I wonder if designers also follow their own ideas rather than following what consumers want. Indeed, Don Norman recently wrote an interesting essay on his blog. Going beyond this conflict, I am particularly wondering how designers do and should manage the conflict between their inner voice and the voice of consumers.

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…

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.

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?

“Teaching by showing is normal; teaching by explaining the way of thinking is the next step forward. An excellent designer with superimposed doctoral training can be a real treasure. It is a pity that so many good designers do not actualize themselves to their full potential both as designers and as professors just because they hate that bookish staff. It is high time that design academia rethink their way of creating new professors.”

I participated in listing up the 2009 World’s Best Design Schools in Business Week as one of the 42 panelists. Please find the schools from the World’s Best Design Schools and find who are the panelists.

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.

List of participants

Biographical sketches of participants

The collected design courses (probably, this is the only document in the world on this issue!)

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?

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.”

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?…