What should ‘good’ design have as its principle?

Posted by admin | Under Design Arts Essays Tuesday Apr 29, 2008

Introduction

Over the past few decades, the expansion of design principles has dramatically changed the way design concepts are viewed by people. The strong influences of principles towards good design have driven evolutions in many design artifacts. This document will represents a compilation of what should good design have as its principles, which have been compiled from many resources on design, as well as my own experience and from a comprehensive literature gathered from multiple resources. Moreover, most of these principles can be applied to any kind of design either in fashion, product or graphical.

If there is such a thing as beauty, we need to be able to recognize it. We need a good sense to be able to design good things. Instead of indulging beauty as a concept, to be either non-sense about or avoided depending on how one feels about fresh concept, it is best to try considering it as a practical question: How do you make good design? This document is expected to be systematically developed a set of general and supporting good design principles.

Design

The term design is defined as the act of planning a form of idea, a decorative or an artistic work, a sketch used to indicate the plan for something, an anticipated outcome that is intended or that guides actions planned. Design indicates to an idea, which is aimed at. Objectives points to the feelings or desire with which an idea is required. The purposes of design are that it has indication to a complete choice or purpose for its success.

The life cycle cost of a design artifact is, to a large extent, influenced by its maintainability. Besides being a statistical concept, maintainability is a design factor whose achievement is influenced by known elements and attributes. However, these elements and attributes appear far and beyond in literary sources.

One can assume that all good design principles are varies in physical, intellectual / psychological aspects and properties. Until now, a common difficulty in creating and designing new products, or modifying existing ones, is to know to what these design should be, that is, whether it will be acceptable to the public or just simply for the pleasure of the designer.

All products, old and new, can be described in functional terms relating to the level in which they assist people to handle materials physically and/or to use information in their work. For example, an electric toothbrush has changed the way people cleans the tooth easily, it has been recommended by dentist all over the world; a pocket calculator can assist every businessman with tedious arithmetic. Products can thus be described as ‘physical’ and ‘intellectual’ capabilities, and a typical example is Microsoft Word that takes both the physical and intellectual dullness out of productive writing.

The definition of a desirable product depends entirely on the point taken such as: technological, commercial, ecological, cultural and social. However, any design using new technology will incorporate the existing and will include new design elements. The probability in acceptance of society towards a new product designed is enhanced by maintaining a balance between imaginative and a creative new form, and also that with people are familiarize with and preferable, a new design may be rejected if it is too original and unfamiliar design shape, or it is consider as too traditional.

Principles

Universal good design principles should be usable by all people to the greatest extent as possible without the need for adaptation or specialized design. These principles may be applied to evaluate an existing design, and also a guideline to the design process and their impact towards the environment and society.

1. User Profiling

The first step to consider when designing a product is to obtain information of who will be using the design. A design that is good quality for a technically skilled user might not benefit for a non-technical person or an artist. When all information is gathered, the designer can then proceed to start designing the interface of the product to achieve the goals of the product design. A physical interaction to the user is appropriate to understand the purpose of the design it self.

The following questions are conflicting values. How much uniqueness is good and how much consistency is good? How do our design decisions reflect both? Mass produced items have a tendency to show conformity in our culture in spite of the fact that individual freedom of choice is highly valued in our tradition. In many tribal cultures hand crafted artifact show individuality.

2. Reasonable Use

Design should be useful and accepted to the society with perfect functionality. Ideas about the usefulness of the design should be carefully thought before starting any of the design process.

For examples: a typical house stove has four burners arranged in a square, and a dial to control each. How should the dials be arranged? The answer is to put them in a row. But this is a simple answer to the wrong question. The dials are meant to be use, but if the dials are put in a row, the user will have to stop and think each time about which dial are used to ignite the burner. It will be better to arrange the dials in a square like the burners or even maybe next to the burner.

A lot of bad design is industrious, but misleading with the purpose of it is being designed. In middle of the twentieth century there was a trend for setting text in sans-serif fonts. These fonts are closer to the pure, underlying letterforms. But in reality that is not the problem we are trying to solve. It is much more important that letters are easy to tell apart and read from a distance.

Product for adults has been designed as efficiently as possible to give pleasure for the people that will use it. Some people consider this as taboo and not appropriate for the market. Nevertheless, there are more and more demands for these kinds of products to be placed in the market. Beside the uniquely design concept suitable for any person, this design product also prevents other transmitted disease. In a matter of speaking this product design has decrease the sexual disease among societies.

