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Katsunami · 02-04-2018, 06:57 PM

Sometimes I wonder what designers are thinking.

Because I'm getting back into chess, I took out my electronic DGT chessboard. It's a beautiful piece of kit, but at 54x54 cm, it's also huge. When positioning the clock and a 15.6 inch laptop beside it, you'll need a table of around a meter long.

I went to see if there are smaller alternatives nowadays, and i found this:

Square Off

A self-moving chess board, connected through bluetooth to a phone. It seems brilliant! The king is 2.5 inches high (6.35 cm) as opposed to the normal 9.5cm. That's a third smaller, so the entire board should be smaller. I like this.

But then... you see this...

Image

It's a beautiful board. But... what kind of an designer IDIOT positioned that tacky, huge "Square Off" plate right smack dab in the middle of the rim?! Why F*** defile an otherwise beautiful piece of kit by doing this? Couldn't this name have been put discreetly on the side, like DGT does?

And why the WHITE and BLACK sides? Just leave the indices off, and make the board auto-rotate automatically, depending if you set up black or white on your side. (The DGT board does this; but if you have a board with indices, they will be the wrong way around, or you'll have to rotate the entire board if you want to switch from white to black. Having OCD to the point of being unable to bear wrong indices, with a lack of desire to rotate a 54x54cm board each time I switch sides, I think the indices-less Walnut version is the only usable option.)

(Another product that suffers from exactly the same design problem is the Casio Celviano GP500 digital piano. Such design elements that attract the eye have no place on a device/furniture that should get out of the way and be understated in appearance.)

02-04-2018, 06:57 PM	#31824
Katsunami Grand Sorcerer Posts: 6,111 Karma: 34000001 Join Date: Mar 2008 Device: KPW1, KA1	Sometimes I wonder what designers are thinking. Because I'm getting back into chess, I took out my electronic DGT chessboard. It's a beautiful piece of kit, but at 54x54 cm, it's also huge. When positioning the clock and a 15.6 inch laptop beside it, you'll need a table of around a meter long. I went to see if there are smaller alternatives nowadays, and i found this: Square Off A self-moving chess board, connected through bluetooth to a phone. It seems brilliant! The king is 2.5 inches high (6.35 cm) as opposed to the normal 9.5cm. That's a third smaller, so the entire board should be smaller. I like this. But then... you see this... Image It's a beautiful board. But... what kind of an designer IDIOT positioned that tacky, huge "Square Off" plate right smack dab in the middle of the rim?! Why F*** defile an otherwise beautiful piece of kit by doing this? Couldn't this name have been put discreetly on the side, like DGT does? And why the WHITE and BLACK sides? Just leave the indices off, and make the board auto-rotate automatically, depending if you set up black or white on your side. (The DGT board does this; but if you have a board with indices, they will be the wrong way around, or you'll have to rotate the entire board if you want to switch from white to black. Having OCD to the point of being unable to bear wrong indices, with a lack of desire to rotate a 54x54cm board each time I switch sides, I think the indices-less Walnut version is the only usable option.) (Another product that suffers from exactly the same design problem is the Casio Celviano GP500 digital piano. Such design elements that attract the eye have no place on a device/furniture that should get out of the way and be understated in appearance.) Last edited by Katsunami; 02-04-2018 at 07:01 PM.