When looking to make purchases I never really focused on design of the product and how that design influenced my purchase. I never thought about where that design came from and what may have inspired it. I also never really thought about the subtle, and yet other not so subtle, differences between object designs. The lecture over industry design and the different philosophies that have been used in designing products was quite intriguing.
I particularly enjoyed the philosophy by Dieter Rams, “Good design is a little as possible.” Apple has completely encompassed that in their design approach and I have always found their products to be the most aesthetically pleasing ones and that not just limited to technology, but in general. Although I also found Eero Saarinen’s philosophy of designing based on context of the next larger element intriguing. Apple is designing their products with these two philosophies in mind.
Whether looking at the iPhone, iPod, or iPad they look great because they are sleek and simple. They are great stand alone products but they are contextually designed to mesh well with each other and with the Mac Computers. These products have a similar sleek design, but more importantly they fit in well together based on the context of technological design.
When choosing which design philosophy to incorporate it could be difficult to gauge the audience when testing them with new design ideas. Just like in “Blink - Kenna’s Dilemma” the story about Herman Miller’s new chair Aeron. It was a new radical looking chair that received poor aesthetic reviews by initial testers. It turned out that the reviews were not necessarily poor because the look was bad, but rather that the design was different from what they were familiar with. The testers misidentified their notion of bad with unfamiliarity which caused the low aesthetic reviews. The design philosophy you choose may be met with some resistance in the beginning but it may not always be because it’s poor, but rather that it is in fact unfamiliar to consumers.
