“Dreyfuss brings to his work no special aptitude for mechanics and only a moderate gift in the handling of materials,” noted The New Yorker in 1931, in one of the first glossy profiles anywhere of an industrial designer. But “he has to a high degree a sense of the ultimate use to which commodities will be put, a feeling for the comfort of the man who is going to use the fountain pen for writing more than as a decorative adjunct to his desk.” (Emphasis mine.) This is the spine of the user-friendly world, unchanged whether you’re talking about smartphones or toothbrushes or driverless cars: a
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