When I got my first job out of college, I bought a car. It was a new, 1997 Mazda 626. I was excited to finally have some of my own money, so I added all the features I could afford at the time. I added leather, a sun roof, and the ‘luxury package’ which to this day I’m convinced consisted of nicer floor mats. But the coolest feature of all was a standard feature on Mazda’s at the time. The center blower vents (for heating/Air conditioning) on the front dashboard were oscillating.

oscillating vent

The oscillating fan is nothing new, but its not commonly found in cars. Mazda engineers took note and added this to their cars. Why not? It was a simple motor, that with a push of a button allowed the vents to blow air back and forth, efficiently cooling the whole car. We see/use fans every day in our lives, but when passengers got in my car, it always drew comments. That’s how unique it was. It was a minimalist way of providing climate control. Other manufacturers were busy working on heated seats, dual zone cooling/heating, but Mazda took a step back and saw that adding this simple button and motor could provide a lot of benefit for a little investment.

As web designers and developers we need to find that next oscillating fan for the web. The lesson I learned from that fan’s design was that you do not always have to invent a new wheel. Sometimes the next great idea is just a re-using of a current idea. Simple using a common idea in a way that have never been used before can be very effective.

I think the last great web design idea like this may have been the tab. Old methods of navigation were becoming more complicated when amazon pushed the tab navigation. They took a familiar element we are comfortable with in our daily lives (tabs existed in books, file folders, etc…) and applied a graphical representation of it to the web. Tabs existed before Amazon, but in 1998 Amazon really pushed the metaphor and transformed it into a common web interface.

Firefox became a major player in the browser wars partly becasue of their use of multiple tabs. Tabs are now slowly fading form some uses. Firefox says it is looking to abandon the tab in favor of a traditional tree view.

What is the next oscillating fan or tab? We need to constantly look for that complicated or cumbersome element, take a step back and find for the practical solution. They may not all become standards, but sometimes the best ideas don’t always hit. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. After all, I’ve owned 5 cars since that Mazda, and driven countless others and I have never had an oscillating fan in any of them. However every time my car is hot, and i crank up the A/C I fondly remember that feature and wish I had it today.

Related posts:

1. Good Software Design Is Still An Important Art Solid Architecture is a Dying Art When I was in...
2. deployment schedules are not effective Simply put, deploying code on a set schedule is not...
3. Knowing your users will help make effective decisions If you are reading my blog, there is a very...
4. Estimating Resource Time for Web Development Projects Coming up with accurate time and resource estimate is one...
5. Iterative Development is Effective Here at SmartMoney, we have been using iterative development techniques...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Filed under:
experiences by bill breen