About me as a designer

A circle is not a line of constant curvature whose points are all equidistant from a center, but first of all a compact, hard, stable thing. -Rudolph Arnheim

My interest in industrial design was born of frustration with existing products. To this day, every time I use a urinal and have to avoid the inevitable splashing back, I wonder why such poor designs are so prevalent. Over the years, I have come to understand (though not necessarily accept) many of the economic, manufacturing, and cultural factors which often take precedence over usability in the product development process.

As an undergraduate dabbling in industrial design, (and having just discovered the writings of Donald Norman), I focused on designing for the end-user. I always thought of what I was doing as trying to make things work better. As for form-generation, my decisions were guided by ergonomic and user-interface concerns, with little conscious concern for proportion, color or any other aesthetic concerns. When the mechanical or ergonomic criteria did not fully determine a form, I think I unconsciously fell back on the visual language of the mass-market products around me, which often had the pure geometric shapes and unadorned surfaces of Modernism.

On the other hand, as I began to become more conscious of the aesthetic qualities of designed objects, I found that I was just as irritated by designs which obviously compromised usability for the sake of appearance—no matter how gorgeous. Eventually I realized that my user-centered view of industrial design was pretty lopsided. So I decided to pursue a master's degree in ID at Pratt Institute—known for its aesthetic focus—to try to round out my thinking.

Aside from a few art history survey courses, I'd had no previous training in aesthetics as such, so beginning to consciously understand the the fundamentals of three-dimensional form, color and spatial relationships was a wonderful revelation. Learning to create an aesthetic hierarchy of elements and learning to appreciate the ever-so-subtle iterative changes that are required to resolve a design were invaluable experiences for me. Yet during my training, aesthetic and utilitarian concerns remained separate. Even at Pratt, these two aspects of a particular design were often evaluated separately, with little discussion of how one related to the other.

But I had a hunch that the distance between these two aspects of design (aesthetics and usability) were not so different after all. Perhaps the essential role of the industrial designer is to create products and experiences that are appropriate to human psychology and physiology. I believe these issues are at the heart of the industrial designer's essential role. Our work is based on innate human abilities for direct perception via the senses. Like sculptors, we use form to communicate ideas, but unlike sculptors, the ideas we communicate are of a pragmatic nature—the primary purpose of the objects and spaces we create is utility (whether decorative or functional), not philosophy, faith or any of the other persistent themes of art. This is not to say that our work cannot or should not contain elements of such themes, only that, ultimately, utility is the raison d’être of our profession.

Whether consciously or unconsciously, I spent much of my time at Pratt trying to understand the relationship between aesthetics and utility. This inquiry culminated in my master's thesis, entitled The Expressiveness of Form. In it, I argue that expression provides the bridge between aesthetics and my earlier interest in user-centered design. User-centered design can be defined as design which gracefully accommodates human physical and psychological capacities and frailties. To this formulation, I add a second mental capacity, by distinguishing perception from cognition. If the visual and spatial language of expression is an oft-neglected, but inherent aspect of perception, common to all humans, then designers who are truly concerned with improving the user experience should think of aesthetic considerations as more than a frivolity, a marketing gimmick or a status indicator of wealth and refinement. Instead, designers may consider the expressive qualities communicated via form a means of addressing a human capacity, just as we do when we place a control lever within easy reach or use the icons of a graphical user interface to represent otherwise intangible computer functions or segments of data. Attention to expression can help make the mass-produced objects of everyday life more humane.

The first part of my thesis argues that humans share a common, evolved perceptual capacity that is also the basis of emotional reactions to form. The second part attempts to identify the specific visual characteristics which are associated with emotional reactions.

Download My Master's Thesis (PDF 1.3MB)