Problems can be improved as well as solutions. In software, an intractable problem can usually be replaced by an equivalent one that’s easy to solve. Sometimes updates or patches are being distributed with no charge to solve the setback.

3. Aesthetics

It’s not necessary that each design have to be visually attractive. But it is important not to have an unattractive shape. There are a number of simple principles from a graphical design principle that can easily be learned. From the Gospels, we have a beautiful example of how aesthetic is important compared to functions. This happens when Mary broke the expensive perfume in Christ’s honor. It was an aesthetic experience unappreciated as a waste of resources by the disciples, but clearly endorsed and blessed by Christ. It is clear that all our needs are not met by practical things and function alone. Appreciation is often expressed through aesthetic means.

Beauty itself cannot make bad people into a better person, but it is one of the positive influences on us. These includes, where public housing projects being demolished which first buy their own inhabitants, and finally by contractor in planning explosives and ruined a designed work of others.

Ethically speaking, a design should need to reflect hope, and not merely an existence. An aspect of art can give a measurement of sense of worth, identity, and hope, even where it is existed just a little.

To deny aesthetics for economic reasons or for practical considerations does not make the world into a better place. Perhaps those of us learning design must observe, listen, respond, and question about what is bad while we can, but we must not enforce such understanding.

4. Flexibility in Use

With the term flexibility, we introduce a new design concept of a particular products quantitatively characterizes. It is important when designing a product that alternatively may be used for other purposes. An example of multipurpose design is the Swiss army knife, where a single knife has a multipurpose uses and the size is small and handy, which makes it easier to be carried around daily.

Once you get familiar with the concepts, producing a flexible design is probably not too difficult compared to producing a fixed design. A flexible design requires less maintenance and which is easier to do. Furthermore, it is also cheaper when one considers maintenance over the life-time of a design product.

A designer should not be static with their design concept and he/she should not also be constantly attached with a lot of principles in designing an artwork. By being flexible, it does not mean artists breaking the set rules of a principle. Most of the principles can sometimes be appropriate for some events, but ethically speaking the moral can determined by what is being right and wrong. None the less, a flexible design has some issues in regards of the consistency. Since a consistency exist when a design is not flexible, but then a flexible design can’t be a consistent.

5. Simple and Intuitive Use

The design aim is clearly stated, regardless the user’s experience, knowledge, language skills, income levels and user ethic background. You hear this from math to painting. In math it means that shorter evidence tends to be a better one. For architects and designers it means that beauty should depend on a few carefully chosen structural elements rather than a profusion of enhancement. Enhancement is not entirely bad, only when it is hidden on colorless design. Similarly, in painting, a still life of a few carefully observed and solidly modeled objects will tend to be more interesting than a stretch of flashy but mindlessly repetitive painting.

It seems strange to have to emphasize simplicity. However, something seems to come over people when they try to be creative. Beginner designers have adopted a trend that doesn’t sound anything like the way they speak. Their artwork has expressed their feeling toward a specific genre.

6. Honesty

Honesty is not the common word we most hear during this time of year, where the worlds are in the terror of terrorist. But none the less, we as designers should implement honesty into our design.

No matter how humble the material, honesty should always be considered more beautiful than deception. On the other hand, there are products made from plastic that are honest in the sense that they could not be made from any other product. IMac computer housing makes no attempt to look like another material, but many people find it very attractive. With the help of capable designers, plastic as plastic can be aesthetically pleasing and appealing. With honest concept reflect toward, the use of plastic in IMac computer housing enables it to be recycles and friendly to the environment.

7. Consistency

A consistent look and feel will relieve the user towards product design, Example: In a newspaper where the fonts and the size are being used for the body will have the same typefaces throughout the entire newspaper. This reflects a consistency being used by the graphic designer. Magazines, newspapers, and television gives a lot of attention to a recognizable style layout uses to attract people. It will be shown if you browse through any magazine. The longer you look, the more you often a kind of uniformity is shown. In page layout, fonts, writing style, use of color, titles, headers, lines, images etc. Newspapers are often distinguishable just by font and column width. This all serves just one purpose and that is recognizable. You know where to expect certain thing; you don’t have to look for it anymore.

A television set can be an example. When you intended to turn on the TV you simply press the button that says on/off. What if the on/off button being press instead turning on the television changes the channel? Wonder about what would happen if the buttons would change places every time you press one. Quite annoying, don’t you think?

