I recommend this website from Bill Moggridge (IDEO). It's based on a book + DVD but they provide a chapter (of the week) for download and the interviews.
"Devastating?" Why would you say that in particular? They look superbly logical but dated to me. I'm more instantly attracted to the speakers and radio, for instance.
I'm guessing you've got more design experience than I do, so care to explain what it is you see when you look at those calculators? I'd love to know.
I use "devastate" in a few forms to talk about the effect an attractive woman has on me. With that remark, I generalized the usage towards the calculators, and the beautiful things on the rest of the page helped bring the word out of me too. The whole site (I agree those speakers are great) was beautiful.
I have no design experience, unless you get metaphorical with the word. This just lit my aesthetic taste buds.
But I wish I could know what I really mean with "beautiful". Viewing the calculators, I noticed it felt similar to looking at a beautiful woman; that was novel. I never felt that about a calculator, so I noted it.
And after this experience, I won't squint my eyes at mathematicians when the call equations "beautiful" again.
This is a great question, aesthetic preferences seem odd. This one just hit the right buttons with me.
I've never heard of Dieter Rams before this thread; I'm not hip to the design world. But some designs do raise my pulse while I looking from the sidelines. Henry Dreyfuss' Western Electric Model 302 phone [1] is a good example.
That phone has the nostalgia effect; that's good in design. Design should be nostalgic, in the sense that it should recall things that you're familiar with and feel comfortable around.
It's useful to look at design as communication. Your trying to same something with the right metaphors. But in this case, it's with three dimensional metaphors instead of words.
compare:
http://www.designmuseum.org/__entry/4799?style=design_image_...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/gruber/667023357/