+, M-, and MC' buttons. If we needed a master of ceremonies, I'm not going to carry it in my pocket. Likewise there is no need on a pocket calculator for Square Root, or Percent buttons. There might be a need for the percent button in a business, but if you're not doing financial transactions, it's very rare that you will need that feature.
There is a valid reason to do 'order of operations as entered' rather than PEMDAS, however Every instance I've seen is related to inventory, which means it's applicable to financial. In this case, having the '%' key might be interpreted as 'this calculator is too stupid to do PEMDAS, but that seems to me to be the only good use of that key on a pocket calculator.
(Side note, the 'valid' reason for an 'as entered' order of operations on a calculator that doesn't have parentheses buttons is, I have 5 cases of 24 spools of black filament, and 3 spools that are loose, Each spool is 2.2 lb, that gives me 5*24+3*2.2 lb of filament on an inventory calculator. Perhaps instead of 2.2 lb, you charge $15 per spool, so the value of the inventory is 5*24+3*15.00 represented in dollars. The problem becoming that if you do this calculation as pemdas, you're going to get the wrong value unless the 5*24+3 is wrapped in parentheses. That and 'we're too dumb to do the mdas portion of pemdas so you're going to get a broken calculator' are the only reasons I can see to do those things. I do consider inventory entry to be a good reason to include the option, but it's a deal breaker for a huge number of math problems. The other option here is to make the + and = functions live on one key as '+=' )
'=' should not repeat the last two steps of the calculation if pressed a second time. I.e 3*35 = should display 105. If you hit '=' again, you should see 105, not 3675.
Note that I read off a formula written in standard notation i.e. something like (4*8)/(2-7)= that the comp sci instructor posted to the blackboard, in RPN. as fast as he had put that formula on the blackboard. 4_8*2_7-/ using '_' to 'enter' the value. without looking at the HP 10C in my backpack. So yes I'm familiar with that, and no I don't suggest that this is the best way of teaching math. It's handy for letting comp-sci students understand how the CPU performs the calculations, but beyond that it's mostly just a form of showing off. So, yeah, I was showing off, but if you impress the toughest profesor in your area of study, it can turn out to be helpful, or give you harder homework in the end.
We're basically down to 10 digits, +-x/= and a decimal point an a C button as the only buttons really needed on a pocket calculator. 17 buttons, make the '=' button 3 buttons wide under the '0' button that becomes double wide. + gets to be double tall, and next to the = and '.' buttons. -, x and / (division sign) stack as single buttons above those. Lightly contrasting buttons darker than the shell for numbers, a different shade for functions, and yellow for '=', gentle curve at the top that hides the solar panel from view, while lifting the display to an agreeable angle. and you've got a decent pocket calculator. Optionally, celebrate the solar panel on the surface, perhaps taking the space of that missing power and memory row of buttons, and put a flip down 'foot' at the top back of the calculator to give the lift, yet leave the calculator slim for pocket storage. You could probably throw together a virtual version in Javascript, Python, TK, Scratch, or whatever modeling software you like to work with. I refuse to do so after looking at way too much javascript implementing a basic calculator about 30 years ago. I know some people who might implement something like this in hardware using capacitive touch buttons. I'm not a big fan of those, but if it floats your boat, go with it.
Considering the target market, I'd consider using a snap together front and back plate, with buttons etc., that aforementioned flip down foot, (robustness would be an issue though) and a TPU bumper around the entire calculator that would help to protect the buttons from accidental presses while it's in your pocket, and give you something comfortable to hold in your hand if you don't have a table or desk to set the calculator on. The extra 'grip' would be nice, and if you did it in a high contrast green, orange, yellow or purple, you might not be going to the store the next day to get another one as often. There might be a market for bumpers that handle turning that flat calculator into a wedge for readability though…
Is it perfect, Um, no! it's just a stripped down and made attractie basic calculator. You can do everything it can with paper and a pencil. And be able to show your work untill the teacher tells you to show your work on why 3×5=15. (I'm presuming the class this week isn't trying to show options where the values are octal (result 17), or hex, (F).
