Design Research and Design Thinking have become so important, I feel like I have forgotten the essence of what it means to be a designer. I am just as excited about the advancement of our field as anybody else, but I feel like I’ve forgotten the language of our founding. A pet peeve of mine is when people talk disparagingly about “reskinning” a product. I believe and hope that there are meaningful and complex reasons as to why the appearance of a “skin” of an object can make all the difference. There is something more about the intuition and eye of a designer in the process. Maybe it’s something right under my nose that is already absolutely apparent. I’m probably preaching to the choir on this, but consider this question -
Through design research, designers learn about the target market and hopefully find insights that weren’t noticed before. However, going back to the first iMac, do you think Apple designers actually found in their research that people wanted a lollipop(jk) for a computer? I don’t think they did, I think they realized the mass market they were shooting for wanted something more fashion forward, more inline with lifestyle brands, maybe even more colorful, but how did they know this form was the most desirable form that embodies all that understanding?
How come it didn’t end up with a colorful version of this? Would this have revolutionized the industry and taken the consumer market brand language with it?
How did they know it needed to look like this to be desirable?
