In designing hardware to be used every day, it was important to keep both the human aspects and the machine in mind. What looks good also often feels good.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
My background is in hardware design. I found hardware work to be a welcome change from thousands of hours of programming and that led to the designs you mentioned.
I like stuff designed by dead people. The old designers. They always got it right because they didn't have to grow up with computers. All of the people that made the spoon and the dishes and the vacuum cleaner didn't have microprocessors and stuff. You could do a good design back then.
In my opinion, no single design is apt to be optimal for everyone.
With regard to what is designed really well, I think people are the best-designed objects in the world. Seriously.
Good design should be honest.
If you have to design something, choose things that we need as opposed to frivolous things that we might just want for a month or two for bragging rights.
We want to build technology that everybody loves using, and that affects everyone. We want to create beautiful, intuitive services and technologies that are so incredibly useful that people use them twice a day. Like they use a toothbrush. There aren't that many things people use twice a day.
I love the idea of anthropomorphizing machines. I love the idea of taking technology and giving it a personality.
Design must reflect the practical and aesthetic in business but above all... good design must primarily serve people.
Usually all I care about is how elegant or over-the-top the pieces are, it's nice to really get to understand what the customer wants and needs as opposed to just focusing on the aesthetic.