“It is a non-alcoholic beverage so you can enjoy it without worrying about the next working day” is the tag line printed on the Asaho non-alcoholic, zero calorie beer-like beverage.

Work shapes the life style of many Japanese.

Poster in 二俣川 driver license office showing an unhappy face. Maybe this the kind of emotion that Japanese police associates with driver license?

Clean icons to explain the features of the cafe.

Zou-no-nana Terrace / 象の鼻テラス
Address: 横浜市中区海岸通1丁目
http://www.zounohana.com/

The New Town Plaza shopping center in Hong Kong has an iPhone app which allows you to:

1. see featured promotions and get coupons
2. reserve table at the restaurants in that shopping mall
3. check-in on Facebook (hmm…who do I want to do that?)
4. see store directory and search for store
5. information about the area around the shopping mall

Detail screenshots of some of the features:

2. Table reservation system

3. Location check-in

4. Store directory

5. Info about the shopping mall neighborhood

Link to the App Store: download the app here (Hong Kong App Store).

KUMON, a well-known private tutoring company in Japan which specialized in early childhood education, has a gadget called “E-PENCIL” that claim to speak native English to kids and train their listening and pronunciation skills.

To read a pre-recorded speech user can tap the tip of the device onto the reading material.

Here is a TV commercial of the Kumon E-PENCIL device:

My thoughts:

1. I’m quite concern about the accuracy and the sound quality of the audio. Judging my the TV commercial, this device seems to have a pretty low quality built-in speaker. Is that audio playback clear enough for students to listen to and repeat after?

2. This device is an attempt to add some interactivity to traditional book reading experience. While reading a book, the reader can only see the text without any audio feedback. This device can add that missing audio feedback. This can be useful for language learning scenarios.

However, as we already have affordable and highly capable tablet computers in consumer market (the iPad), I believe it would be much more cost effective to build learning apps on these platforms, instead of investing on specialized physical printed materials and custom-made, single purpose gadgets.

Furthermore, the school can take advantage of the internet connectivity of these tablet devices, and constantly roll out updated materials related to the most current news in the world, to keep students engaged and informed about the world.

Official site: http://www.kumon.ne.jp/eigo

There seem to be a UI trend recently, that the primary entry list / timeline is associated with the “three horizontal line” icon. Here are some screenshots from apps that use variations of such icon design. These apps include Path, Facebook, Google Plus, Reminders, Gmail (mobile web version), and Stitcher.

Here are some thoughts:

• This “three horizontal line” icon is not bad for representing a list of entries, which is a visual abstraction of the iOS table view, although sometimes it’s just too general that it might not show the characteristics of the data of individual application.
• The icon is almost identical to another UI element “toolbar resize grip” that is commonly used in desktop applications. See the screenshot below.
  And perhaps because of the reason above, both Google and Stitcher are using three bulleted lines to represent the primary entry list, to distinguish it from the possible confusion with the toolbar resize grip.
• Just curious, what happen to the “Home” icon? What are the reasons that the app designer decided to ditch Home icon for the three horizontal line icon? With the concept of “Home”, at least it carries the idea of a place that you can get back to, the origin of a journey. Home is an appropriate metaphor that exists in real world. However, the three horizontal line icon does not have such metaphorical meaning in real world.

Evernote: three horizontal line icon for side pane resize grip

The Japan Railways (JR) has a ticket reservation website at jreast.eki-net.com. Just like any other web services, they require users to register an account to make train reservations, check information and so on. A nice touch on the account sign-up form though, is the choices for the secret questions. Here’s the translation of the list:

• 好きな電車 (Your favorite train)
• 好きな乗り物 (Your favorite way of transportation)
• 思い出の駅 (A memorable station)
• 思い出の観光地 (A memorable sightseeing location)
• 好きな食べ物 (Food that you like)
• 嫌いな食べ物 (Food that you hate)
• 卒業した学校 (The school that you graduated from)
• 好きなチーム (You favorite team)
• ペットの名前 (Pet’s name)
• 親の旧姓 (Mom’s maiden name)

What I like about this list is that it is relevant to the training experience. When filling in this sign-up form, this little part reminds me of why I want to open an account in this web site – I want to book a trip to travel. Small detail, but makes the sign-up progress a little more present and personal.

This is an automatic sanitizing toilet in a public washroom located near the Hankyu Arashiyama Station (阪急嵐山駅).

Official description at the facility:

• The toilet seat, toilet bowl, and floor are automatically cleansed after each use.
• Fully equipped with heating and air conditioning, background music, baby seat, handrails, mirror hand soap, toilet paper, hanger, dust bin, sanitary napkin disposal etc.
• In case of need, there is a direct line to our administration center so you can call us 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

The tag line of this poster is「思わずびっくりかえる、お得です。」(before your realizing, [time] changes suddenly and great deal comes)

Despite of my bad translation, there are two things that I think are clever in this poster design:

1. In the tag line, the word かえる (KAERU) has two meanings:
(a) 「変える」Changing from one state to another
(b) 「蛙」Frog

2. Along with the “frog / change” word play, the illustration above resembles a sitting frog. If you flip it upside down tho, it appears to be a dragon head. The illustration combines three themes into one presentation: frog (KAERU), change (KAERU), and the symbol of dragon.

I wish everybody a happy 2012. I will continue my journey to discover and document beautiful designs in everyday things.

This is a sketch book from a Dyson engineer showing the thinking process when designing the company’s revolutionary vacuum cleaner. The notebook is part of the exhibitions in Tokyo Designers Week 2011.

It’s very intriguing to see that how the designer used the sketch book to gather ideas and visual thinking with simple doodles. No worries about structure, fidelity, quality; all it matters is quick and free drawing, or even putting your coffee mug on the notebook and leave a mark. So analog, so beautifully human.