Video reflection4: objectified

This featured film, explains the various steps or to me layers of being a designer. It showed example of why we as designers do this and that, and what we really design for. The film takes me around these various aspects of being a design and good design telling me about what many people define as good design also what the next step there is to design. Amongst the myriad of important design information I found the above two points most useful in terms of giving direction to my design career.

First lesson for me was from Alice Rawsthron and Jonathon Ive, the interesting fact that good design should look as if it hasn’t been designed. Confusing concept to grasp however through explanation with plastic containers it makes sense. Good design should also be taken for granted and unnoticed, this I define as being able to let users experience ease and simplicity when using the product. It essentially emphasises the need for simplicity, which ultimately makes mass production happen. Jonathon’s talk also touches another important aspect to good design. I often over complicate or over engineer a design. It’s sometimes hard to think of simple ideas without feeling drabness and incompleteness. But from the Apple examples good design really should be simple. This caused me to realise the less there is to do there less space for error or in this case difficulty to use.

From Smart designs and other speakers of this feature film, I was informed of the demands of companies as well as how these designs are comparatively made available to consumers but the dominant take home messages yet remains to be simplicity. Davin stowell demonstrated simple solutions with the peeler example, the fact that their solution was really taken from a problem which has been solved by another area of use. The bicycle handles; designed for comfort in long durations. This not only tells me the effective and simple approaches to good design (off the shelf innovation) but also makes links to standardisation. “If a design is targeted for the extremes the middle will take care of itself” quoted in the video, essentially stating the importance of standardisation; designing products which anyone can use. Dieter Rams further adds to the emphasis of good design being simple, simple by means of user reaction.

In conclusion good design should be for the masses and must be understandable, easy to use and agrees with one’s logic. These factors influence our decisions in design but also the consumers. It’s a feedback system which can only be perfected slowly by eliminating unnecessary discomfort or unease with simple solutions.