This approach has some added advantages. When you are designing a new concept on a new design, you can limit the efforts to its content. Also other people can work more easily on the product, when a re-design is required. Furthermore, a consistent design reflects its product identity towards the public. A consistent appearance will have a unity to its craftsmanship. Consistent material being used by Macintosh Apple has appealing and also familiarization of the product toward the society. That can be recognized by noticing part of the design.

8. Enduring

Design can be used efficiently as possible with a comfortably and minimum weariness from time to time. A static design will eventually be outdated and resulting in the down of revenues.

We value permanence and tradition, but we also value creativity, changes, improvements, and relevance to the time in which we live. If a design can stand the test of time, is it better than a new design that rejects old appearances because better materials and processes have been discovered or invented.

For a new designed technology to be successful, it has to come at the right time. Developing something too early may mean that it will be forgotten by the time it is needed, or worse, it cannot be used, and it is because the intermediate steps have turned out to be different than what was expected. But what is the right time? It is hard to say, however some of the symptoms of its arrival are that people start asking for something, that there are people available with ideas, and especially that the obvious solution appeared.

Aiming at a timeless design is also a way to avoid the grip of fashion. Fashion, by definition, almost change time to time, therefore if you can make something that will still looks good far into the future, then its appeal must derive more from merit and less from fashion. An example of a timeless design in fashion can be shown by Louis Vuitton timeless design product. From first being introduced to the market until now has reached their market for the superior class and prestige design craftsmanship.

Strangely enough, if you want to make an idea that will appeal to future generations, a way to do this is by trying to appeal to past generations. It is hard to guess what the future will be like, but we can be sure it will be like the past in caring nothing for present fashions.

9. Minimal

Minimal design is one of the most significant design principles, in order to emphasize the important. The starting point of a good design is by identifying the essential aspect(s) of the problem. It is about understanding the design problem, and focusing on the essentials. It is not about being able to justify inclusion because anything can be justified.

Minimal design involves a paring down to only the essential elements required to provide maximal function and aesthetic appeal reflected on the entire design artifact. Example of a minimalist design product is the IKEA furniture, after it is unwise to describe a design artifact as being low-priced considering the cost of material used, there can be no doubt that many artifacts are burdened with an excess of material being over the years.

The simplest designs can make a good design, that are characterized by simplicity, elegance, details, materials quality and a concern with functionality in both the physical and psychological sense for user. By achieving a convincing, highly-functional simplicity and harmony, it is an approach that has little to do with the economy or convenience. Better minimal design artwork should come as a result in the creation of a relatively simple, elegant, and functional and processes that, each provides the maximal purposes for intellectual development and achievement of the designer.

10. Ecologically friendly

Ecological Design describes how making natural systems the basis for design makes more efficient, less toxic, healthier, and more sustainable buildings, landscapes, cities, and technologies. (Van der Ryn & Cowan 1995.)

We know that it requires resources to meet human needs, but we also value caring for resources. How can we show care about resources as not something we use up but something we borrow from future users. Design are met in optimizing the use of resource (time, people and content), it would minimize waste (time, energy, materials). It would be sensitive to the local environment, and also being adaptable successfully to a dynamic environment.

Un-recycled product does not mean clutter and messy boxes in hallways, or whether there any beautifully designed solutions to encourage even the most un-recycled material to be recycled product. Many recycle material are produced in the market to be used by designer. The complexity is to find out whether the designer is willing to utilize the use of ecological material as a part of their design artifact.

As a designer, we should be conditioned to find the pleasure in preservation of resources, in consuming of the resources efficiently. Consequently, the ecological approach demands that we explicitly analyze constraints that are endangered the environment.

Conclusion

In conclusion, a good design contributes more value than costs. It is also a profitable design. Furthermore, it is not sufficient for a design to contribute to the performance requirements. It must not cost more than the value of the level of performance it reflects. A designer must be able to estimate the cost impacts of a given design on all critical resource dimensions, in order to justify it. The failure of correctly estimating the design cost impacts can cause budget overrun or schedule overrun.

Design as practiced today is too often failing to systematically address the multiple needs to the society. Since most design principles are connected to each other. Designers have to understand the right principles to be applied for the purpose functionality and its user.

Practically, it is easier to see unattractiveness than to imagine beauty. Most people who have made beautiful things seem to achieve it by fixing things that they thought unattractive. Great work usually seems to happen because of the thought of “they could do better than that” as well as perceiving something good.

There are many other points that could be made, but the general principle is that a good design should also have a well purpose defined and need to be evaluated for their effects on social interaction and nature.

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