I’m a fan of bad design.  This is the most important thing that I have learned coming out of my Interaction Design course this past quarter at the UW MCDM.  You must be thinking: what?  Well, maybe a more accurate summation would be that I was a fan of bad design, but I didn’t even know it.  I’ve subconsciously felt an aura of empowerment in being able to decipher and analyze poorly designed delivery modicums.  I think so much of this has to do with developing that deciphering and analyzing habit from a young age by growing up with technologies like video games and the Internet since their basic arrivals on the scene.  I am a child of the 80s, and the kinds of design considerations that go in to the making of websites, social media tools, games, and other media today are so far removed from the functionality requirements of the past.  Before, things were all about simply being able to accomplish the task (buy something online, for example) or enjoy the thrill of a thing for the very first time (shoot-up Nazis in Wolfenstein 3D) that dressing things up in aesthetically pleasing and logical ways was a little less important, I’d imagine.

In some ways this is because the technology or know-how didn’t exist yet.  Now we can have simple, good-looking, practical designs with more powerful technology and the forward thinking of personalities like Donald Norman or John Maeda.  Intellects such as these and others have helped me to see why I love bad design, and why that needs to change.  No longer can I marry my mind to the so-called “amatuer aesthetic” or “underground web culture”.  In one class we discussed the design of craigslist.  Despite its archaic design, craigslist remains hugely successful.  Granted, most of that success has to do with what the service provides, but while others push forward with buzzwords like “web 2.0″ people still come to craigslist.  I think a part of that has to do with familiarity – just as I got used to bad design, repeat users accept the design of craigslist because it’s “what they know”.  Just as Donald Norman essentially points out, we so blithely accept bad design that we fail to see how much better things could be.  This class has helped me to see how much better the things I design in my professional life could be.

Whether I was being asked to consider the concept of intuition in the interaction design of something like IDEO’s Project Inkwell, or examine the lazy design considerations of Seattle’s new parking meters, or think about the impact branding has on products and how web memes are a form of branding, all of these things have pushed me to consider simplicity.  The more concise a message, the more efficacious.  The more intuitive the delivery of that message, the more approachable it becomes.  People have short attention spans – can the design of your game console or lolcat or website capture that attention quickly?  These are just some of the things I previously never considered.  But, what I didn’t realize is that the principles of good design were intuitive and instinctual, and I “knew” them without knowing them.  So, in a way, I want back all that long-attention span time wasted from my early days coming in to interactive technologies.  It’s regrettable the amount of effort we put in to certain tasks that could be accomplished so much more swiftly and simply.  As I move forward in producing New Media, I will take in to account the principles of simple, good design I’ve learned from this class.

For example, right now I can apply the principle of being concise.  In the past, my entries for this class have been overly wordy, clocking in sometimes at 1300 or more words when all that was asked for was 500.  Well, that’s over with!  How about 647? Ta-da!

References

Maeda, J. (2006). The laws of simplicity. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Retrieved from WorldCat

Norman, D. A. (1998). The design of everyday things. London: MIT. Retrieved from WorldCat

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