Core77

Although exploring these obscure psychological human factors can be relevant why do I always see the same repeated minimal design language that almost every designer now apparently aspires to. Furthermore there are so many other greater human factor issues that seem to be neglected seemingly because they may not offer the most beautiful designer solution or aesthetic. Sometimes I feel the true nature of design (to solve a problem and make life better for all) is neglected cause it seems as though young designers are looking up to these posh high-end designers that essentially create pretty products that don't really solve any real issues for the most part. Don't get me wrong I love beautiful design and I highly respect those high-end designers for the awareness they bring to the field of Industrial Design but let's try and think about solving for real human issues and get those designs to proliferate and make real impact.

It is very interesting, what one calls a real problem to others is a nonsensical theme for design. The world is a rapidly changing place, yesterday in not tomorrow I think a famous man once said. For instance, if you look at Ticker Tape on the Photoblog, a decade ago Euphobia would have been laughed at by doctors but nowadays, it is coined by many as the new disease of the millennium and clustered together with diseases such as fear, stress and anxiety. After reading the text for ticker tape I just presume that if you do suffer from Euphobia (the word and the disease do exist I just looked it up in the Internet and in a dictionary) you wouldn't want to go near a radio to use the controls designed with traditional human factors in mind if you thought a particular type news was gonna come out of it. Then the question arises, what come first the egg or the chicken ... or the chicken before the egg. Personally I think that if used in a team situation or if it is seamlessly grafted into a modern model of the design process these new perspectives can help make peoples live better and a product more successful and enhance design as a discipline - that is as long as the whole design story, including traditional human factors, is considered.

I think what is encouraging that there were some global issues approached by the young-ens of the RCA in the Interim show. I saw one on Malaria. There was also a project that automatically put out kitchen hob fires. I think I'd appreciate that if i was in the bath while my dinner was on fire. I'm sure lots of other would do too.

I think what is interesting is that thinking about people from new perspectives can trigger new design that offers new design insight, obviously this needs to be tested and verified by real people, but at the very least the design outcome can be utilised as a platform for other design to emerge.