Designing designers

✍ Scribed by The Design Council

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1982
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 175 KB
• Volume: 14
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0010-4485
• DOI: 10.1016/0010-4485(82)90348-7

✦ Synopsis

Designing designers

CAD workstations are not the most beautiful objects. John Lansdown (at Computer Graphics 80) once compared them to Russian tanks, if that's not being too unkind to Russian tanks. Certainly CAD systems have not received the attention from industrial designers their office counterparts have. And it's not the drawing office environment that demands such utilitarian looks -there are some very elegant drawing boards around these days.

Granted, some vendors do make an effort -compare the Ques~ Q-design with the McAuto ADD-100 in this issue for instance. So it was a pleasant surprise to see the Racal-Redac Maxi featured in an exhibition at the UK Design Centre on the workings of the Design Advisory Service.

Redac approached the Service in 1980 and were put in touch with industrial designers Moggridge Associates. The result was a workstation in three sections: a pedestal unit contains the CPU and supports the display, a separate worktable provides a flush surface for the keypad and printer, and a tiltable reference table holds the designer's sketches. Stylus and keypad connector sockets are on the front of the panel and can be changed round for left-handed operators.