From 2010 and updated 2018 - an overview of design as a function of consumption

1. What Designers Do
John Knight © 2010

2. Products and services define who we are

3. Whether they are intentionally designed or occur by complex happenstances –
everything coming out of human modes of production is designed to some level of
intent

4. Design has a social effect too
‘New York's Long Island highway overpasses were deliberately
designed by Robert Moses so as to be too low to allow passage
beneath them by public buses. This design decision was also a
political decision, and the technical arrangement it put in place
was also a political arrangement….low overpasses effectively
denied poor people and racial minorities…access to the public
park and beaches.’

5. Design often has unforeseen consequences

6. For better or worse – even if we can even anticipate impact

7. The best intentions of utopian designers

8. Can have the worst outcome in the real world

9. Adoption is often unexpected and shaped by unintended use cases

10. The way that products are is not purely design – but highly shaped by consumption

11. Products and services live in an ecosystem

12. The stereotypical designer is a caricature

13. Accounts and company ethos have a big effect on product and service experiences

14. Are we designing for ourselves? Or merely reflecting the enticements of consumption?

15. Or trying to find new combinations
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16. That meet latent needs

17. What are we designing? Images? products? Systems/

18. What we design is often hidden and employs materials that have agency

19. Across many disparate touchpoints and networks

20. Or the whole experience

21. ‘Designers define and assist in producing the best
experiences, from the resources we have available to
fabricate compelling products and services in the here and
now and for the future’
John Knight © 2010