The Reflective Design of Production
BDES 1201-Week 5
During this week’s readings we looked at two very insightful chapters from both Donald Norman in his book “Emotional Design: Why We Love (Or Hate) Everyday Things” and Jonathan Woodham’s book “Twentieth Century Design”. Both articles are very different in terms of content, but both subjectively discuss the world of production and the nature of consumption.
Donald Norman starts off by describing three teapots he owns and how each has their own reason for still being in his possession even though he rarely puts them to use. Norman uses these teapots to explain the three emotional design philosophies; visceral design, which is the design and appeal of physical appearance, behavioral design, which is concerned with the pleasure and effectiveness of use in a product, and lastly reflective design which is design that is more involved with self image and context of a product, to quote Norman directly about reflective design: “…considers the rationalization and intellectualization of a product. Can I tell a story about it? Does it appeal to my self-image, to my pride?” (Norman, 5). Norman goes on to describe the role our emotions play within not only design but within our decision making. Norman relates these emotional factors to everyday design occurrences such as the implementation of color displays for computers which at first seemed to him as an illogical implementation with no rational need for color but soon realized the emotional effect that made color such an important implementation.
We can gather from Norman’s claims how integral emotions are when it comes to design and production as psychologically our emotions affect our decision making and how we feel about a product plays a huge part in how we choose to consume relating back to Normans example of owning three different teapots entirely for how they make him feel.
Looking at Woodham’s book “Twentieth Century Design” more specifically chapter 3 “Commerce, Consumerism and Design” we learn about the history of production and the place and role of designers in the world between the 1920 to post depression. Within this chapter we learn about the history and innovation of “consumer engineering” or what we now call today “planned obsolescence” and its role in the recovery of the post-depression US industrial economy and more importantly how important the use of consumer psychology came to be. Furthermore, we learn about the showcasing of “futuristic” items at the world’s fair at the time by various notable designers of the era which drew large crowds to conceptualized products of the future. Lastly Woodham goes in depth about the trends of interior design of the mid 20s to 30s that stem from Deco style and more over the importance put on symbolic meaning within a consumer’s home.
All of these themes are still very prevalent within our world today with big tech companies releasing new iterations for designs faster than we can keep up and more than that is reasonably necessary most of the time.
The apple watch is a perfect example of this as each new iteration is set to capture the “new” and “future” of trending design and appeal to us as consumers as not only the newest and greatest but a sense of prestige and display of status. Brand reputation has taken on this role of status and self-aspiration as we can easily observe in our day to day lives, identical replication or even similar iterations of products like the apple watch are more than frowned upon by other consumers in contrast to the more popular and trending option which in this case is the apple watch.
Word Count: 596
Questions
- With planned obsolescence taken over most of the notable tech industry how are we as consumers equipped to deal with this problem considering how integral some of these products are becoming (Computers, Software, etc)?
- With the idea of emotional design and design geared towards self-aspirations do you think ideas and concepts like minimalism have gained a better reputation as a suitable alternative in an era of mass consumption capitalism?
Work Cited
Norman, Donald. “Three Teapots.” Emotional Design: Why We Love (Or Hate) Everyday Things. New York, Basic Books, 2004, pp. 1–33.
Woodman, Jonathan M. Twentieth Century Design. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1997, Chapter 3.
