What do you believe is the role of design?
The team over at Webreakstuff prompted the question; what a great question to be asking! How many of us “design” in one way or another and never stop to think about the role of design? I am sure selfishly we’ve asked and answered the question, “what is our role in design”, but have we stopped to ask, what is design’s role?
Whether we are talking about information, visual or technical design; I believe the role is the same. Design is about conveying information appropriately; it is simply about interpretation. The role of design is to interpret requirements to adhere to three primary questions: what does the audience want, what does the audience expect, and what do we want the audience to want? If you’re addressing these issues within all design elements, then and only then are you truly doing a service to your product, and most importantly, your audience.
The role of design is simply to interpret business objectives, product specifications, technical requirements and a variety of other strategic initiatives in an aesthetic, coherent, creative, logical and functional form. Design gives rhyme and reason to everything we perceive, process and their influence on interaction. Design gives creative form and function to everything!
- October 3rd, 2006
- 5comments
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I have to say, I don’t see how many more answers you can get into that answer.
While I agree, design is all about the audience in the end, your three primary questions are wrong. In general the audience has no idea what they want, why they should want it, or what they expect. This is not to say the audience is dim, rather the audience seldom understand how good design can help them, which is fine. In the end the audience mostly cares for function. It is the role of design to provide the proper form, that makes the function successful. Anything can be functional in a sense, but it is the form that ultimately determines how well the function is executed.
I have to disagree with you: I will defend those three questions as the basis for beginning all designs as far as I have too. I believe it is a bit naive to think your audience doesn’t know what they want or what they expect. Everyone wants something and they all go into a situation with some level of expectation.
Take the iPod for example. The audience wants a portable digital music player. Being Apple as the provider, the audience expects slick design (clean and sharp), intuitive function and the ability to easily integrate with most other appropriate Apple products. No one (rarely) walks into a store picks up a box that says “iPod” and throws down $300 without some level of expectation or idea of what they want out of the product.
The reason Apple is known for its design is simply because they make their devices intuitive. How do you accomplish that? You start by asking, what does the audience expect? The best designed products have very small learning curves. The Apple audience typical demands their products to designed more fashionable than its competitors – the devices almost become superficial status symbols (you have to design for that desire).
If I were to purchase a DVD player, I would expect it to play DVD’s. At this day in age, I might also expect it to play MP3’s, MPEG’s and a variety of other media formats (this being an example of what I want over what I expect). I would expect there is a tray in the front that opens out for the DVD to be placed into. I would assume the symbolic characters on the control perform the same function as all other media devices (play, pause, stop) – I would expect there to be controls! I would want there to be a remote control, cables, and batteries. I would want a warranty registration card, installation instruction and to know this DVD player is compatible with all traditional US based television systems. Imagine purchasing a DVD player and not knowing what you wanted or what you expected – you might end up with a $200 toaster.
Again, in the end the audience mostly cares for function, and that’s exactly what you just laid out.
Thus my point earlier, it is the role of design to provide the form that makes the function successful.
One of the roles of design is to convince unconvinced people of what they want or should want.
Jason, can’t say you’re wrong there; excellent point.
Design is most fun when it is convincing uninspired and confused people of what they want or should want — that is when you get that “wow” look on their face.