What if there was no spoon?
Our fondness for beautiful objects and what it means
My wife did some cleaning up of the kitchen today and she put away one of the spoons. I promptly searched for it, found it in the drawer and put it back with the other frequently used bowls and cups on the kitchen table.
“That’s one of my favourite things,” I said to my wife, something I hadn’t realised up to this point.
“Oh, good that I didn’t throw it away or something.”
“I mean, I wouldn’t die if it was gone, but it would feel really weird.”
You see, I’d been using the same spoon for almost 20 years to make coffee, tea and my milo (a hot chocolate drink commonly found in Asia). It just feels right – the curvature, the weight, the handle. I had picked it out from the rest of the spoons. Over the years, I sought it out unconciously. The form factor just made me want to use it over the other spoons. In essence, I would say good design made the spoon pick it out, even though I wasn’t making a concious choice. I mean, I already had it in my inventory. (If you’re wondering: my mum lifted it from the Singapore Airlines flight when we migrated from the UK to Singapore.)
What a banal post. I mean, a spoon? I believe there’s more to it than that.
My own reaction to a seemingly everyday object facinates me as a design professional. I had, over the years, built up some kind of connection to this spoon. I’m not saying I have a relationship with this object. Nor is it the same kind of fetishisation that many people attach to food.
What I do have is… I’ve developed a certain attachment to this object, established through daily use over 20 years. Losing the spoon that would have caused me no small amount of distress. It’s not uncommon to embed certain memories or feelings to a physical place – that’s why they call it “walking down memory lane”.
In my case, I’ve embedded certain feelings in this object. This spoon represents, to me, the stability and comforts of a daily routine that I’ve had for 20 years. It represents home and shelter both physical and psychological. The familiarity brings me comfort.
If we generalise my own experience here, might I posit:
1. Humans are hard-wired to pick beautiful things, even when we’re not trying to.
2. Humans project positive emotions onto objects over extended use.
I wouldn’t say these are new ‘discoveries’ – in fact, there’s a whole documentary about this called Objectified – but it’s certainly brought these points to my attention once again.
Now, how can we apply this to designing software?
