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Thursday, October 30, 2003
What is a product?Products are created as a result of an art or many arts. A product can be characterized by its means (how it is made), material (what it's made of), form (shape and style), and function (how it works). There are four classes of products: - information/signs
- artifacts/physical objects
- activities and services
- organizations and systems
There are lots of crossover between these classes in contemporary design. The nature of products has changed. Designers used to think of products from the outside (form and function). The "Good Design" movement is an example of this. But then, in the latter part of the 20th century, designers began to look at products from the inside. A chair isn't a back, arms, etc. It is the form of a person sitting. Designers began to learn (and do) new things from going inside the experience of the person using the product. Now we ask of a product: Is it useful? Is it usable? Is it desirable? Useful is about logos (technological reasoning, quality of argument). Usable is about pathos (appeals to beliefs of the audiences, about affordances). Desirable is about ethos (the character we present). The trickiest is desirable. Desirability is that quality of a product that makes us want to have it be a part of our personal lives. We identify with it. The product's voice is its desirability. Placing products in a social context introduces rhetoric. And when we look at form, we also get rhetoric. A triangle can be drawn with the product, its makers, and its community of use at each point. The design process synthesizes the voice of the makers with the needs of the community of use.
posted at 10:15 AM in
design theory
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