Why are there so many products that do not look good or anything but easy to use? I am guessing that over 80% of products out there are the outcome of "Frankensteinzation". Part of the reason is the engineer voice is dominating the design process. Design represents the voice of the user. Design is never part of the engineering school culture although design is an inherently part of engineering. It is generally not regarded as a primary course of study in engineering school. Why is that? Engineering is about science, and science represents a systematic study of the natural world that characterizes and quantifies the physical attributes of matter and phenomena. It getting to the truth, it is basically a reduction process and things are separated into cause and effect that heavily anchored in a Newtonian world. Design is the exact opposite. In the engineering world, design is less about aesthetic enhancement and more a feature of problem solving and logical analysis. Features and functionality comes before the form factor.
Buckminster Fuller (famous inventor, architect, engineer, mathematician and cosmologist. Twice dismissed from Harvard, Fuller never received a formal degree and had no academic credentials, he received 44 honorary doctoral degrees) talked about this as, “The consumption and digestion of facts and statistics is somewhat like eating and chewing hay and thistles. There is nourishment in them in their raw state, to be sure, but a cow is needed to convert them into milk.”
Engineering’s intimate ties to science and its penchant for practicality have left it vulnerable to compartmentalized thinking. Business is having the same problem as the core teaching in business schools is anchored on finance and economics. Usability school is somewhere in the middle but more towards the engineering school's side. In D-school, design is the central pillar on which artistic expression is built around. Design is a governing force, a voice that guides shape, form factor, making “one great thing instead of a collection of little things. They are two different worlds. Design seeks to harmonize, unite, and simplify representing a different mind-set from science-based culture. Design exists beyond the boundaries of look and feel, on a cognitive level, meaning is perceived in the non-verbal realm of emotion and intuition. Good designs build great brands.
The success of Danish design is a good example. The Danish twist on things involves a simplification, but without making things vulgar or cold. While Bauhaus school used steel to express simplicity, the major figures of the Golden Age drew upon Denmark's strong carpentry tradition to make comfortable furniture for people stuck inside for much of the year. Danish design is recognized for- user-friendliness and comfortable forms; many products today take cues from Danish design by combining an aesthetic shell with functionality.
Fuller had some great insight into the mechanics of invention. Working at a time when the modernist ideal was driving new paradigms in science and art, Fuller put forth an equation: Science + Art + Industry = Universal Architecture. Fuller revealed in this theorem that in combination reason, intuition, and purpose have a synergistic relationship. In this instance, architecture was not a feature of the built environment or a stylistic proposition; it was rather a description of universal order. Designers and engineers can benefit a lot from Fuller's ideas.