Very good video and thought process breakdown. I think a cool follow up video would be you designing a calculator for additive manufacturing. Critique others work, then show us how you would do it.
Kids should do math in their heads, not on calculators
For other product reviews, consider lamps. Should they turn on/off by touch, clapping, push switch, rotor switch, or via remote control.
Funny how long you rant about the memory button but didn't take the 3 minutes to google and find out how to use it.
I use the memory keys, but I think you are right about intuitiveness of them. They should have better labeled them so people can better understand how to actually use them.
I don't get it. Is the joke supposed to be that you obviously have zero idea what "good design" is? Was the part where you said "they didn't have industrial design back in the 80s", was that supposed to be like, sarcasm? It's like you think that just because you were too lazy to take the two seconds it would have taken to just Google how half of these features worked, your viewers are also going to be too lazy to call you out on any of the nonsense jargon-filled mess of a video this is.
I just can't figure it out, man. This video is so unintuitive.
I honestly never really understood the solar panels on calculators since these are mostly used indoors. When you're not using the calculator, you're just going to throw it in a random drawer, so it won't charge. In my opinion, a calculator with a battery is way better since those last for years before the battery dies, and people are probably going to lose the thing or forget about it before that happens. When I went to high school, I needed to buy a calculator, which I have used very extensively. I still have it and it still turns on, even though I bought it over 10 years ago and it doesn't have a solarpanel. I do have to say that I don't know how long it takes to charge a calculator with a solar panel. I think it won't take that long, but even if it takes like a second, I still think a battery that lasts for more than 10 years is better.
NO WAY HE SPOKE ABOUT CALCULATERS FOR 30MIN STRIGHT
1. Flex circuit boards have become much more common and reliable in recent years, so making a single flex board that runs the length of the product to accommodate a "neck bend" is not a manufacturing challenge at all.
2. Putting a solar panel below the keypad is complete idiocy. Where is the user's hand going to be? Over the panel, blocking the light.
3. Memory functions are a huge time saver and must-have on a calculator. Imagine measuring floor area of rooms in a house. For each room, you enter "length X width = M+". When you're done with all rooms, MR gives you the area for the whole house.
4. Not mentioned: Are key presses properly debounced? Bounce is an electrical trait that shows up as accidental double key presses. Cheap calculators with poorly debounced keypads are pretty much useless.
You talk about a calculator user should not have to read the instructions (figuring out AC, C, CE, and the memory functions) but you also talk about your use of graphing calculators. Did you not read the instructions for the graphing functions? At what level of complexity is reading instructions allowed?
I actually enjoyed this video format idea 👌🏻 would love to see more of this, I enjoy these videos applying them to fabrication manufacturing especially when making up kits for clients to be installing them selves
Button batteries are absolutely the most confusing "system" and is just chaos.
Ok.. mem recall, m-, m+, … Ok… But srsly what does MU do? Is the calculator supposed to sound like a cow?
I think it's genuinely an interesting video, basicly displaying how a "simple" product can vary is such a vast amount of ways. And that's just "regular" calculators, add "scientific" or "engineering" or "desk" or "accountant" to your search terms will give you a whole new set of designs. Which… is probably why they all are made SO cheaply, there is simply just so much competition on this market.
About the larger + sign… Generally, you don't NEED to use the = sign that much, adding a lot of numbers together, you'll just press the value, +, next value and in the end, the + will work as a "= and +" so.. it's more efficient to just use the plus. Especially if you're unsure if you have to add more stuff into your total. Like adding totals in a pile of reciept as you go along.
About the memory keys:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzePMBCHMhA
It's for doing complex calculations on a calculator without brackets. It's basicly just using the memory as a single variable where you can add whatever result you have on the display (M+) or subtract (M-) to whatever you currently have in memory. If nothing, you simply add or subtract from 0. MR will display what's currently in memory, and the MC is basicly just memory clear.
-As someone who works in IT I've never used it myself either, but I've helped a lot of finance people to know how a lot of them work. 🙂
Some come with fake solar panels.
Wait till this guy sees the ti 84+
if you've never used those buttons, I really have to question your engineering chops .