“Objectified” has revealed to me as a designer the importance of designing products which will allow users to deeply connect to the products they buy through “emotional energy” as mentioned by Chris Bangle. This connection will in turn create layers of meaning within that product whether it may be culturally, personally or socially. Hence sentimental value of the design will increase over time and it will become part of the user, reinforcing their perception of themselves, truly reflecting who they are.
Contrary to the previous ideology, many of today’s current products lifecycles are one of superficial ignorance. Products are ever growingly becoming thoughtless and are creating more and more waste in landfills for they are constantly being replaced. As designers we must be able to minimise waste by reducing/removing unnecessary components. Using APPLE as an example they have reduced the iMAC’s components vastly i.e the keyboards extruded frame provides multi functions such as mounting and stabilising. This is a key issue in evoking sustainability in any designer’s mind.
As designers we must our designs must be “beautiful, innovative, useful, understandable, honest, unobstructive, long-lived, consistent in every detail, environmentally friendly and simple to be a GOOD design. Through these different aspects we can allow users to pour their emotion into the design in their own way as mentioned earlier. We [designers] must “know people more than they know themselves” in order to achieve successful designs. If products make people think “of course it’s meant to be this way” it will help the product “STAND AGAINST TIME”.
Designers are now perceived as “culture generators” so it is our responsibility to provide for a better future for humanity. The “true value” of design is to “SURVIVE” and in order to do so we must provide designs which will allow users to deeply connect with products so they do NOT wish to dump them and hold onto them and cherish them.
No comments:
Post a Comment