“There’s something beautiful about the the way it works”

Artful Design Reflection #1

5 min readSep 21, 2020

I dabbled in human-centered design in the last eight years, and this quote really puts me thinking what’s the relationship of function and form, and how that connect with people.

My training on “function” all come from my education in HCD.

I first encountered HCD when learning about a project called Jerry the Bear. Via interviews, designers found out that the kids with diabetics need friendship more than anything in their lonely journey of dealing with this illness, and then they came up with a wonderful toy product. Such a cool and non-obvious insight(at least at the time)! Later on at a need-finding class at Stanford, I learned about the term called “seeing the water” which explains what user research is about.

It’s as below.

Two little fish were swimming.

They met an old fish.

The old fish said, hey kids, how’s the water today?

The little fish look and each other, confused, and said, what’s water?

The beauty, or meaning, of research is to find out the non-obvious norm that we live in. And once you know your water, you can jump outside, dive deeper, add color dye, or just change in many different possible ways.

Human-centered design is all about research.

Observation is research.

Brainstorming is research.

Rapid prototyping is research too!

Yes, human is very complicated and conflicted. If you are trying to collect user feedback and just ask people how they feel, most likely they can’t accurately explain how they really feel. Not because they want to lie to you, but because they don’t know. And their feelings and thoughts also constantly change.

By prototyping a lo-fidelity, “ugly” solution, and putting it in front of users, they can react to it, and their reaction reflects how they really feel.

Company doesn’t want to spend time on research. Just look at why design thinking is so popular in companies. People are willing to pay for thousands of dollars for a three day workshop (i.e. at the Stanford d.school). Design thinking is a fast way of research. It’s a “sexy” way of research.

You can’t use the word “research”, because it might make things sound dull and time consuming. But design thinking in nature is a way to explore complex problem, aka, research.

BUT BUT..

Design thinking isn’t the way to solve everything. It doesn’t really touch upon form or aesthetics.

But I would argue that aesthetics is human-centered. Just like this quote says.

“There’s something beautiful about the the way it works”

Humans are attracted to beautiful things. Humans are emotional. Designing something for emotion is powerful and impactful.

I did chat with my professors on this topic before. The worry is that if you focus too much on form, you loose the big picture. You get too stubborn. You get in love with your solutions while you might not be even tackling the right problem. Form is craftsmanship. It is detail oriented. It’s time consuming. It requires patience and persistence.

But can form creation be more flexible?

Is craftsmanship still craftsmanship is artists aren’t holding strong points of view and being stubborn?

Can we apply design thinking to form creation?

We all know that to have the best of the both world is to have both function and form. But can a designer accomplish both? How to keep the balance?

Unsure at the moment, but something to keep thinking about and explore.

ETUDE

Three things that I find beautifully designed at home:

Airpods serves many of my common use cases:

Great for workout because it doesn’t fall off or get sweaty
Wireless so it doesn’t entangle with my clothes.
Hidden, so at work, people don’t know I’m listening to music
Fits nicely so it doesn’t hurt my ears. Some rubber ones squeeze in my ears and they are very uncomfortable

Airpods look very clean and elegant. Egomaniacally, you can grab it in hand and it fits nicely. The clipping sounds when you put the pods back in, and when you close the case are very satisfying. You can also decorate them anyway you want! Mine is dressed in a little gameboy suit!

The pan holder is very useful for the big household I live in. We have so many pans and don’t have a ton of storage place to store them and dry them. By hanging them up, it perfectly utilizes a space we are not using, while providing convenience of easy retrieving, drying and storing. It really help you to quickly choose the size of the pan you need for the amount of food you are cooking.

And aesthetics-wise, it just looks so cool. It looks as if we are a house of excellent chefs, those who have a ton of cooking equipments. The pans are all spaced out and parallel to each other so they look fairly organized!

This couch is extremely soft and comfortable. It allows you to sit with your feet on the ground or stretching out on the couch. It’s great for napping and working! You can quickly re-arrange the cushions based on your preference.

The color and shape fits nicely with the blue wall, and it lights up the living room, creating a warm and comfy feeling.

GUERRILLA DESIGN

I live in a big house with a bunch of friends. We have a huge garden where we planted some tomatoes. When I walk out of the house and go to the garden to water tomatoes, I normally need to take a zig-zag route to get out of the corridor. It would be so much easier if I walk in a straight line towards the tomatoes. So my design is to make a little slide that I can slide down from the corridor into the garden. That will make the garden trip a fun activity. It will also add more playfulness to the overall garden aesthetics. If we ever have children or friends over, they can also play with the slide!