Designing with a Sixth Sense

Continuing our A Whole New Mind reading, Pink introduces six factors that he believes are pertinent to design now, which he dubs as the six "senses."

-DESIGN with function

-STORY with an argument

-SYMPHONY of a focus

-EMPATHY and logic

-PLAY with seriousness

-MEANING with accumulation

Pink makes a good point that with good quality products being mass-produced and easily accessible, design is the only factor left to differentiate a product and make it outlive its peers.  To make this come about, Pink recommends that designers get a grip on the six senses for their work.  For example, he observed that a toaster is used 1% of its lifetime. The other 99%, it is out on display. Thus, its design should be developed further than being an inactive appliance taking up counter space.

Pink suggests that everyone, not just designers can contribute to promoting a right-brain world by merely observing the design in their everyday lives. We can all contribute by the simple acts of reading design magazines or documenting designs that have a positive or negative effect on our daily life through pictures or notes.  If we happen to encounter something with uncomfortable design, it is as simple as sitting down for 5 minutes and thinking of how the negative experience can be omitted or bettered. The next step would be sending this idea to the designer of the product, hoping that the company would be supportive enough to give it a try.

Pink emphasizes how having a story for any design is an immediate success for any product.

Creating a narrative for a design, whether visual or conveyed through text, provides the consumer with interaction and possible endearment. Pink uses examples such as wine bottles with a short description about the homely creators of the drink and even applies Story to life outside of design, such as doctors creating a connection with a patient by giving them an illustration for their prognosis. Actually thinking about it, some of the products I purchase have a story.  My shampoos describe a beautiful Mediterranean getaway, some of my clothes are endorsed my celebrities I admire, my makeup products come with a taglines about being confident and easy, breezy, beautiful. 

I think that Pink has something going here. Out of all the phones I could buy, would I want a sofa with a nice pattern on it, or one that also doubles as a pull-out bed? Would I prefer a notebook made in China, or one constructed out of recycled material by a company promoting going green? Would I want a lamp that is turned on with a knob or merely touched? How about even a light that has different settings, that can change from fluorescent, to black light, to disco light?  Story, multi-functional, simple. These are some of my own senses that I look for in design. How about you?

Inspired.

Things in Life:

Traditional and Graphic Art:

Editorial Design:

Photography:

my kind of design.

we were assigned to document 10 items which design we appreciate enough that we would bring them first in case there was a fire. however, i thought that that applied more to my emotional attachment to the object and the fact that i need the object to survive rather than the good design of the object. so, here are 10 things that i never leave my room without:

Right Brain-ing It

Daniel Pink is positive- the world will soon rest in the hands (or more appropriately minds) of today's right-brainers. In his book "A Whole New Mind," Pink defines the left brain as the center of logic and information, and the right brain as the complex of emotion and reasoning that puts information in context. It is inevitable that these two sides of the brain must work together in some form for significant output, but how is our society end up being currently left-brained, as Pink puts it? He reasons that the world has gone through several ages which have fixed us in our current state. It began with the agriculture age, where surviving and maintaing land was essential to life. Once land was posessed, we began refining our essential items to make a better living for ourselves, which brought around the industrial age. More recently, we have locked ourselves in an age of information, where, especially concerning the widespread use of the computer, we are thirsting for easily disposable information because it is accesible to us. Although the web is an amazing way of communicating and finding a common ground for the diversities of our world, information has nearly maxed out.

Pink determines that there are three factors that will consume this overload of information and make it mandatory for the rest of us to become creative thinkers: Abundance, Asia, and Automation. Abundance- there are so many various forms and styles of our products today, that it is becoming essential to incorporate more of an emotional or mental connection to the consumer to want your product out of the hundreds available. Asia- there are many phenomenal left brain thinkers in this world, all needed for the same tasks; Pink observes that persons from the middle east and asia who have these brains but lack our well-off lifestyle will be swallowing up the left-brain jobs because they will work for less since it actually is more for them. Machines are being trained to fufill the logic our brains sort. For example, in the 1900s the leading undefeated chess player Garry Kasparov was outwitted by a computer.

