What Is design? by Bill Moddridge

In Bill Moddridges lecture he speaks about what design is. He not only speaks about industrial design but he also talks about what design is in all disciplines. He speaks about the design of not only tangible products such as products, clothing, interiors and houses but also the design of processes such as services and applications. He points out that without bad design we are not able to recognize good design. As designers we must think of not only making a product look good but we also need to have the end user in mind and think of what their needs are.  We must analyse the process of the intended use and test it and experiment on how to improve it. For example, with the i-mode service of buying a drink using your mobile phone. When tested the user was confused and also had to wait over 30 minutes to receive their drink.

I really liked the point he made about the importance of observation, experimentation and prototyping. To design for other people is to observe their daily lives to further learn what they need. If you are to ask someone, “what do you need?” they probably could not tell exactly what they need but if you are to study them you can learn more. For example, the customers of the Bank of America wanted to save more money. They were probably asked “what do you need?” and the answer was most likely money. So the bank started an initiative called keep the change where the bank saved up all the roundings of change into an account. This was good design because the needs were met and all parties were happy.

The other point I took away from the blog was the importance of working with other design disciplines. The IDEO company now has architects, industrial designers, interior designers and even engineers. This helps to understand things we don’t understand in our own fields. If you are to work with an engineer, they will not think like a designer so they will work with a designer to improve the process or the aesthetics of the product.

I learned a lot from having watched this video and will take it all in through my design process in the future.