Why the Millennium Falcon is great design
Some thoughts on emotions and design.
As I’ve been thinking about what it takes to make great design I have really valued the time to read more. Books, yes, but also shorter pieces online. Pieces like the one linked to above, part of Daniel Eckler’s essay series called ‘Design for Humanity’. Reading that, and the second article in the series today, has helped me process my own thoughts on emotion in design.
As I have written about, and will continue to write about, I think the chief concern in design should be people. People should be at the forefront of everything. And it is because I think good design is human-centred that I think considering emotions is vital for designers. In ‘Emotions: Living Life in Colour,’ Graham Beynon writes this:
“To be utterly unfeeling is not to be human. In fact it’s to deny part of how God has made us. We are created as thinking, feeling and acting beings, not as logical machines.”
It’s tempting to think that failing to consider people’s feelings in our design is just failing to consider an optional extra. But it’s to miss part of who we are as humans. It is essential, if we are to design for people, to consider their feelings.
Donald Norman helpfully describes emotions in the context of design as follows:
“Cognition is about understanding the world, emotion is about interpreting it”
I was watching Norman’s TED talk on this topic of emotions in design (the video is at the bottom of this post) and a reason he gave for thinking about how our products make people feel is that “pleasant things work better”. Imagine a plank on the floor. Would you walk across it? Of course! There aren’t many easier things in the world. Now picture about a plank a couple of hundred metres in the air. Would you walk across that? Same plank. Just as easy in theory, but we are scared! Fear changes how we view the plank, and it makes it harder to cross.
Now to Eckler’s essay, he says:
Form and function are universal concepts that every junior designer considers when developing new work. But there is a third, more subtle factor at play in design; one that many designers may relate to subconsciously but rarely express as a priority in their design thinking: feeling.
One of my biggest problems with Dieter Rams’ 10 principles for good design, though they are a brilliant guide, is that it’s possible to follow them to the letter and design something boring. You could design something incredibly functional, and even give it a beautiful form (Good design is aesthetic is actually one of the 10 principles) but it could still be boring. There are a myriad of paintings that I couldn’t care less about even though I think they’re pretty, for example. That are masterfully crafted but just don’t resonate with me emotionally.
However much I might love Rams’ work, I disagree with functionalism as a design philosophy when it says design should be utilitarian and practical above all else. I think it certainly should be practical, but not at the cost of everything else. I’m not convinced we should have to choose. Maybe good design values function over form where it must, but great design will be functional and beautiful and lovable. If our designs are really to be user-centred we must consider how people can emotionally interpret them as well as how they’ll cognitively understand them.
A difficulty with feelings is that the designer isn’t always in control of them. Eckler even alludes to that in his essay, speaking of how we often keep some items that aren’t useful or pleasing to the eye because we have an emotional connection to them. He talks of ticket stubs from a first date, or presents from a close friend. But it’s also funny that we also develop this sentimental attachment to products that are badly designed. An old car maybe, that’s falling to bits but you love it all the same. We can come to love the flaws in products. Maybe you have to hit the glove compartment in just the right place to open it. Think of the Millennium Falcon, isn’t it the perfect example of this? How can we be so attached to a ship?! Because its faults and imperfections make it unique, and they give it charm. We love that Han can make it work by hitting it in the right place. If it just worked perfectly it wouldn’t be half as fun.
But just because we can’t control how everyone will feel doesn’t mean we need to abandon any hope of emotion in our designs. That’s like saying because not everyone thinks something looks beautiful we shouldn’t bother trying to make things beautiful. And we can learn a lot about how people feel from what they love in their old banger, or the Millennium Falcon even.
An example of emotions causing people to love design is nostalgia. How come typewriters are fashionable now? And handwritten notes, and notebooks? They’re really nice, and physical. People like that better than the digital alternatives we use. There is a bit of a resurgence going on at the moment. Obviously an email is better design functionally than a letter. It is faster, more efficient, and better for the environment. But we love letters. Espcially love letters. You don’t really get ‘love emails’ so much, do you? Why? Feelings. And books. People worried Kindles and tablets would’ve killed books by now, but they haven’t. Why? Kindles are easier to use than a book. You can easily read them in bed while you’re lying down, they’re lighter, it’s easier to turn pages, and you can carry an entire library in your bag. But we still love books.
Philippe Stark’s juicer for Alessi is interesting enough in its standard form But it also comes as a gold-plated version. If you fork out for that, you also get a wee note (no expense spared). That note tells you not to use it to actually juice anything! The acid will react with the gold plating it says! Why would people buy that?! Because it’s fun. It looks nice, and makes people feel good. They want it. They want to collect it.
Part of what makes us love products is when they have personality. When we can get behind them and become attached to them. I think the difference between products I like and products I love is one simple word: charm. It’s what all my favourite products have in common. They are charming. Not merely good looking, not merely functional, but charming. I really like this Conran vase that was designed for JC Penny. It’s a vase, and it’s not too out there, but it’s a bird. Classic with a twist. It has that little bit of character. And back to Dieter Rams, though I was critiquing his ten points earlier I love his products because of their charm. The proportions are so perfect it just makes me smile. That’s what I aspire to in all my design, to make something charming. Something that makes me smile, and hopefully others too.
But how do we get that alongside seeking to create functional products? Eckler in his post contends that function may be our fundamental concern, but he questions how stricly we should cling to it. At the beginning of his TED talk Donald Norman actually spoke of some of the criticisms he had received for his writing on design:
“people used to say, ‘Norman’s OK, but if you followed what he said, everything would be usable but it would be ugly.’ Well, I didn’t have that in mind”
Is it about how much we cling to functionality? Is it about finding a balance between extremes? I often think that saying we must ‘strike a balance’ is a bit of a cop out. You can’t quite make your mind up between two things so we just say it must be in the middle. So can we decide what’s most important between functionalism, form, and feelings? But I think that finding a balance is exactly what we must do here.
Rams, and others who would ascribe to functionalism, would cling so tightly to function that they’d be willing to drop everything else. I think that is the cop out here. It’s easy to say function is the most important thing, because it lets you off the hook with an ugly or boring product so long as it works. Product to product different compromises must be made, and deciding what’s most important will depend on the application. But we shouldn’t settle for ugly or boring products. We should give ourselves high standards and not settle for merely doing the job.
And just because a philosophy is a balance between extremes doesn’t mean we can’t hold to it extremely. We can be extreme in our application of the balance between form, function and feeling. We can be extreme in ensuring that our products best meet the emotional, functional and aesthetic desires of the user.