Since our success in informational thinking is beign overtaken by these factors, Pink reasons that our society requires a shift into creative thinking to problem solve our way to uphold our individual success. Yet how are we to do so? Pink has laided out six "senses" which he will discuss in the next section of his book: design, story, symphony, empathy, play, and meaning. I will discuss these as soon as I am done reading the section!

Shared Ideas

This past week I shifted focus to extend my involvement in the design world by become familiar with individual designers in the field right now.  Two websites that are really helpful in finding these people are Pop!Tech and TED Talks.  Both of these organizations find individuals from any kind of profession who have captivating ideas; The organization just gives them a time frame and records them talking about whatever interests them.

Here are some of my finds from each website:

TED Talks-

Tony Robbins' discussion inspired me the most.  He discussed what makes the difference in the quality of people's lives, reasoning that the determining factor is not the possession or lack of resources but the resourcefulness of the individual.  He categorizes the human's desires into 6 basic needs: Certainty, Uncertainty, Significance, Connection/Love, Growth and Contribution Beyond Ourselves.  

Clifford Stoll's "18 Minutes with an Agile Mind" discussion was a frantic thought-driven dialogue.  Stoll seemed like he had a lot of cool things to share, but he had trouble sticking to one point which took away from his speaking.  He mentioned that to find out the future, we shouldn't ask the brilliant people of our time, but the kindergarten teachers who are constantly watching our future generations develop, I thought that was an interesting point.  He ended his presentation with a brief experiment that measured the speed of sound.

Beau Lotto had a really clever, interactive discussion about how optical illusions reveal how the mind and our sight work in interpreting colors and light.  I thought that his topic was really amazing; he decoded how our brain learns images and colors that can trick us to think we see something else because it would normally make sense. "The brain didn't evolve to see the world the way it is, but the way it is useful to see, continually redefining what is normal."

Pop!Tech-

In his short talk "Slow," Carl Honore commented on how so many people are focused on doing things as quickly as humanly possible and that we should shift gears to perform as well as possible rather than as fast as possible.

Davy Rothbart spoke about his magazine "Found" which is comprised of objects and text that were left or forgotten and then found by someone who submitted to the magazine.  I think that this continual art form is a really cool idea and i'm inspired to make my own collection! Check out the magazine's website here.

Choreographer Elizabeth Streb introduced her new form of movement art, which doesn't limit the dancer to gravity and instead uses the whole body to make physical relationships to the three possible reference points-earth, water and air.

Done Good.

The rest of Berman's "Do Good" contains instructions and suggestions on how to bring about the improvement Berman is so adamantly stressing for our future.  He recommends methods and materials for producing the least wasteful items and being able to truthfully communicate them accordingly.  For companies that have already been sucked into the hole of deceit, Berman suggests that they begin developing alternative products under their brand name to keep their business going as they start weaning themselves off of the unhealthy product.  He concludes the book with what he refers to as "the do good pledge."  This pledge calls for an immediate shift in one's own:

Ethics - "I will be true to my profession."

Principles - "I will be true to myself."

Effort - "I will spend at lease 10% of my professional time helping repair the world."

This applies to not just designers, but any professional in the world.

If we all make an effort, only good can come from our working together.

I really enjoyed Berman's book; I learned so much about the mask that is put on everything and anything to make it appealing to consumers.  Think about grocery stores shelves- those tricky chip bags that are filled with air, appearing to contain double the amount of chips we are usually disappointed to discover.  And it doesn't necessarily stop at product advertising.  Look at today's fashions- high waisted skirts to elongate legs and push-up bras to create the illusion of fuller breasts.  Our society is centered on illusion.  Even if we are unaware that we are contributing to this mass facade, we each can be guilty of falsely promoting ourselves.

