The Value of "IA" or Whatnot, was Re: [Sigia-l] Th e New Nielsen?

[Andrew Hinton]

Design *can* be about a visceral/emotional effect. But if you're getting
paid to produce something for that kind of effect, the process for creating
it isn't that different from making a better hair dryer or a better
ecommerce application.

Let's say I want to figure out a cartoon character that will so resonate
with six-year-olds that they will feel comfortable with a breakfast cereal
the character is to promote.

The character is an object. A product. A thing that must be crafted for a
particular use, to meet a particular need. In this case, the object is not a
toothbrush that is to be more comfortable to hold. It is not an interface
that must be more efficient to enter widgets into. It's a cartoon character
that is to be manipulated by writers, art directors and marketers to affect
the judgment of sugar-starved first-graders.

Now. If I'm crafting and producting an artifact (in this case a cartoon
character) that is to be used for a purpose outside itself (in this case, as
a tool for marketing a product), is this not design?

I submit that it is design. But it is design that has as its intended
function an emotional response (aka an affinity or emotional benefit). (I'm
not sure 'visceral' is a great word for any of this...makes me think of
being drawn and quartered...but that's just me).

But the key differences here are:

1) The cartoonist-designer must acknowledge that this is not a work of
self-expression. It is not Art. (Of course some of the personality and style
of the designer will be in the mix... But that's not the purpose of the
design.)

2) The designer must also then research the audience, understand the needs
of the users (both the marketers and the consumers), and craft the product
to meet its intended use to the best of the designer's ability.

Designing for emotional use is just as important as designing for physical
use. It's all about "use"...it's just that we, in our practical-minded
culture, tend to relegate imagination and emotion to the arena of
"uselessness" and frivolity. It's a dangerous mistake.

At the same time, however, designers have been pumped full of crap from the
designer star system. So many design awards are focused on aesthetics almost
completely divorced from actual use. This or that famous designer is praised
for having a "style" of his/her own the same way a fiction writer is
described as having a unique "voice" or a painter has a unique vision.
"Ooooh, look at me, I used typography that bleeds to the edge of the page
and is almost frickin' impossible to read!!! What a daring vison!!! I'm a
designer!!!"

It seems it's all watered Design down to be just about anything anybody
wants to slap onto a screen or page, justifying it by "this is an ironic
comment on previous design" or "this is meant to challenge our assumptions
about what can be done with the page." That's art, not design.

But I'd ask even those who say "this is my vision, and it's meant to
inspire!" Well, have you tested its inspirational capacity with its intended
audience? Did you have any conversations with that audience beforehand or
did you just go from your own "inspiration"?

My background is in the written arts, so an example I keep thinking of is
poetry. Even a poem, which is technically a work of art for its own sake,
still (according to most mainstream schools of thought on poetics) must
communicate something to its reader in order to have any value. It is part
of the job of the poet to make things clear, or at least not misleading
(unless of course that is part of the intended effect of the poem).

Even speculative/science fiction, which one might assume has no rules since
it's all imaginary worlds and whatnot, has very rigorous best-practices that
are necessary to follow in order to make a speculative world or situation
hold together enough to keep a reader's interest and create an effective
narrative. 

Visual artists have the luxury of being almost entirely abstract, of playing
with "pure form" because their medium isn't all tangled up in language or
utility. And much of it is quite beautiful. I adore Kandinsky and Pollock. I
love Mark Rothko's work, for example, but I wouldn't expect it to be very
effective at selling anything, unless some art director figured out that a
Rothko, based on a focus group or something, really is just the perfect
thing to put in an ad for margarine. Then it becomes raw material for a
design, but it all still follows a similar process.

A Graphic Novel is an interesting example. There are very powerful elements
of hard-core, rigorous design involved in creating a readable, effective
panel in a graphic novel. But there is also a very powerful element of
inspiration. But the inspiration can't obscure the story...it has to serve
the experience of the narrative, or it ceases to be what it was intended to
be...it becomes a coffee-table book of funky cartoon art.

Architecture gets a bad rap because so many architects have gone the route
of abstract form-manipulators to alter the shape of our skylines without
actually thinking about people having to live and work in their
monstrosities. Unfortunately, the bad ones overshadow the many good ones who
really do think about people and how they inhabit space.

There is rigor involved in design. There must be. That isn't to say that
inspiration has no place, but it only has a place in the context of the
necessary limitations placed on the design by how it is intended to be used.

Good lord. How am I going to account for this incredibly long message in my
timesheets today? Hmmm....

--Andrew Hinton
www.memekitchen.com
www.drewspace.com

::zapolsja at WellsFargo.COM::wrote on 7/16/02 08:46pm:

> Peter said:
> <snip>
> Which I don't think I completely agree with. Partly because I don't quite
> understand what it means that "design is about the visceral". I'd argue very
> much that it is NOT. Design usually about specifying some solution, whether
> it's the structure of a building, the form of a pencil, the schema of a
> database, or whathaveyou.
> </snip>
> 
> Amen to that.  Design is not *about* the visceral.  Designed things *can*
> evoke a visceral reaction, but this is really besides the point of the goals
> of design as a practice.  I'm not trying to pick on David (who often has
> quite valuable things to say), but I don't think fetishizing design by
> associating some evocative power to it gets us anywhere in this discussion.
>