Compared to other well-established fields, it seems that the web industry is still working through its definition of “good design.” Still, design thinking in the web world is built on the fundamentals, and necessarily borrows from older disciplines. The concept of user-centered design, so revolutionary in the tech world, has long been the foundation of of design in other fields–from writing, to product engineering, to architecture.
I was reminded of this watching Helvetica director Gary Hustwit’s film Objectified the other night. Hearing a diverse group of product designers talk about their approach and ideologies, one suspects that there’s very little difference between the concepts that drive great product design and those that drive great interaction/software design–only the execution and subject matter differ.
Nobody in the film drew out this connection so much as Dieter Rams, Braun’s old product designer, famous for his minimalist, cold-war modern style. His ten principles of good design are well known, but I think they’re worth repeating:
* Good design is innovative
* Good design makes a product useful
* Good design is aesthetic
* Good design helps us to understand a product
* Good design is unobtrusive
* Good design is honest
* Good design is durable
* Good design is consequent to the last detail
* Good design is concerned with the environment
* Good design is as little design as possible
Sound familiar? Sounds to me like everything I read on every visual and interaction design blog out there. It’s enduring, cross-discipline advice.
Of course, I’m not the only person who appreciates the timelessness of Ram’s sensibilities. If you haven’t done so already, compare this picture of Apple’s iMac (top) to Ram’s LE1 speaker (bottom, from 1960):
I did a little research after writing this post, and found more juicy nuggets that reveal similarities between Apple and Rams’ products. For instance…
