Qualities of Design: It Works and It’s Durable
Jens O. Meiert, October 13, 2007 / April 9, 2012.
This entry is filed under Design.
Attempting to improve my simplified definition of design—“design reveals”—I found one additional attribute beside functionality, namely durability or robustness, respectively. This means that a design—be it physical or “intangible”—that works may nonetheless be bad if it breaks quickly, or if it needs frequent updating.
We just need to think of e.g. an iPod, a product that is usually considered well designed, and imagine it broke after a few weeks. Or something industrial design, an excavator for instance, that doesn’t make 100 miles. Or a website that is clearly communicating but “programmed” so poorly that it needs to be refactored every time a new feature is added. Good design, but still not good since it’s not robust.
The simplified definition appears to work in practice, and the “extended definition” seems to complement it appropriately. Although, any definition that filters out decoration works better than what seems to be the common understanding of design.
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Comments
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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?
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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?