By Design
Few months ago I have read one book that was called “By Design” by Raplh Caplan. Nothing big, just nice to read when you sit on a toilet or fly on an airplane. But I liked the name: “By Design”. And then I have started thinking how many issues I have solved during my design career, that could be solved by involving a lot of engineers’ effort or money injections, but were solved just by design. This are huge amount of them.
When you work on any product, you always have a bunch of issues to solve. Every issue has its own cost. That’s it. Yes, almost every issue could be fixed by just increasing the budget of this product, some issues might take developers’ effort, that always cost too much (especially for young companies). But a lot (maybe even 100%) of the, could be solved just by design, which will be enough to get necessary effect without involving a development team or a case with banknotes. To solve an issues a designer needs as minimum - piece of paper and a pen, as maximum - computer and a Wacom. This saves to you a lot of money and time and brings the same effect.
Well, many words. Lets look at some examples.
This is a photo of the famous German tank “Tiger”. Looks aggressive and frighteningly. Isn’t? Do you think this happened accidentally, because the engineers’ requirements aroused that? No. This was planned and this was a task for designers. The tank must not to only be fast, effective and powerful, it must have a psychological effect just because of its appearance. Just compare how less terrible the one of the first American tanks Sherman looks:
And the Tiger’s effect was achieved just by design. Yes, it could be some engineering solutions to make these psychological stuffs: to add some guns on the top, make it lighting or noising, but this is much more expensive and taking much more time. The product got the same by design.
So, this is not a joke: the design was really winning and loosing wars.
Okay, let’s come back to the piece.
What if a product is not friendly and trustable enough? This was happening in the late 90’s around computers. Not that many people, especially the older generation, trusted this new machines, keeping in mind Orwell’s tales.
Yeah, computer companies could inject a lot of money into marketing researches, polls, works with focus groups and any bullshit. But there was one designer that said: “Stop it. I could solve this by design”. His name is Jonny Ive. And the solution is here:
Just by adding this handle, the computer became freaking friendly, apprehensible and accessible. No money or engineering effort is needed anymore. It’s solved by design.
The best thing that I could do in my works it’s: when there is a big discussion, disputes about expenses, overheated engineers and gloomy managers - I say “Okay, let’s stop it. We will solve this by design”.
When you work on any product, you always have a bunch of issues to solve. Every issue has its own cost. That’s it. Yes, almost every issue could be fixed by just increasing the budget of this product, some issues might take developers’ effort, that always cost too much (especially for young companies). But a lot (maybe even 100%) of the, could be solved just by design, which will be enough to get necessary effect without involving a development team or a case with banknotes. To solve an issues a designer needs as minimum - piece of paper and a pen, as maximum - computer and a Wacom. This saves to you a lot of money and time and brings the same effect.
Well, many words. Lets look at some examples.
This is a photo of the famous German tank “Tiger”. Looks aggressive and frighteningly. Isn’t? Do you think this happened accidentally, because the engineers’ requirements aroused that? No. This was planned and this was a task for designers. The tank must not to only be fast, effective and powerful, it must have a psychological effect just because of its appearance. Just compare how less terrible the one of the first American tanks Sherman looks:
And the Tiger’s effect was achieved just by design. Yes, it could be some engineering solutions to make these psychological stuffs: to add some guns on the top, make it lighting or noising, but this is much more expensive and taking much more time. The product got the same by design.
So, this is not a joke: the design was really winning and loosing wars.
Okay, let’s come back to the piece.
What if a product is not friendly and trustable enough? This was happening in the late 90’s around computers. Not that many people, especially the older generation, trusted this new machines, keeping in mind Orwell’s tales.
Yeah, computer companies could inject a lot of money into marketing researches, polls, works with focus groups and any bullshit. But there was one designer that said: “Stop it. I could solve this by design”. His name is Jonny Ive. And the solution is here:
Just by adding this handle, the computer became freaking friendly, apprehensible and accessible. No money or engineering effort is needed anymore. It’s solved by design.
The best thing that I could do in my works it’s: when there is a big discussion, disputes about expenses, overheated engineers and gloomy managers - I say “Okay, let’s stop it. We will solve this by design”.