Objectified overall has changed my opinion and thoughts on design, both as a whole and in the details of what makes good design. My beginning definition or thought of design was the idea of making something look interesting in order to sell or display. Mainly only thinking of the products that caught my eye. Instead, through many of Objectified ‘s featured designers statements, it made me not only broaden my view of design but also focus on what successful design is.
Throughout Objectified there are many designers that throw out statements that seem slightly outrageous, but instead requires a bit of thought in order to understand. From thoughts on how design should look to thoughts on how design should live. One of the first statements that I noticed was the idea that a designer should focus on the extremes rather than the normal, when it comes to potential customers. Originally I would have said that you would want to focus on the majority of your consumers, making the product work best for them. Now I realize that design for the extremes, it can make a designer focus on possible problems the design will run in to. For example if you are making an app and focus on designing it for older people, it can make the designer create it more intuitively so that the app is read well for the extreme part of their consumer spectrum. Another big idea discussed by several of the designers in Objectified was on the lifecycle of a product. My idea before would to make a product live for as long as you can, long lasting materials, and a design that would look appealing for years to come. While it is discussed that a product should stand the test of time when it comes to the looks of the product, it also is said that each product should think about after it is thrown out. This is mainly focused on material selection, predicting how long the consumer might use the product before throwing it out. Karim Rashid specified that he would was his phone to be made of cardboard because of how often they are replaced. This radically changed my thought of design and made me think design as a whole lifetime instead of just getting it to a customer. Finally, it was stated that a design should make a user think of how they will apply it to their life rather than make them marvel on how much work was put in by designers and engineers. At first I always thought it was interesting to think about how a designer or engineer thought of a solution to a problem. Instead this statement made me look back at products that I thought had great design, making me realize that I never thought about the design and just applied it to my life.
Objectified changed my opinion and thoughts on design in many ways broadening my vision by now looking at extremes of the consumer, to the lifecycle of a product. Also showing me the keys to what makes good design through simple intuitiveness. Many of the statements seemed off putting at first but soon changed my thoughts of how design works.