Interesting TED talks
My supervisor distributed an email with a TED talk about “the value of intangible utility” by Roy Sutherland: Life lessons from an ad man.
After watching this talk, I realized that there are tons of interesting TED talks that are worth watching such as, for instance, Don Norman’s Design and Emotion, John Maeda’s Journey in Design, Paola Antonelli’s Design and Elastic Minds, Yves Behar’s Designing Objects that Tell Stories, etc…
Mismatch between form and function
After having discussion about why some products are food shaped, my Japanese friend introduced me a website where a Japanese designer keeps posting his/her own design prototypes (Prototype 1000).
In fact, there are many products whose actual function is not matched with the function inferred from its form. Examples include donut shaped tape (from 3M), burger shaped/fries shaped/coke shaped USB drive (from Burger King), and chocolate shaped mirror (from Meiji).
Why do companies create and sell these products? Do consumers like a product when there is a gap between the actual function and the inferred function? If not, do consumers want to be shown different from others by having those products? If not… why? I want to identify the benefit of form-function mismatch, which has not been discussed in the past.
How to identify harmony or a good interaction?
My observation suggests that some consumers do not make good decisions in terms of design. For instance, they choose bad paintings, bad wines, bad interior products, bad clothings, and so on. I wonder if education or training improves their taste or their ability to identify well-designed products. Indeed, Reber, Schwartz, and Winkielman (2004) suggests that beauty evaluation can be trained by exposing to an object more often.
I further argue that a critical skill that needs to be trained is to appreciate the (positive-negative) value of interactions among more than two components within an object. For instance, they must know whether a specific shape and color of a figure in a painting goes well with another figure, whether the bitterness of a wine goes well with its sweetness, and whether red muffler goes well with brown boots, etc.
There is much evidence that people pay attention to interactions and they evaluate a product highly when a positive interaction was identified. For instance, when consumers make a purchase decision about a stereo component, they consider “ensemble”: when the stereo component goes with other interior products that consumers previously purchased, it is more likely to be purchased than when it does not go with others (Bell, Holbrook, and Solomon 1991; Holbrook and Anand 1992). Consumers also prefer a product whose various form features are “consistent” over a product whose form features are not (Veryzer and Hutchinson 1998), suggesting that the value of interaction is elaborated and supported by the works based on Gestalt theory.
Then, I raise questions: (1) how do we test whether a specific consumer is able to distinguish between a good interaction (harmony) and a bad interaction, and (2) how do we train them to distinguish good and bad interactions?
designer salary
I have been always curious about whether designers earn as much as business people. See below.
See the coroflot’s 2009 designer salary survey
Interestingly, conclusion No. 3 suggests that design academics is not a smart choice. Is this true? Hope to see a meaningful conclusion based on more data.
One of the “deciders” for the World’s Best Design Schools in Business Week
As one of the 42 panelists, I participate in listing the World’s Best Design Schools in Business Week.
Please find the World’s Best Design Schools and the panelists.
NSF Design Series Workshop, “Interdisciplinary Graduate Design Workshop: Instruction” (1)
In two days, I join a group of esteemed design teachers working at a variety of schools. They come from mechanical engineering and engineering education to architecture and psychology. I am one of few people with business background.
Although the information about participants and design courses are available on the workshop website at Stanford, a summarized list might be of some help to those who need those information right now.
Biographical sketches of participants
The collected design courses (probably, this is the only document in the world on this issue!)
Designers’ theme
Consumers tend to be ignorant about evaluating holistic objects consisting of multiple components. One example is interior which consists of furniture, clocks, wall, window, etc.
Prior works suggest that when consumers need to evaluate holistic objects, they should break them down to a list of components. Doing so helps consumers identify how much each component contributes to its holistic object. This suggest that, for instance, if consumers find the relative value of furniture, clock and wall, they will evaluate the interior. Therefore, “learning” is suggested as an important topic. If consumers are exposed to multiple interiors, each of which has its evaluation score and various interior components, they will “learn” the contribution (or importance) of each interior component and other interior rooms. In sum, “breaking down holistic objects” benefits consumers.
However, I believe that consumers can benefit by “putting together components” because doing so helps consumers infer the theme that designers create. Note that when designers design an interior, they generally set up a theme and then choose approrpriate interior components. For instance, if the theme is jungle, designers may choose brown desks and green chairs to represent trees, paint walls with red dots to represent bugs, and place a round-shaped yellow clock on the wall to represent sun. If consumers identify the theme, they will evaluate the contribution (or importance) of holistic objects more accurately without breaking them down into components.
I believe themes explain why designers choose specific shapes and specific colors. I wonder if consumers identify a designer’s theme when they see an interior? Put differently, are consumers able to reversely engineer the designer’s message? If not, how can I help consumers find the designer’s theme?
“Play” with diabetes
Half an year ago, a friend of mine approached me and asked me if I am interested in joining her submitting a work to a design contest, 2009 DiabetesMine™ Design Challenge. It was an online competition about new tools for improving life with diabetes. I answered ‘why not?’ and had several times of discussions with her and another designer friend.
First of all, it was fun to work with two professional designers. They constantly pumped out interesting and wacky ideas. I was impressed by the amount of effort they invested and the quality of the final outcome.
What did I learn from this experience? “Business people talk a lot, but designers make a lot.”
Curiosity-evoking product design?
Some products serve surprising functions with unexpected forms. For instance, a new product launched from 3M looks like a doughnut but works as a tape dispenser. It can be divided into two parts and combined with differently colored parts such as chocolate-brown, strawberry-red, and cream-white. There is a cell-phone shaped lighter which lights up the fire when its slide opens. There is a wine-bottle shaped umbrella. A small umbrella can be carried by a wine-bottle shaped container. Probably, there are numerous examples in the world, in particular, in Japan.
I wonder why some people like a product when its form has nothing to do with its function? As far as I know, most prior works on discussing the relationship between form and function suggest that “match” is always better than “mis-match.” When the perceived function (inferred from a form) is inconsistent with the actual function, are people ’surprised’ by this inconsistency? How does this inconsistency work? Who likes these products more and who hates them?…
Different design consulting firms, different approaches
I wonder if design consulting firms use different approaches (e.g., different research methods, different ways of data usage, different ways of idea generation, etc.). If so, why and when different approaches are used? I believe this is an important question that needs to be answered because, for now, there is no guidance that (non-design) managers use when they look for which design consulting firms they need to contact initially. (IDEO may not always available, isn’t it? 
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Imagine that a hospital manager wants to make the experience of the patients better in his hospital. Then, the designers from a design consulting firm uses one type of market research (e.g., interview rather than survey), collect one type of data (e.g., “Parking lot is dirty” rather than “nurses are not friendly”), and suggest one type of solutions (e.g., “cleaning up the parking space” rather than “educating nurses”). This sequence of design activity shows that even before designers identify problems (data) and generate solutions (ideas), the initial moment of the design process (e.g., choice of research methods) determines the overall design process. Therefore, I believe, if the pattern of the design outcome of each design consulting firm, we might be able to tell which consulting firm fits which projects, which will be of great help to managers to find their right consultants!
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