Since the day when my 7 year old told the cashier at Wal-Mart that we qualify for a discount on the groceries bill, "because my dad", he said, "has just become a member of AARP", I have decided to keep a low profile about my association with the growing AARP membership.
But everything has changed when I received an invitation from the American Marketing Association, It read that since 20 percent of the workforce will be retiring in a few years, it meant the loss of a wealth of institutional knowledge… and it asked " what can we do to retain the critical contribution of these valuable players?”
So I decided to break my low profile state of mind, and regain my self-esteem as a born again “valuable player”.
I always owned a Mac, whether at home or at my studio. I was never part of the Apple cult. Never followed Steve Jobs on his promo concerts. In matter of fact, I felt strange about the fact that as a Mac owner, I had belong to a 4% minority whose voice could not be heard or understood by the rest 96% of the PC owners in the business world.
For my birthday, my kids bought me an iPod Shuffle. It measured only 1.5” by 1”. It was cute and so small. Apple always had a tradition of producing elegant designs, although I thought they were non-functional designs, but they had the right formula for bringing design awards. And this time I had a hunch, before opening my present that some smart creative authority at Apple, will come up with the fantastic idea, that since the product was so cute and so small, everything else should be so cute and so small. No surprise here: I opened the small cute box and grabbed the small cute manual, and got ready to read the small cute type, and I couldn’t. My kid had to read it to me.
Then it was time to use my new iPod, and since I am an avid road biker, I clipped it to my sleeve, inserted the beautifully odd designed earphones into my ears, turned on the iPod and begun riding towards my studio, over the bridge connecting Gulf Breeze to Pensacola, Florida. It did not take long—at almost 100 F and 98% humidity— for both earphones to slide out of my ears. No sweat, I thought, I will put them back on, as I continued riding. Between the cars passing on my left at nearly speed of sound, and me slowing down my bike on a ridiculous narrow road shoulder, I have made an attempt to make sense out of the blurry, light, thin, barely noticeable grey writing on each earphone: was there a way to find which was the Right earphone, and which was the Left? I realized that I didn’t know left from right so I decided to continue my ride without enjoying the ultimate sound experience. About 15 minutes later I arrived to my studio, put my glasses on, and there I saw it: I mean, I hardly saw it. A blurry shape, so thin, and so grey and so pale, and so well hidden: The elegant, baby boomer non friendly, unnoticeable letters R and L.
Conclusion: It’s not about design, you stupid.
Suggestion: Have you heard about color-coding? Hey, kids may like it too.
By Ariel Peeri
Who I am
What do I do
But everything has changed when I received an invitation from the American Marketing Association, It read that since 20 percent of the workforce will be retiring in a few years, it meant the loss of a wealth of institutional knowledge… and it asked " what can we do to retain the critical contribution of these valuable players?”
So I decided to break my low profile state of mind, and regain my self-esteem as a born again “valuable player”.
I always owned a Mac, whether at home or at my studio. I was never part of the Apple cult. Never followed Steve Jobs on his promo concerts. In matter of fact, I felt strange about the fact that as a Mac owner, I had belong to a 4% minority whose voice could not be heard or understood by the rest 96% of the PC owners in the business world.
For my birthday, my kids bought me an iPod Shuffle. It measured only 1.5” by 1”. It was cute and so small. Apple always had a tradition of producing elegant designs, although I thought they were non-functional designs, but they had the right formula for bringing design awards. And this time I had a hunch, before opening my present that some smart creative authority at Apple, will come up with the fantastic idea, that since the product was so cute and so small, everything else should be so cute and so small. No surprise here: I opened the small cute box and grabbed the small cute manual, and got ready to read the small cute type, and I couldn’t. My kid had to read it to me.
Then it was time to use my new iPod, and since I am an avid road biker, I clipped it to my sleeve, inserted the beautifully odd designed earphones into my ears, turned on the iPod and begun riding towards my studio, over the bridge connecting Gulf Breeze to Pensacola, Florida. It did not take long—at almost 100 F and 98% humidity— for both earphones to slide out of my ears. No sweat, I thought, I will put them back on, as I continued riding. Between the cars passing on my left at nearly speed of sound, and me slowing down my bike on a ridiculous narrow road shoulder, I have made an attempt to make sense out of the blurry, light, thin, barely noticeable grey writing on each earphone: was there a way to find which was the Right earphone, and which was the Left? I realized that I didn’t know left from right so I decided to continue my ride without enjoying the ultimate sound experience. About 15 minutes later I arrived to my studio, put my glasses on, and there I saw it: I mean, I hardly saw it. A blurry shape, so thin, and so grey and so pale, and so well hidden: The elegant, baby boomer non friendly, unnoticeable letters R and L.
Conclusion: It’s not about design, you stupid.
Suggestion: Have you heard about color-coding? Hey, kids may like it too.
By Ariel Peeri
Who I am
What do I do
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