Design dissolving in behavior
Watched a great documentary last night - Objectified by Gary Hustwit.
(Haven't seen it before? Make sure you do. Some great interviews with best-in-their-game designers from across the world)
Anyway, here are some ideas / quotes that stuck to me after seeing this picture:
- Jonathan Ive (design guru @ Apple) said something like this "indicator has a value when it's indicating something, but if it is not indicating something it shouldn't be there... you spend so much more time to make it less conspicuous and less obvious". Now. How novel of approach is that! A lot of designers I know work hard to make their features more conspicuous and more obvious, not other way around.
- Karim Rashid had a go at perpetual design mistakes and lowering expectations. So relevant in the online space. "If we designed a million chairs till date, why on earth do we have uncomfortable chairs, there's like no excuse, whatsoever." I mean, seriously, how true is that? How often do we go to websites where logos are not clickable to the home page.
- Someone else said "designers understand what people need perhaps even better then they do" stressing the role of designers as creators of things and trend-setters. Arguably, asking people what they want often results in mediocre products. More often than not, great products are bold visions of individuals, as opposed to outputs of 3-hour-long focus group sessions. Like someone said "ultimately my role as a designer is to look into the future".
- Still. Sometimes ignoring things people overtly want, does not mean disregarding their needs. As one designer put it "...good design makes you feel that you're looking at an object where attention has been paid to the human need".
- One thing struck me while watching Objectified. Something evident, yet uncannily sad to me. A consequence of websites being immaterial products is that they don't undergo physical wear and tear. Some objects in the real world have a quality of getting better with time - like that old leather briefcase. Fatigue made it beautiful. Wouldn't it be cool if online designs were susceptible to wear and tear as tangible objects are?
- On a flip side though, good news is that we, online designers, don't need to wrestle with sustainability issues. No matter how redundant and un-eco our products are, they don't litter, harm or destroy the planet.
- One French designer mentioned "often our hardest job is to remove remove remove, bit by bit, anything that is unnecessary". Yeap. Design is pain.
- Dieter Rams, outlined his 10 commandments for good design of which my personal favorite one is "good design is as little design as possible". This goes hand in hand with my pet theory of quite structure by Andy Rutledge. Quite designs don't fall prey to fashions, don't quickly become obsolete. They just are.
- In a similar vein was the commentary by Naoto Fukasawa, who stressed the importance of removing design from the realm of conscious. "I'm not thinking about this pen when I'm writing with it." He had me at saying "design dissolving in behavior". How profound is that! Shit. I'm gonna frame this quote and hang over my bed.
Boiling down all these quotes, approaches and opinions, one timeless design mantra pops out. Keep it simple : Less is more.
