Saturday, October 25, 2008

My Design Philosophy

As a junior industrial design student in the Rhode Island School of Design I have figured that design students tend to be very unique as much as we go to a unique school. I know this because I have transferred from a university with a broader field of studies and people than RISD being a more concentrated field of studies and people. The university is called the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign and it is very different from the RISD. Although I was a design major there, all my friends were business, science, math, and engineering majors. Hanging out with them I could quickly know that they seem to study to get one answer and at the end all of them have the same answer to solve one main problem. However, here, in RISD, everyone seems to have different answers to solve one main problem. Therefore, many people will have different design philosophies that somehow will influence the world’s future. My design philosophy is broken up into three elements. The first element is that a design should be different; the second is that every function of a design should have a reason; lastly, a design should provide the user an emotional experience.

To start out with the first element of my design philosophy, every design should be different. In the world of design there are so many different designs that rapidly appear in the market. To be successful over all of those designs you have to come up with something even more different than those designs out in the market. Many design teachers often say think out of the box, and I agree with that phrase. To think out of the box, I tend to throw out extreme ideas during the early stage of my design process. Most of the time people tend to laugh and go when they see these ideas that I throw out, but sometimes these ideas get rewarded because someone comes up and says “that can work.” This happened during my internship over this summer.

During this summer, I worked with the OLED display department in Samsung back in Korea. They wanted me to develop ideas that they can apply to this newly developed technology: OLED. I started to throw out extreme idea as usual and presented the ideas to the department. At first they laughed, and then someone started to point out few designs and said it can be possible. This started out a whole new conversation in the meeting room with the subject of possible vs. impossible. At the end, the department decided that it was possible and they got a patent for the designs. For me, it was exciting because my design got a patent, for them, it was exciting because they got a design that was totally different from the others.

To go further with my design philosophy, the second element is that every function of a design should have a reason to it. A product is a product because it has its function and purpose to it otherwise it becomes a sculpture not a product. This function is there to help the user to fulfill their task. Also, to link in the first element of my design philosophy, this function should be something different from other existing products in the market. During the mid phase of my design process I tend to develop a new way for the product to fulfill its function. Once I have a concept then I go on and test out the different iterations of how the product can function.

A great example of a product having a function with reason and a function that is different is the iPod. People were amazed by the iPod not only because of its simple design but because of how it functioned. Unlike other MP3 players with many buttons, the iPod came up with two simple buttons. One was a ring and inside of the ring was a round button. The ring served as a tool to shuffle down pages, play, pause, stop, and back. The ring was designed to be a ring shape because they immediately told the user to “turn your finger on me.” The button in the middle served as a tool to simply select. This was totally new to the MP3 player market, and people started to buy iPods and now almost everyone has an iPod in their hand. The iPod is a successfully designed product because the function of it had a reason and was different from the others.

Lastly, the final element of my design philosophy is that a design should provide the user an emotional experience. The best way to give a user an emotional experience by design is with the “look” of the product. The “look” in designing a product can be form, materials, color, and two dimensional graphics. Again, to link this element with the other two elements of my design philosophy, the “look” should be something different and it should help fulfill the function of the product. When I was in University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, my professor gave us numerous amounts of form study assignments. One of the assignments was called the “Adjective Assignment.” In this assignment we were given two adjectives each. With these two adjectives we created forms that described the two adjectives given. By doing this assignment I learned that a product can have emotion to it and that emotion can influence the user’s emotion as well. At my last phase of my design process I try to apply this element to my design. Also by adding this element to my design the product is no longer just a product. It becomes a “living thing.”

Recently I have been observing vehicles a lot, because I am taking a studio that is highly involved with vehicles. During this observation I get the feeling that cars are emotionally driven products. For example, SUVs tell me that “I am strong,” sports cars tell me that “I am fast,” sedans tell me that “I am safe,” and luxury cars tell me that “I am expensive.” Having that basic idea set as a foundation, cars are designed to have their own personality. I think this is why many people are emotionally attached to the car that they own.

As a unique student in a unique school during my junior year, my design philosophy has three main elements and they are: (1) a design should be different; (2) every function of a design should have a reason; and (3) a design should provide the user an emotional experience. All of these elements integrate with each other in order to solve a design problem. These elements might change as I go in deeper in the field of design. However, at the moment this design philosophy is working well in guiding me through the design world as a student.

No comments: