Red or blue? Steel or spruce? Python or Ruby? These are all design questions, choices that determine how people experience the things we make. And it’s not only aesthetics. Many of these decisions are coded into the way our products operate. Design doesn’t just make things beautiful, it makes them work.
This is not news to designers. In the early 1980s, Dieter Rams laid out his now canonical 10 Principles of Good Design. Rams taught us that great design is as little design as possible. It doesn’t draw attention to itself; it merely allows users to accomplish their tasks with the maximal amount of efficiency and pleasure. At its best, it is invisible.
Rams was talking about designing things you can see and feel. But we’re entering a new era, one in which designers create experiences centering not on physical objects but on the fabric of digital information that surrounds us. That’s the next great challenge for design: weaving the threads of technology, information, and access seamlessly and elegantly into our everyday lives. When a social network automatically checks us into a location, or cashiers can suggest new products based on our purchase history, or our connected TV calls up our favorite shows when we walk into the living room (all things that are either happening now or coming soon), it may seem like magic. But these are carefully designed experiences. They just follow Rams’ dictum—they appear invisible.
Comments