Tag: Objectified Review

Elijah Carrington
2/18/15
Designing for New Media

Interaction design is creating products, relative to their baseline, that solve problems. Through standardization and conceptualization, everything is designed for a reason. Whether that reason is to fulfill a promise, solve a problem, or change behavior, design is here to stay. Anything that we touch, see, use, and ultimately understand is interactive design.

I agree that there is a story for every object, especially those that have many revisions and information passed down. Find the products that no one cares about, where extremes will influence revision, and can be changed for the better. Design a better experience through iterative ergonomic processes. At Smart Design, rapid prototyping is implemented to quickly figure out ergonomics and ensure CAD aligns.

Making products usable, understandable, unobtrusive, truthful, aesthetic, is what good design is about. Design is how you look at the world, and asking why? Materials, physical-form, connection are focused on getting design out of the way. Enable the product, do not distract from it. Ensure hierarchy, and show that choices are calm and considered solutions. Form follows function as a manifestation. Designers interpret and understand what people need, better than they do. Good design distinguishes from relativistically ill-thought solutions.

The most important question regarding interaction design is: What form should this object take and why? Derived questions include: What feelings do the sensorimotor actions invoke? Will this product last and how much will it cost?

Designers will be the culture generators and translators for the rest of the world that needs to be taught what things are and how to use them. We translate using icons, colors, feelings, pictures, text, and so on, to achieve a transferable message. This message will have a lasting impact on the audience, only if it survives the true tests of design and makes its way into the consumer’s mind.

Do you agree or disagree with any of the designers’ statements, why?

I agree with the statement made by Tim Brown. He said, “If one’s really honest with oneself, most of what we design ends up in a landfill somewhere.“ I think it is true because a lot of what is designed is not thought to be valuable or worth keeping when it loses its use or becomes old. When it comes to the average consumer, they buy a product and use it and when it is done it becomes trash. I think designers find more respect to these products verses just an ordinary consumer and that is why he was able to understand that someone views his things, along with others, as useless.

Has anything the designers said changed how you thought about design?

I think the statement made by Alice Rawsthorn really stands out to me because she made the comment that “designers spend most of their time designing products and services for the 10% of the world’s population that already owns too much when the 90% don’t even have basic products and services to lead a subsistent life.” I think this really sunk in with me because as a student who wants to get into filmmaking, I can’t make a movie that only 10% of people will want to see but making a movie that 90% of people will want to see.

Each designer interviewed for “Objectified” defined how they see Design, how would you define design and how has that definition changed?

Before seeing this film, I would have thought that design was something to do with things you see in museums that designers create or clothing you see in stores and on the runway. After seeing this film, I now know that design is anything that someone uses on a regular basis. Clothing, toothbrushes, chairs, beds, homes, furniture and much more.

I really agreed with Dieter Rams when he said that users act positively when things are understandable.  I feel that some people over design products because they want to make something new and out there but it is not going to do well if the people buying the product do not understand how to use it.  Some notes I wrote down about how the designers from the movie define design as “ways to improve the way people do things,” “are the things we are going making change?,” and “every object tells a story if you know how to read it.”  I think the one things that really struck me about design is make the people move, not the product. The whole movie kind of just blew my mind since I have not really sat down and just thought about design and how powerful it can be.

There are very few movies or documentaries that require a tremendous amount of thought and concentration while watching; However, Objectified is an exception. From the very beginning of the film, images and clips were shown that made the viewer think and the context had a profound impact on my views of design. There are many professionals that appeared in the documentary who had opinions on design and views of society that I had never heard before or thought of on my own. One of the first ideas the film mentioned was the fact that every object has a story behind it. Everything one uses on a day-to-day basis has been strategically designed, yet no one thinks about it. Maybe here or there someone ponders why a toilet looks like a toilet, or why a door looks like a door, but it is a rarity. In my opinion, the people shown in the flick have molded their minds to automatically think about these background stories and incorporate that knowledge into modern design. Because of this, effective designers know what people need or want before everyday people realize it. For example, a company designed a new handle for hedge clippers without anyone even bringing up the fact that they were hard to use. By having a grasp of the stories behind products you haven’t created, one can incorporate this knowledge into other products – ultimately improving performance by design without anyone noticing or thinking about the change.

Someone in the film stated that good design is “un-designed”. Allowing users to say, “well of course it is this way.” A person using said hedge clippers would assume that having notches in the grip for your thumbs would be an obvious feature, but at one point it was not. Some designer had to have an “ah-ha” moment and realize just how obvious that feature was, and eventually implement it.

Being inventive and ultramodern is an important aspect of design in general, but someone in the film mentioned that one of the hardest parts of design is removing what is unnecessary. Although having a lot of features can be attractive, it is not always user-friendly. The documentary emphasized this point a lot. It is all about the user, and that must be kept in mind at all times while designing. A good design should be unobtrusive, easy to use, self-effacing. A good design should have as little design as possible. I completely agree with this statement. When things don’t work properly, individuals automatically assume that they are too stupid to use the product, but it is the design that is actually stupid. Design is supposed to allow humans to interact subconsciously, while producing the expected result of some object.

Watching this film has really changed my view on everything I touch. I have begun thinking, “Why is that the way it is?” and, “Who decided that that looks ‘right’?.” Before watching Objectified, I had always thought of design as simply aesthetics. Much of design still pertains to aesthetics, but even more of it has to do with usability. I had always thought that much of those aspects of design were left to engineers, architects or inventors, but it dawned on me that we are all people, living in the same world, using similar products. Anyone from a plumber to a doctor to a pilot to a small child has insights to usability, but it is how you train your mind to acknowledge potential changes. Being a designer, the world is virtually in your hands.