Just watched “Objectified”; if you care about design in the least, you absolutely must see this film, there are no excuses. It’s really quite wonderful I think. So after watching the film I watched the extra bits on the disc, and it was all these cut scenes with designers talking about all sorts of wonderful stuff. I think some of these bits were better than anything actually in the film itself. And it got me thinking about the future of the world.
Designers have an ever increasing influence on our lives. As the number of things we come into contact on a daily basis that weren’t designed by a person shrinks to a minuscule number, the number of times a designed object has an interaction with us, which is to say, the number of times a designer’s perspective interacts with us goes up, which provides a higher likely hood that we will be influenced by that perspective. We see this everywhere in the way that out attitudes about ourselves are deeply rooted in our relationships with our objects.
As designers are becoming aware of the influence they have, some have started to show a great deal of responsibility. An ever increasing number of companies are working with designers that understand the influence their designs can have and choose to try and make peoples’ lives’s better rather than worse. These designers go through great lengths to make a product as good as it can be. A huge part of this is getting as much feedback from consumers as possible. The companies that have the widest and most loyal customer bases are those that design their products knowing that the product’s success, so ultimately the company’s success, is dependent upon more than how many are sold. There is a relationship between that product and that company, between that product and that consumer, and so also between that company and that consumer. Because of this, the success of that company is ultimately in the hands of that consumer, and that relationship is about how that Consumer thinks that company treated him/her. Did that company deliver a product that met the needs of that consumer? If not, then the relationship is effected negatively and in danger of being severed. The companies practicing good design understand this and that is why we love their products and their brands and their commercials and that is why we buy the things they make.
They understand us and so their products do what we want them to do, sometimes in a way we didn’t even know we wanted. They understand us because they study us, they ask us questions, they look at the products that sell and those that don’t and they get to the bottom of why certain products are successful and why some are not. And they keep pushing and pushing and pushing, going back to the drawing board again and again till they get it right.
And it struck me how these are the people I want running my country! I want people who are always trying to get the bottom of a problem, trying to understand its every complexity, and then the solutions, and not just the solution, but the best solution for the intended audience. They know how to think like their consumer because they have done their homework . And they are consumed by the need to make something that their consumer wants to own. But not just to own, but to take part in, to buy into, to sign up for. We want to belong, and we need someone who knows how to make us feel like we belong. And when we feel like we belong, our lives will be better.
How do we make our government into a product that people will want to buy? How can we make it a commodity that can be bought or sold?
