The MusicCube is a concept for tangible interaction developed by Miguel Bruns Alonso during his graduation project. Or a as Miguel puts it himself:

MusicCube is an expressive tangible interface for controling your Mp3 playlists remotely, it makes contol more exciting and fun when compared to regular interfaces.

The tangible interaction concept seems appealing to me somehow, though sometimes it does seem a bit strange and cumbersome to develop an interface without a display and buttons when you can buy full color LCD displays on every street-corner...

Read more about the MusicCube on Miguel's website or in the articles published at SIGCHI and in the journal Personal and Ubiquitous Computing.

See also:
> Shake Control Patent Controversy

Comfortable hand tools improve working performance and reduce injuries. Lottie Kuijt-Evers showed in here PhD research that the productivity of carpenters, painters and Do-It-Yourself handymen improves when they use tools that feel pleasant, have good physical ergonomic qualities and provide the right force transfer. Kuijt-Evers, who works at TNO and was a PhD candidate at Applied Ergonomics & Design (TU Delft), developed a 'comfort questionnaire'. She asked professional and 'amateurs' that had just used a specific tool (such as a saw or screwdriver). The study resulted in a number of requirements for the development of comfortable hand tools.

Sources: TU Delft (in Dutch only) and Volkskrant (Dutch Newspaper)

UPDATE
Lottie's entire thesis (pdf) is now available online at the TU Delft Library online repository.

Yes, that's right: it's the travel-iron-hairdryer hybrid!

Sometimes people think it's a good idea to combine products just because you use them in the same place or at the same time. Leading to famous inventions such as the toilet-paper-holder-slash-radio. Daniel pointed out this travel-iron-slash-hairdryer out to me. I don't know... He found it on a Dutch eBay kind of site, where it struck me that there were a lot of second hand travel irons for sale. All still in the box. Which leads us to the question: is the travel iron the gym membership of consumer electronics?

A washbasin and mirror for small people (presumably children) in the restroom at Pizza Hut (picture from Vidafacil)

The association of Portuguese usability professionals has a section of their website called Vidafacil. With my limited knowledge of the Portuguese language (=none) I would make 'easy living' out of that. It's a collection of examples of good and poor usability on their website. It's in Portuguese, but it's not that hard to make sense of it (lots of pictures...). Usability is a pretty universal concept I guess.

(Thanks to Elif for the tip)

User Interface (on the back of the device) of a Philippe Starck designed alarm clock (found on the core77 forum).

Follow up
The Thomson radio on which it was hard to adjust the volume, that I posted about earlier on, was developed by Phiippe Starck and Matali Crasset (don't know exactly who did what). This interview with icon magazine contains an interesting statement:

The project was not just a styling exercise: Starck and Crasset tried to simplify the products by removing the superfluous functionality and making products easier to use.

Just to illustrate that offering only the basic functionality can make a product easier to use. But it's no guarantee.

Impossible alarm clock
Also found this review of a Starck-designed (or art directed) alarm clock (see picture) on the forum of core77.

The usability is terrible to the point of uselessness. This is clearly a product meant for consumption, not interaction. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised since it comes from the man who gave us the juicer that doesn't juice and the teakettle with the scalding-hot handle. I love your aesthetic Phillipe, but you're killing me!

Yet another satisfied customer.

The title might sound ridiculous, but think about what happens when you're painting. You're pouring the paint out of the bucket into a small tray, which you use to evenly distribute the paint over your roller. The pouring process is always messy and the tray has to be cleaned afterwards. Dutch design company Flex/the INNOVATIONLAB came up with a solution for Flexa (a Dutch paint brand): a paint bucket of which the lid becomes the tray. So no need to pour the paint and no cleaning afterwards; you just close the lid. Even a mundane product category as paint offers possibilities to improve user friendliness; as was also proven earlier on with the easy-white paint by Histor.

I would like to extend my sympathies to all those art and industrial design students that will have to find a new hobby, instead of making iPhone-could-be-phones, now that the real iPhone was revealed. I hope you'll get through this week. Just remember that you came really close.

Another Don Norman essay within a short timespan, but he steps up to the plate on simplicity - a theme I just referred to in a post about two simplicity books - in an essay on his website: simplicity is highly overrated.

“We want simplicity” cry the people befuddled by all the features of their latest whatever. Do they really mean it? No.
...when it came time for the journalists to review the simple products they had gathered together, they complained that they lacked what they considered to be “critical” features. So, what do people mean when they ask for simplicity? One-button operation, of course, but with all of their favorite features.

Personally, I think we're just schizophrenic. When buying a product we want all the features, startling design, a low price, and peak performance. When we use the product, we're annoyed by a lack of usability or production quality. But once we're in the shops again...

(Thanks to Bob for the tip)

Remember those first digital watches from the eighties? The ones which featured two controls: mode and set. With these simple buttons you had a whole arsenal of functionalities at your command. All you had to do was remember in what sequence and how long you had to push them. Every combination accessed a different function. Almost like a game. Well, the digital watched has evolved into the 5.11 H.R.T. Tactical Sniper Watch, including bullet trajectory software. Two buttons have become four, but the number of features has increased even more.
And the fun part is that there is an online demo which allows you to try it out. To enhance the fun, first try to figure out the watch without reading the elaborate instructions that are featured below the demo.

water fountain user interface (click image to enlarge)

You walk up to the water fountain for some nice, refreshing, cold water. You put the cup under the nozzle, and push a button with blue marking under it. You assume that's used to start the tap as it's the most distinguishable button. Alas. The function of the blue button seems to be to put the instruction 'press taps' on the screen. So we've added an LCD display and two buttons to a water fountain because the tap lever wasn't identifiable as such? I must be missing something here.

Other products in the Office Usability series on uselog.com: Powerpoint, The Copier, The Telephone, The Electronic Door Lock and The Light Switch.