why you should care about design
To most people, the ideas of design and engineering seem like some magic that happens behind closed doors, performed only by people with high educations and high salaries
However, here we’ll learn a little bit about how we’ve gone from this
to this
First, let’s talk about a little bit of background information:
Lets assume products are designed to help people (in a perfect world), and to help people, you must understand, well, PEOPLE. In short
PROBLEM = DESIGN OPPORTUNITY
DESIGN OPPORTUNITY = PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT
Thats it. Thats the whole basis of product engineering, build something to achieve a goal. And make it efficient!
Okay, so now that we know the goal, how do we get from acknowledging a problem to creating a fully designed and functional product that people use?
Well, it takes a lot of gathering information and reflecting before anything can happen. Were gonna talk about some fancy words for a minute but bear with me:
Usability- the degree to which something is able or fit to be used
We can test how easy or difficult a product is to use by testing many people’s experience with it. This is called usability testing. In fact, some people’s careers are just testing usability and quality of products for companies. One of the ways we test usability is through user research.
User Research- understanding user behaviors, needs, and motivations through observation techniques, task analysis, and other feedback methodologies.
Basically, the process of collecting data about possible users. Sometimes this looks like one on one research, such as a usability test, or looking at masses of data to analyze peoples needs thought things like surveys, censuses, and experiments.
This helps us to learn a little bit about the overall experience of the product, the broader environmental contexts, user struggle areas, and efficiency.
Last word to learn:
Ideation- to generate and communicate ideas about products through visual representations (usually drawing/ prototyping)
this is the part where you start to draw out ideas for products that solve the problem at hand.
Heres an ideated image of a wheelchair that has many different amenities like an X-box screen and subwoofers. While not everything in this drawing is perfect and planned out, it achieves some goal the designer had, and communicates their ideas.
From here, countless rounds of product testing, ideation, and prototyping will be done until a product is manufactured and available to users.
Finally, here is a small list of some guidelines of design to keep in mind:
Accessibility: Is my product accessible to a wide range of users?
Constraints: Are there parts of my design that are physically impossible to accomplish given the technology and resources available?
Privacy- Am I respecting my users privacy in the development and the execution of my product?
This process is not simply a one and done deal. The way that we got from hard to use, ancient wheelchairs to modern wheelchairs is through constant design improvement! Because we are always learning more about people’s needs, and we are constantly coming up with better ideas improve products!
The future could hold something greater!
You are impacted by every single product that you use in your everyday life. We know this because as users, we HATE it when a product is difficult to use.
Question design choices made about the products you use, and your ideas, too, can contribute to future of design! We never know what it could hold...