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A DESIGN CONVERSTATION

THE STATEMENT - DAVID HEAP“as a design theorist I’m constantly intrigued by why some designs are loved and others hated…what are the essential qualities in some designs that make them desirable, valued and eventually indispensable, and in other designs that make them uninteresting, unappealing and ignored?”

THE RESPONSE - PROFESSOR JERRARDI think herein lies an immense problem for designers and consumers...about time and time-based experiences. Objects of desire (that is objects that are designed to be desirable) have future lives (fashionable clothes lose their appeal of the catwalk but find popularity eventually in charity shops, beautiful furniture become classic art and then an antique or firewood, graphic design moves from an essential functional piece of communication to a faded object of derision or a recycled material egg box...etc.). These objects are time based so those essential qualities are also time-based and completely and always transient. This appears to have little to do with good design or often good designers. So...the question is not what, but when?

THE REPLY - DAVID HEAPI agree to a certain extent with your hypothesis of time-based experiences and the transient nature of an artifact’s qualities. Indeed I make a similar point on my website that someone might hate/love a particular designed ‘thing’ because it invokes memories of an unpleasant/pleasant time, experience, interaction, moment or event. Take this example posted on my website as a loved design;The Ferguson T20 Tractor (the ‘little grey fergie’)Takes me back to happy memories of childhood, mine and my children's. Standing in the back box attached with the revolutionary 3 link suspension, clinging on to the wheel arch as Dad hurtled along. A workhorse which entertained as Dad, then brother James came last to 'win' the slow tractor race in the local agricultural show.Here we have a woman recounting a pleasant experience linked to a particular object, this however is a time-based experience based on the woman’s time, not the objects time. And perhaps this is where my perspective differs from yours; I am interested in why people value things at certain times in their lives, not in a particular point in the lifecycle of the object. Memories like the above example, based on moments of interaction with objects, are often the key reason why someone will love (or hate) a particular thing. Yet designers (at the moment at least) cannot design such elements into things as they don’t know the circumstances in which their designs will be used or experienced.In this project I’m not asking people to make judgements on what they consider good or bad design, as I state on my website such a question is questionable (notions of good and bad are generally subjective and reveal little of relevance to design practice). I am more interested in the artifacts that have evoked a strong emotion and the reasons for such evocation.So I feel the real question is partly what?, partly when?, but mostly why?

A CONVERSATION ABOUT DESIGN WITH PROFESSOR BOB JERRARD

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