Dickson Fong

There’s been a trend in recent years to make design a wholly objective, data-driven process. You’ve probably heard of it as user-centered design, human-factors design, interaction design, or user-experience design. This process has been popularized by design consultancies such as IDEO and Cooper, which have used it with great effect to create some awesome products. When used properly, data-driven design methods are very helpful and have contributed valuable insight into the way humans work.

But, for some people, design is also about love. Wim Crouwel, Richard Meier, Joshua Davis—their work isn’t just a result of client briefs and blind faith in objective data. Their work is also a reflection of their design philosophy and social ideals. Beyond having purpose, their work makes a statement about what design could be and shows how design can impact people and the environment.

You can almost taste the sweat and blood that some designers pour into their work. But the style that you taste isn’t for the sake of vain self-expression. Rather, any element of the designer’s style was the byproduct of his or her philosophy and convictions. The end-product looks and works the way it does because he or she genuinely believed it was the best solution, not just because “it looked cool” or “the data said so.”

The downfall of subjective design

A fish likely has no concept of dry. Likewise, a user who has only had poor experiences shouldn’t be expected to articulate a better experience. In this sense, data-driven processes are good because they’re not supposed to make the user suggest solutions. It’s strictly task observation and introspection, and it’s up to the designers to make sense of the data and create a solution.

Here’s my problem: data-driven processes have helped us define social constructs, relevant features, and improved usability at the expense of putting subjective design on the back burner. All the brouhaha and fawning over objectivity has kicked subjective “gut design” to the curb, relegating it to stereotypical design renegades in black T-shirts and full-body tattoos. “The user is always right. Subjective design is arrogant design.”

I think that attitude needs to change. We need to open our minds and understand that data-driven design is not the total solution.

Why love works

In an effort to make the design discipline a more systematic, rational, and—dare I say it—scientific profession, we’ve forgotten that design is about forging an emotional bond with the people we’re designing for. We can’t create these bonds by strictly basing our design decisions upon quantitative and qualitative data. Optimized content and effective IA aren’t going to make the user fall in love with the design because these are elements that should be transparent to the user. While it’s great that we have the tools to make design better from an objective goal-oriented perspective, we risk having our work wither into soulless, boring, bionic crap. People frequently use soulless objects, but it’s more difficult for them to develop an attachment on any emotional level.

And that’s what differentiates a mediocre product from an exceptional one—the effect that it has on its user. Design shouldn’t only be about goals and intuitive interfaces. Design should also be about how the experience transcends our objective needs. Successful products elicit positive emotional reactions from those who use them. To do this, we need to put passion back into the design process. We need to believe in our work and make sure our decisions are for the right reasons—not just because our informants said so. Simply put, it’s all about heart. If we can do this, it’s more likely that our designs will resonate with the people we create them for. After all, if we don’t love our own work, why would someone else?

End

RSS comments for this post Previous post Next post Permalink