Designing from Experience, Not Expertise

vernacular design, which I would define as functional design for ordinary people rooted in a local economy and culture.

I find an interesting parallel here to the ideas James Scott proposes in Seeing Like a State (which we covered back in RE #4): a top-down, central planning-style of design can't effectively predict the diversity of user needs. It turns out, contra to the "expert architect", that the users know best what they need from their space. And often even th... See more

have no training in design, I have only ideas and opinions.

My design approach is rooted in two principals:

1. Things that make sense please me.

2. Things that are beautiful please me.

Sometimes those are the same thing, and sometimes they are not (which can be a source of great displeasure).

Context, problem-solving, gestures, pleasure—these topic... See more

“In design for emergence, the designer assumes that the end-user holds relevant knowledge and gives them extensive control over the design. Rather than designing the end result, we design the user’s experience of designing their own end result.

But at the time, I questioned this approach. Why study semiotics when I could be building a portfolio site? Why pull all-nighters just to endure brutal critiques—tossing the work away and starting over? But the process—thinking, making, critique—proved transformative. The school wasn’t teaching design as ornamentation or styling. Instead, it was an... See more

Design, to take from industrial designer Naoto Fukasawa, is an embodiment of values. And thus products act as a built environment of value assertions. Both by their existence and in the case of many digital technologies - with their every use and app open.