An Obsessive Focus on UX: Pilot's Pressure-Regulating Kire-Na Highlighter

I think something that's probably under appreciated if you don't read/write Kanji– bad penmanship is incredibly hard to read due to the complexity of the characters. Good penmanship is extremely valued in Japan, so that need for precision tends to bleed over into an overarching valuing of stationary and related accessories.

Japanese overdesign is not only about removing inconveniences, it's also about bringing a bit (or even a lot) of joy into using seemingly mundane products - just like this highlighter. Just knowing that a lot of thought went into the product to make it as good as it can be without making it a luxury item is something that elates me whenever I use something like this.

Another good example is Japanese cling wrap, which is just so much better than everything I've seen in western supermarkets.

That kind of innovation is not always for the best. As an example, after hearing so much praise about the kuru-toga mechanical pencil, which rotates the lead as you write so it stays sharp longer, I went and bought one. I hate it. The rotation mechanism means the lead doesn't stay in place but has a weird "give" to it, which I notice every time I raise the pen and put it back to the paper. It's very small, a fraction of a millimeter, but it is noticeable and distracting. For me, the cure is a lot worse than the disease. I went back to my 10-year-old Pentel P205 which is stable as a rock.

"Obsessive, over design, hilarious" these are the words of a trained slop-o-phile born and bred to remove themselves from the equation of tool use

As a fan of Pilot's fountain pens, I've come to rely on their aim for quality. Their pens and inks just work.

One of the things many fountain pen users complain about with Pilot is that their converters don't work like other fountain pens. But in each case there are specific design choices that shine. Their cartridges have wider openings than standard ink cartridges. In part this makes their cartridges and converters proprietary, but the wider mouth and the hinged lid on the cartridges makes for better ink flow.

The CON-40, often criticized for low ink capacity, fits their smaller pens, and has small agitators in the converter, allowing every last drop to get to the feed, and making cleaning easier. The CON-70, generally liked for its capacity, also has a unique feature of a metal tube that runs the length of the converter. This tube, which could have simply been a rod to hold the rubber stopper that enables pump filling, is a tube so that you can actually hold a blunt syringe to the tube mouth and squirt water straight to the back of the converter allowing you to clean it out properly.

I love using well-designed products, and their writing instruments are among my favorites.