14 ms·

Dieter Rams: ten principles for good design

134 points by part1of2 6y ago

wrnr 6y ago
The speakers look nice but those shelfs will get old quickly, they bend under the wait of books and have the cheap look of a grocery store. If ur into design pay a carpenter for bespoke shelfs.
- sandofsky 6y ago
  The discourse on this article is such low quality, so I wanted to delete my comments and leave. But Hacker News won't let you delete it after a while I guess, so I'll just edit it and leave this comment instead.
  - CamperBob2 6y ago
    considering it's just anchored to drywall. Wow, that's terrifying, given your photo. I hope you don't live in an earthquake-prone zone.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- rswail 6y ago
  Are you talking from experience with these shelves? Or are you making an assumption about their quality and long term stability? To me, they have the same functional design as Rams has promoted since the 1950s which has had a lasting effect on the world of design in both technology and other areas. Note that the shelves form a system of shelving, so you can adjust them in many different ways to suit different storage needs. They are usable in numerous different environments and mounting configurations. That's design. Eames said "Design is about constraints". The constraints here are things like wall types (and the requirements for mounting), using compression to support free standing shelving where it forms both storage and area separation. The sizing supports standard wall stud spacing and both plasterboard/solid construction as well as semi-freestanding and entirely freestanding configurations.
  - wrnr 6y ago
    yes as is implied in the comment.
pmoriarty 6y ago
Low content click-bait
- colordrops 6y ago
  Somewhat agree, though perhaps junior devs or others without much experience can take something away from this.
  - darkhorse13 6y ago
    You are in way over your head if you really think junior devs (or others without much experience) are the only ones who can take something away from Dieter Rams' design principles.
- pembrook 6y ago
  Rams' Ten Principles for Good Design came long before Buzzfeed and the concept of clickbait. This is not a listicle. This is the earnest design philosophy of one of the most influential designers of our time. A philosophy which can be found in most tech products today (Apple has literally ripped off many of his designs). If you create software or hardware products, ignore these at your own peril. HN users, perennially frustrated by superior technological solutions losing out to simpler sexier ones, could learn a thing from #3: Good design is aesthetic.
  - pmoriarty 6y ago
    "Rams' Ten Principles for Good Design came long before Buzzfeed and the concept of clickbait." Yet the article is still exactly that and no more: low content clickbait. "This is the earnest design philosophy of one of the most influential designers of our time" I hope he was influential for more than just those 10 trite platitudes.
    - eitland 6y ago
      > I hope he was influential for more than just those 10 trite platitudes. Yes, AFAIK he was primarily influential because of his work, only later because of his writing.
gabrielsroka 6y ago
Earlier this year, I saw Gary Hustwit's documentary about Rams. Rams is arguably one of the most influential designers of the last century. His lessons on design are valuable for software engineers and others. https://www.hustwit.com/rams https://www.hustwit.com/rams
- ramboldio 6y ago
  In that documentation he only talks once about the tech scene and he absolutely nailed it: "The one thing that we have to get right is that humans are in control of the technology and not vice versa."
  - bathtub365 6y ago
    Given that technology has been and is currently being used to control people, I’d say we failed.
    - naikrovek 6y ago
      Used by whom? Humans. Humans control technology to control other humans. Several layers of failure, there.
- tmilard 6y ago
  Yes of course. Or gui design it is obvious
layoutIfNeeded 6y ago
I haven't found empirical evidence if the functionality of these Braun products were compromised by his aesthetic choices or not. i.e. were these actually good products at the time, or did they only look good in your living room? Does anyone have data on this?
- theonemind 6y ago
  I don't know, but if they allowed the aesthetic to impede the functionality, they did so in violation of design principle #2 because good design MUST (tongue-in-cheek RFC-like capitalization) disregard anything that detracts from the usefulness of the product.
moltar 6y ago
11. Good design is expensive A base model of their chair is GBP 3245 (USD 4200).
- aswinmohanme 6y ago
  "A good life is an expensive one" - Unknown
neilpanchal 6y ago
I extended it to engineering and marketing fields: https://neil.computer/notes/good/ https://neil.computer/notes/good/ It's a stretch, these principles are just extremely abstract and perhaps even non-actionable; the devil is in the details :-).
tmilard 6y ago
Apple is perhaps the continuator of Diet Rams philosophie of design. Jonathan Ive was totally a fan of the German designer Rams. You can really feel it in the simplicity of Apple products. I am a big fan also even if less gifted.
- gwern 6y ago
