Qualities of Design: It Works and It’s Durable
Jens Meiert, October 13, 2007 / March 7, 2008.
This entry is filed under Design.
Trying to extend that simple definition of design – design reveals
– I came to only one additional attribute beside functionality yet, namely durability or stability, respectively. This takes into account that a design – be it physical or “intangible” – that works may nonetheless be bad because it probably breaks quickly or needs to be updated frequently, thus not being stable.
So we just need to think of e.g. an iPod, a product that is usually considered well designed, that breaks after a few weeks. Or an industrial design sample, an excavator for instance, that doesn’t make 100 miles. Or a website that works and that is clearly communicating but “programmed” so badly that it needs to be refactored every time a new feature is added. Good design, but still not good since it’s not robust.
(These examples do not target the design process in which design is just tried to be yet revised, improved, and evolved.)
The “simple definition” appears to be quite sufficient to hold true in practice, and the “extended definition” above also seems to fit. However, I guess everyone recognizes halfway working design even faster by just filtering out decoration.
Read More
Enjoy the most popular posts, probably including:
Comments
-
On October 17, 2007, 3:40 CEST, Stefan Nitzsche said:
Recently I read that the iPod never went through extensive user tests. Do you know if it‘s true?
-
On October 17, 2007, 9:32 CEST, Jens Meiert said:
To be honest, I don’t … interestingly, that might even work given there’ quite experienced people involved. However, such a method should probably mean no role model since tests are always advisable.
(Would be certainly great when Apple and also Google UI experts would publish something about approach, methods, and evaluation …)
-
On October 19, 2007, 0:57 CEST, Stefan Nitzsche said:
Yes, I think it works (with real experts), but I would always recommend extensive user tests …
I would redommend that Google and Apple would publish something about usability …
-
On October 22, 2007, 21:08 CEST, Clay Newton said:
Maybe with regard to design/art/decoration:
Art is an end in and of itself.
Design is utilitarian; it is a means to an end.
Decoration is pleasurable.With all three of these classes of stuff, there is the good, bad and the ugly.
I don’t feel that these 3 classes are comprehensive. For instance:
Artifact is a historical representation of object state.
Definition description of object.Jens, do you think this is a valid extension? If so, what other classes are there?
-
On October 24, 2007, 13:26 CEST, Jens Meiert said:
Hi Clay, that’s an interesting addition … I’m afraid that I don’t really understand the last part though, did you just want to point out the difference between artifact and definition?
