Ebook Designers and Users
In our daily lives we are surrounded by things that have been designed by others. This applies to environments, buildings, objects, information and systems. Many of these things are designed by architects, engineers, graphic designers, software designers and industrial designers. Each of the design professions has a domain of knowledge that enables practitioners to understand relevant issues, make judgements, communicate ideas and ultimately produce designs for things that will be brought into existence. Knowledge about people is also required in all design disciplines as a designer makes choices on behalf of the people who will use the things designed. The success of a design will depend to some extent on how well the designer “knows” the users.
In the case of industrial design, the designed objects are usually made in large numbers and distributed widely. The designers cannot have direct knowledge of all the users or all the situations of use of the things they design. They must therefore make choices based on their expectations of users. The act of designing involves making predictions, or at least conjecturing, about how a future user will respond to and interact with something that does not yet exist. Relevant knowledge (for designers) about people may include quantifiable statements as well as knowledge of a more tacit nature, such as notions of fashion, desire, culture and aesthetics. The latter form of knowledge is imprecise, temporal and not easily described. For example, assertions about what will constitute ‘the right look” for a product, what will appeal to a particular sub-culture, or what feelings are likely to be evoked by an arrangement of form and colour are based on a form of knowing that is based on experience but rarely subjected to quantitative analysis.
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Ebook Designers and Users ( 8 page file pdf, 69.KB )
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