The only thing that I didn't necessarily appreciate about Berman's book is the voice he used.  He constantly spoke with a pushy, ordering voice that irked me a little bit; Who likes to be told what to do?  Yet it makes sense that Berman would choose to use this way of speaking.  The change he is asking for is on such a big scale that polite suggestions and pleading might not cut it.  For me, his message certainly overpowered the way he spoke.  In fact, I was most inspired by his little "Shopping Tips for Agents of Social Change" speil (pg 145), which began with the command, "Have a personal mission. Rethink."  I hope that this book will find its way around the United States and that the majority of its readers will find some insight and compassion within themselves to take Berman's message to heart and try to help reintroduce truth and goodness to our society.

Doing Good vs. Doing Good Design

Only having only read half of David Berman's "Do Good," I already feel a little appalled and disgusted by the manipulative and excessive advertisement in our world today.  In his book, Berman provides an in depth revealing of how ads (of the past and the present) can be and are constructed to alter a person's thoughts and habits, becoming a true "weapon of mass deception."

Berman begins by making the reader aware of the potential power and responsibility that lies in the hands of a designer, and introduces his hope that those with the power to influence the future will "do good" with their design to help steer our nation's future in a healthier direction.  He discusses some of his personal experiences that influenced his decision to follow this path, including his wife's disgust at how the female figure was exploited for products having nothing to do with the body or its sexuality, and his daughter's concern that she will not live a happy life due to her not consuming a product that was stated to provide all with such.

Several of Berman's observations similarly opened my eyes to the ridiculousness that advertising has pursued.  Continuing from his wife's complaint about overused sexuality, Berman criticizes the unnecessary exploitation of sexuality for the sake of selling products.  Take, for example, Guess Jeans, who's advertisments have been known for evoking a desire for something unrelated to the product.

    This image is a magazine advertisment for their jeans, yet we can barely see the product in the picture! Even their recent commercials focus more on sexual acts than their jeans.  

A brand logo that we all "know and love" is Coca Cola.  As soon as you read the name, I'm sure your thoughts immediately jumped to curvy white script upon a red background.  This is because the brand's extensive use of advertising combined with a classic, familiar logo has proved most successful.  Compare the minimal change that the Coca Cola logo has undergone compared to that of Pepsi:  

Cola has reproduced its logo out to cover the entire globe, plastered on surfaces of places where the product's existence is barely relative to the life which surrounds it.  Check out this sign for the cola, which is hanging upon a stand in the middle of a Tanzanian market place. 

 In an American marketplace, this would be more appropriate.  Yet how can it be appropriate to advertise in poverty-filled Tanzania, where, as Berman states, "the price of a bottle of Coke is about the same as the price of [the more needed] anti malaria pill"?  It's disappointing to think that customer recognition is so essential to the success of this product that it must be rubbed in the faces of those who can't even afford it.

Last but certainly not least, in flipping through the remaining pages of "Do Good", I glimpsed a sneak peek of the end of the book and happened upon an advertisement that revolted me most of all:

  This mug advertises a Toronto plastic surgery company by immediately labeling the consumer as imperfect. Think about how terribly effective this design is.  The targets of this ad: those with low self esteem or insecurities about their appearance.  For those people, the impact of dissatisfaction is immediate.  If a ridiculous mug like this could make the consumer feel badly about themselves, think of the harm that a world full of of equally successful design could do.  Do we really want to enable an environment for the future generations that is so willing and so easily able to be able to play on the insecurities of others for business' sake?

True, in order for a product to be successful, there must be some connection between the consumer and the product, which is usually personal.  And true, a plastic surgery company only has only so many things it is trying to sell and can advertise.

Yet as aware designers, this now leaves us, more than ever, to make a choice.  Now that we are aware of the potential harm of our skills, can we follow a path to avoid turning our society down a wrong turn? For example, if you were offered an amazing job at Marlboro, could you design for them knowing that their product kills thousands of people each year?  Will we ever be able to reach a point when doing good will be enough, rather than simply doing good design?