  I watched the Hustwit documentary on Rams this year too, and while I liked the documentary (my review: https://www.gwern.net/Movie-reviews#rams https://www.gwern.net/Movie-reviews#rams ), I felt it put a finger on why Apple imitates Rams's surface but doesn't actually live up to his philosophy. Rams's radio and chair etc are all fully functional. Rams removed the accidental complexity by careful design, leaving only the essential complexity (the user still has to choose a radio channel, the radio can't choose it for him!). But there is a difference between removing accidental complexity and hiding intrinsic complexity. Apple's approach is, all too often, to avoid intrinsic complexity and optimize for a surface simplicity which actually shoves away all the hard problems by either forbidding them or relegating them to the CLI or 'power user' tools or makes it the devs' problem. This makes for products which look great sitting in the Apple Store, but then as you try to do anything complex or hard... You run straight into Tog's "third-user" critique: https://asktog.com/atc/the-third-user/ https://asktog.com/atc/the-third-user/ Apple's products are far more shiny than empowering or deep solutions. (Who would ever dare compare an iPad with a Smalltalk or Lisp Machine?) So you get inordinate attention to making the perfect squircled corner, but meanwhile, you have to grip your iPhone right for the antenna to work, or your keyboard breaks at the dust from the drop of a hat, and as always, the web browser lags half a decade behind and can't play basic audio file formats like OGG Vorbis, and Mac OS X ships with breaking bugs; this isn't even reaching the standards of basic competence, much less truly fulfilling Rams's 10 principles and creating user-empowering interfaces and violins of the mind.
- systemvoltage 6y ago
  There is a remarkable difference in Jony Ive's approach towards design and Dieter's despite of his inspiration (OSX calc, iPod, etc.). For e.g., Dieter truly explored texture of the surfaces not from an aesthetic goal, but as a tool to aid functionlism (knobs have knurling, sliders have striations, grippy things had rough texture, areas that shouldn't be touched were gloss). Jony just made things beautiful that sold well because that's what sells. That's what luxury brands do. He threw away the german functionalism that Dieter is so well known for, and adopted the hollow aesthetics of his work. Jony was obsessed with how a thing looks more than how a think works (besides the fact that Apple mouse is horrendous to use, it at one point had a charging port under the mouse). He ignored and still to this day ignores ergonomics, transparency, affordances, feedback and many aspects of design that are fundamental to designing a product that interfaces with humans. Instead of looking up to the challenge to make products more usable whilst keeping a consistent coherent aesthetics, he prefers to hide things or flat out omit important features so that the design is clean. He almost had an authoritarian role at Apple - engineering had to bow down to him. About the only thing Jony Ive did with Dieter Rams was adopted minimalism for the sake of aesthetic goals. Dieter would never design a clock that had a transparent face, made legibility poor and had white numerals on clear glass (which does not guarantee contrast): https://watchesbysjx.com/2013/10/jaeger-lecoultre-newson-atmos-and-memovox-customised-by-jony-ive-and-marc-newson-for-red-charity.html https://watchesbysjx.com/2013/10/jaeger-lecoultre-newson-atm... Jony Ive IMO is one of the worst designers in modern history despite of his success.
GoodJokes 6y ago
Love a 5k chair. Design is cool, but uh, apparently it’s something only rich people can dabble in
BMSmnqXAE4yfe1 6y ago
Power sockets in the photo are not easily accessible. Poor design.
vr46 6y ago
I finally managed to overcome the objections of Mrs VR46 and order some Vitsoe shelving for my office - she thought it was ugly - but after a few months (arguably 10 years) she changed her mind completely and thinks they’re great. I wish I would always have had the money to buy long-term, because you get more satisfaction AND spend less money.
- jcelerier 6y ago
  If I made a software and I took someone 10 years of constant usage to start liking it, I'm not sure I'd say it's a very well designed software. 10 years is enough to make anyone like anything.
  - vr46 6y ago
    That was me joking that it took about 10 years of convincing her to let me buy it, but only a few months of it actually being in the house for her to like it :)
    - jcelerier 6y ago
      oh, had understood it the other way around :)
- naikrovek 6y ago
  How much did it cost? The process seems extremely expensive if you are not a millionaire.
tmilard 6y ago
https://youtu.be/wChkvofR7Q0 https://youtu.be/wChkvofR7Q0
- tmilard 6y ago
  https://youtu.be/A6-wA-7QIeE https://youtu.be/A6-wA-7QIeE (Interesting talk with Rams) Apple, in the Jonathan Ive périod, is to my point of view ,the modern implementation of Brauwn-Rams . You can see this in the video
tmilard 6y ago
Here is an interesting view on the revolution of Dieter Rams design principles . https://youtu.be/nXwpn90Gdec https://youtu.be/nXwpn90Gdec
smusamashah 6y ago
"Good design is invisible" Donald A. Norman - The Design of Everyday things I have been reading this book for a while and the 10 points in this article seem so much on the surface only with no depth. It's probably about marketing more than design principles.

