Blog 1

Blog 1



I thought it was pretty interesting how the history of the design philosophy followed a trend , evolving over time to better satisfy the needs of the customers by eventually focusing more on the customer and their problems themselves.

Starting off, we see that the designers began in a phase where the emphasis was not even on the customer. According to Raymond Loewy- “most advanced, yet acceptable”, eye popping technology or the idea that the more it does the better, took precedence over solving consumers problem. To me this sounds like a philosophy that would create complicated products that would do too many things for a person to handle, leading to low user satisfaction. One example that comes to mind is the "Vodafone Simply", a simple phone that was tailored to older people. The phone company Vodafone at first had no luck with the older market due to the phone being too complicated with fancy software and applications. But after focusing on and listening to their customers, they've learned that they just wanted a simple device that can work.

After that, the design philosophy changed to a more focus on the people by designing something that would deliver benefits to the human aspect. “If people are made safer, more comfortable, more eager to purchase, more efficient, or just happier, the designer has succeeded” said Henry Dreyfuss. Also to note, Mr. Mulhausen mentioned in class that at the time there was growing interest in Anthropometrics to figure out how exactly the product would function with the customer. Already a big change from the first view of design philosophy of Raymond Loewy, but not exactly complete in that it would make a person's life easier or solve his/her problems.

The trend continued to improve as the design philosophy changed again with Eero Saarinen who focused on fitting the product in a bigger context. "Always design a thing by considering its next larger context- a chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment, an environment in a city plan". Furthering the evolution, Charles Eames preached "design is a plan for arranging elements in such a way as best to accomplish a particular purpose". In other words arranging elements in a way to best accomplish the purpose, which to me sounds strongly like Apple, where the famous ipod is absolutely the best example of arranging elements in way to listen to music to its full potential.

Finally, the design philosophy evolution reached its final stage when Dieter Rams said that "good design is as little design as possible". Dieters' ten principles of good design sounds to me that when it comes to designing a product, the product has to get to the point quickly in a useful way that makes sense in itself. As Mr. Mulhausen mentioned, Apple is a big fan of Rams' philosophy where the ipod itself was designed to be simple and to make sense in way that instructions are not even necessary.

The design philosophy in the end has shifted from being competition based to improving the lives of the people.