Dissonant Design: Fulfilling the Need for Self Expression
An excellent, provocative piece at frog Design Mind by Stuart Hogue. And you don't need to be a new parent to get it (not that you'd have time to even read this if you were).
The transformation of the mature stroller category into an explosive new market was no fluke. The Bugaboo became a transformative, self-expressive phenomenon because its design is wholly unexpected. The combination of Euro-styling and ruggedness were completely unanticipated product attributes in a category originally defined by basic utility. It used to be that a stroller only had to be lightweight and compact to be successful. By flipping the category’s expectations, Bugaboo created cognitive dissonance for the product’s observers between their expectations for the product category and their perception of the product’s actual form. Cognitive dissonance, in this sense, is the opposition between the product observer expectations for product categories or brands, reality of the product’s actual design, and then mentally rectifying the two countervailing forces.