134 points by part1of2 6y ago

wrnr 6y ago

The speakers look nice but those shelfs will get old quickly, they bend under the wait of books and have the cheap look of a grocery store. If ur into design pay a carpenter for bespoke shelfs.

sandofsky 6y ago
The discourse on this article is such low quality, so I wanted to delete my comments and leave. But Hacker News won't let you delete it after a while I guess, so I'll just edit it and leave this comment instead.
- CamperBob2 6y ago
  considering it's just anchored to drywall. Wow, that's terrifying, given your photo. I hope you don't live in an earthquake-prone zone.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
rswail 6y ago
Are you talking from experience with these shelves? Or are you making an assumption about their quality and long term stability? To me, they have the same functional design as Rams has promoted since the 1950s which has had a lasting effect on the world of design in both technology and other areas. Note that the shelves form a system of shelving, so you can adjust them in many different ways to suit different storage needs. They are usable in numerous different environments and mounting configurations. That's design. Eames said "Design is about constraints". The constraints here are things like wall types (and the requirements for mounting), using compression to support free standing shelving where it forms both storage and area separation. The sizing supports standard wall stud spacing and both plasterboard/solid construction as well as semi-freestanding and entirely freestanding configurations.
- wrnr 6y ago
  yes as is implied in the comment.

pmoriarty 6y ago

Low content click-bait

colordrops 6y ago
Somewhat agree, though perhaps junior devs or others without much experience can take something away from this.
- darkhorse13 6y ago
  You are in way over your head if you really think junior devs (or others without much experience) are the only ones who can take something away from Dieter Rams' design principles.
pembrook 6y ago
Rams' Ten Principles for Good Design came long before Buzzfeed and the concept of clickbait. This is not a listicle. This is the earnest design philosophy of one of the most influential designers of our time. A philosophy which can be found in most tech products today (Apple has literally ripped off many of his designs). If you create software or hardware products, ignore these at your own peril. HN users, perennially frustrated by superior technological solutions losing out to simpler sexier ones, could learn a thing from #3: Good design is aesthetic.
- pmoriarty 6y ago
  "Rams' Ten Principles for Good Design came long before Buzzfeed and the concept of clickbait." Yet the article is still exactly that and no more: low content clickbait. "This is the earnest design philosophy of one of the most influential designers of our time" I hope he was influential for more than just those 10 trite platitudes.
  - eitland 6y ago
    > I hope he was influential for more than just those 10 trite platitudes. Yes, AFAIK he was primarily influential because of his work, only later because of his writing.

gabrielsroka 6y ago

Earlier this year, I saw Gary Hustwit's documentary about Rams. Rams is arguably one of the most influential designers of the last century. His lessons on design are valuable for software engineers and others. https://www.hustwit.com/rams https://www.hustwit.com/rams

ramboldio 6y ago
In that documentation he only talks once about the tech scene and he absolutely nailed it: "The one thing that we have to get right is that humans are in control of the technology and not vice versa."
- bathtub365 6y ago
  Given that technology has been and is currently being used to control people, I’d say we failed.
  - naikrovek 6y ago
    Used by whom? Humans. Humans control technology to control other humans. Several layers of failure, there.
tmilard 6y ago
Yes of course. Or gui design it is obvious

layoutIfNeeded 6y ago

I haven't found empirical evidence if the functionality of these Braun products were compromised by his aesthetic choices or not. i.e. were these actually good products at the time, or did they only look good in your living room? Does anyone have data on this?

theonemind 6y ago
I don't know, but if they allowed the aesthetic to impede the functionality, they did so in violation of design principle #2 because good design MUST (tongue-in-cheek RFC-like capitalization) disregard anything that detracts from the usefulness of the product.

moltar 6y ago

11. Good design is expensive A base model of their chair is GBP 3245 (USD 4200).

aswinmohanme 6y ago
"A good life is an expensive one" - Unknown

neilpanchal 6y ago

I extended it to engineering and marketing fields: https://neil.computer/notes/good/ https://neil.computer/notes/good/ It's a stretch, these principles are just extremely abstract and perhaps even non-actionable; the devil is in the details :-).

tmilard 6y ago

Apple is perhaps the continuator of Diet Rams philosophie of design. Jonathan Ive was totally a fan of the German designer Rams. You can really feel it in the simplicity of Apple products. I am a big fan also even if less gifted.

