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this post was submitted on 14 Oct 2023
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This was posted in another community recently, so I'm copying my comment from that:
I'm interested in any good examples of hidden design you can think of.
I'm assuming you listen to the podcast 99% invisible?
I don't actually, I never really got into podcasts for some reason, exception is I do end up watching wvfrm but nothing else.
As for good examples of invisible design, there is nothing that I can think off the top of my head, I guess it's just as invisible to me. Jokes aside, the only example coming to my head rn is not the best example, it's of the slit in old macbooks for activity indication light (IIRC). It was so thin that it was literally invisible to the naked eye unless the light was shining, so it's kind of playing up to the concept itself, in turn making it noticeable and not actually following the principle I mentioned.
After racking my brain quite a bit I did come up with an example: pinch to zoom, it's very high level as an example but you would realise it's intuitiveness if you have ever seen someone try to apply it to the real world. Invisible design is an issue because of this, because it's supposed to get out of the way and so you just don't notice in day to day life, it only becomes noticeable when it suddenly is not there.
Escalators vs elevators is maybe a good example of the concept in theory, but in practice escalators are the worse design of the two, and they don't necessarily compete anyway.
Escalators are either slightly faster stairs or stairs for the sedentary. Their only practical advantage is clearing high-volume areas quickly, like transit stations. But otherwise, they are worse stairs - costly, narrow, power consuming mechanical stairs that require regular maintenance. Elevators are an accessibility feature. They allow easy movement of the handicapped and large cargo, and can move many, many floors quickly. Nobody is taking escalators to the 57th floor of a building.
Not to say escalators don't have that advantage of failing in a useful way, just that they don't do anything stairs don't already do. Nothing else really does what elevators do.
Better example may be, say, ebikes or hybrid cars, provided they don't lock up the conventional drive system in the event the electric portion fails.
Agreed, as I mentioned that's the context in which I learnt of the concept, maybe because it's the easiest to grasp for a layman, but it's certainly not the best as you demonstrated. I still would probably use it to explain because it's a known quantity, but I agree with your point.