Monday, 26 September 2011

Bill Moggridge - What is Design?

In Bill Moggridge’s talk at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, he talks about ‘what is design?’
At first he talked about the National design awards won throughout the different disciplines of design, and then showed us a clip of Michelle Obama congratulating all the recipients of those awards, but as well as congratulating the award winners, she also spent a bit of time talking about the education of design for young people, and how the U.S government plans to contribute to bridging the gap between a design education and young people who feel unable to have such an education.
Bill Moggridge then goes on to talk about the different design disciplines and how they have changed through the influences of Computer Aided Design, now architects for example are able to design buildings with so many different shapes and curves that were previously only confined to the imagination of the designer.
Thirdly, Bill Moggridge discusses the use of collaboration between different fields of design and how better communication between all fields involved in a project lead towards better designs. He then says that in order for him to explain to us what design is, he must show us not only what good design is, but also what bad design is. In the example of good design there is a good connection between the visual design aspects, the technical aspects and the idea communication aspects of the product. Whereas, in the example of bad design, there were gaps between the different aspects, sometimes the technical aspects of the design didn’t blend well with the people aspects of the product, for example, not knowing exactly how the intended user would actually interact with the product, thus leading towards a bad design.
Fourthly, Bill Moggridge says that for a successful design process, designers must keep in mind both, people and prototypes. Designers should aim to meet the needs and desires of people, provide a good innovation from a successful marriage of the people aspect, business aspect and technical aspects of design, design for different people, and Learn-Look- Ask- Try. Learn by analysing information that has been collected, Look by observing what people really do (because some people do different things from what they say they do), Ask by gaining information from others and Try by creating prototypes and experiencing what things are like for the intended user.

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