gwern 6y ago
I watched the Hustwit documentary on Rams this year too, and while I liked the documentary (my review: https://www.gwern.net/Movie-reviews#rams https://www.gwern.net/Movie-reviews#rams ), I felt it put a finger on why Apple imitates Rams's surface but doesn't actually live up to his philosophy. Rams's radio and chair etc are all fully functional. Rams removed the accidental complexity by careful design, leaving only the essential complexity (the user still has to choose a radio channel, the radio can't choose it for him!). But there is a difference between removing accidental complexity and hiding intrinsic complexity. Apple's approach is, all too often, to avoid intrinsic complexity and optimize for a surface simplicity which actually shoves away all the hard problems by either forbidding them or relegating them to the CLI or 'power user' tools or makes it the devs' problem. This makes for products which look great sitting in the Apple Store, but then as you try to do anything complex or hard... You run straight into Tog's "third-user" critique: https://asktog.com/atc/the-third-user/ https://asktog.com/atc/the-third-user/ Apple's products are far more shiny than empowering or deep solutions. (Who would ever dare compare an iPad with a Smalltalk or Lisp Machine?) So you get inordinate attention to making the perfect squircled corner, but meanwhile, you have to grip your iPhone right for the antenna to work, or your keyboard breaks at the dust from the drop of a hat, and as always, the web browser lags half a decade behind and can't play basic audio file formats like OGG Vorbis, and Mac OS X ships with breaking bugs; this isn't even reaching the standards of basic competence, much less truly fulfilling Rams's 10 principles and creating user-empowering interfaces and violins of the mind.
systemvoltage 6y ago
There is a remarkable difference in Jony Ive's approach towards design and Dieter's despite of his inspiration (OSX calc, iPod, etc.). For e.g., Dieter truly explored texture of the surfaces not from an aesthetic goal, but as a tool to aid functionlism (knobs have knurling, sliders have striations, grippy things had rough texture, areas that shouldn't be touched were gloss). Jony just made things beautiful that sold well because that's what sells. That's what luxury brands do. He threw away the german functionalism that Dieter is so well known for, and adopted the hollow aesthetics of his work. Jony was obsessed with how a thing looks more than how a think works (besides the fact that Apple mouse is horrendous to use, it at one point had a charging port under the mouse). He ignored and still to this day ignores ergonomics, transparency, affordances, feedback and many aspects of design that are fundamental to designing a product that interfaces with humans. Instead of looking up to the challenge to make products more usable whilst keeping a consistent coherent aesthetics, he prefers to hide things or flat out omit important features so that the design is clean. He almost had an authoritarian role at Apple - engineering had to bow down to him. About the only thing Jony Ive did with Dieter Rams was adopted minimalism for the sake of aesthetic goals. Dieter would never design a clock that had a transparent face, made legibility poor and had white numerals on clear glass (which does not guarantee contrast): https://watchesbysjx.com/2013/10/jaeger-lecoultre-newson-atmos-and-memovox-customised-by-jony-ive-and-marc-newson-for-red-charity.html https://watchesbysjx.com/2013/10/jaeger-lecoultre-newson-atm... Jony Ive IMO is one of the worst designers in modern history despite of his success.

GoodJokes 6y ago

Love a 5k chair. Design is cool, but uh, apparently it’s something only rich people can dabble in

BMSmnqXAE4yfe1 6y ago

Power sockets in the photo are not easily accessible. Poor design.

vr46 6y ago

I finally managed to overcome the objections of Mrs VR46 and order some Vitsoe shelving for my office - she thought it was ugly - but after a few months (arguably 10 years) she changed her mind completely and thinks they’re great. I wish I would always have had the money to buy long-term, because you get more satisfaction AND spend less money.

jcelerier 6y ago
If I made a software and I took someone 10 years of constant usage to start liking it, I'm not sure I'd say it's a very well designed software. 10 years is enough to make anyone like anything.
- vr46 6y ago
  That was me joking that it took about 10 years of convincing her to let me buy it, but only a few months of it actually being in the house for her to like it :)
  - jcelerier 6y ago
    oh, had understood it the other way around :)
naikrovek 6y ago
How much did it cost? The process seems extremely expensive if you are not a millionaire.

tmilard 6y ago

https://youtu.be/wChkvofR7Q0 https://youtu.be/wChkvofR7Q0

tmilard 6y ago
https://youtu.be/A6-wA-7QIeE https://youtu.be/A6-wA-7QIeE (Interesting talk with Rams) Apple, in the Jonathan Ive périod, is to my point of view ,the modern implementation of Brauwn-Rams . You can see this in the video

tmilard 6y ago

Here is an interesting view on the revolution of Dieter Rams design principles . https://youtu.be/nXwpn90Gdec https://youtu.be/nXwpn90Gdec

smusamashah 6y ago

"Good design is invisible" Donald A. Norman - The Design of Everyday things I have been reading this book for a while and the 10 points in this article seem so much on the surface only with no depth. It's probably about marketing more than design principles.