He opened by explaining that how when you see an object, immediately you start thinking many different things about it. Assumptions are made in seconds. For example: what it’s made of, what it does, how well we think it will do it, how heavy it will be, how much we think it’ll cost, its form, its material, how we’ll touch it and how we’ll hold it. Every object communicates things to the person interacting with it.
The documentary explained how there’s a story behind every object if you know how to read it. There are many, design decisions behind every object that a designer has had to make.
Chris Bangle told us that designers look at extremes of every person using an object; meaning that they will think less about the usual, average user and more how for example a weak person will use it like someone with arthritis as well as the strongest or fastest person such as an athlete. If they work out how they can accommodate the extremes that will mean the middle ground will “take care of itself”.
Dieter rams – Head of Braun
He explained that nothing annoyed him more than unnecessary features in products. In his opinion it complicated the design and actually made the overall experience less intuitive overall. He listed the most important design principals, explaining that good design is –
1.)innovative
2.) will make a product useful
3.)aesthetically pleasing
4.)will make a product understandable
5.)honest
6.)unobstructive
7.)long lived
8.)consistent in detail
9.)environmentally friendly
10.)as little design as possible
I need to question myself each time I create a design if each of these rules has been taken care of. They are all as important as each other when creating a product that will be intuitive to the user as well as sustainable, aesthetically pleasing, and useful.
Karim Rashid- designer, New York
He drew attention to the idea that we’re living in an age where design of technology has advanced so much, but yet we go home to furniture that’s made of basic materials and bad for our backs.
cameras, for example are designed around what the original film camera looked like. This original horizontal rectangular shape was based around how the film would fit inside the camera but now this shape as a result is made redundant due to the lack of need for film. He finished by asking “why on earth do we have the same shape that we did 30 years ago”.
I feel this really brings to light how when designing a product, I must avoid basing my initial designs on previous ways in which similar products have been done before. This will in turn create something that is original and may even be better suited to the modern day user and it will help me find design solutions that might have never been thought of before.
Bill Moggridge – co founder of IDEO
When Moggridge designed the first working prototype of a laptop he did it with many different uses in mind. He made sure it was tilted at an angle that was easiest for typing, and that it would fit in a briefcase but still have room for paper and stationary. However, he realised that once he begun using the machine all of this physical design faded into the background and the interface was the thing he fixated his attention on.
This was the first moment he realised the importance of the relationship between him and the digital interface. He felt like he was being sucked down into the machine and that the whole experience of using it was down to what was happening behind the screen – all to do with the digital software and little to do with the physical design. It made him realise that if he was going to learn how to design the whole experience with the product that he was going to have to get to grips with the software side. This was what made him come up with the name – interaction design.