On Design Versus Customization
I saw three panels yesterday that all touched on the definition of design–always a tricky subject. Whether by design or simply because the ideas are in the ether, they complimented each other in a very pleasant way.
The first panel was Jared Spool’s “Magic and Mental Models: Using Illusion to Simplify Designs”. Spool has no angst about the meaning of design; his focus was on ways to keep the user engaged, and, in his words, “delighted.” The second was the panel “Designing for Freedom,” in which Anil Dash, Brent Simmons, Braden Kowitz, Michael Lopp and David Warner outlined various formulas for creating designs that allow for (or can simply withstand) user customization.
The final panel, the one that brought it all together, was “Does Tomorrow’s World Need Designers?” It seems like a reasonable question, what with the ever-growing trend of product customization and crowdsourcing design, that in the end a professional designer might well be a redundant field.
There were a few different opinions: David Merkoski’s final word was that a world without designers was something the average brain can’t yet conceive–but it might happen–in fact, “right now there is too much design, and too many problems being solved.” Alonzo Canada’s view was simply that anybody can be a designer, and so the design profession would simply be absorbed by the creative, technologically empowered public. Johanna Blakley went so far as to say that “everybody has the ability to make what they need.” With all the evidence at hand, is the design profession endangered?
It’s clear that one can only seriously consider the question if “design” and “customization” are used simultaneously, and indeed they were throughout the panel. But there’s a clear difference: just because things are customizable doesn’t mean they weren’t designed first. I can picked out the colors of my Nikes, request extra pockets on my courier bag, or even make my own scarf/table/house, but in every case I’ll be working off designs someone else created. In fact, “Designing for Freedom” specifically dealt with the problems of user customization: how much freedom should users get? do you give them a limited set of colors? Constrain their options in other ways? Or just let things be a free-for-all, MySpace-style?
In a similar vein, most of the crafty, small-production amateur work one sees on Etsy and at craft fairs is not so much designed as simply decorated; fun, and often beautiful, but mostly the customization of familiar products. It’s a subtle distinction sometimes: compare these printed tea cozies or, more famously, user-submitted t-shirt illustrations with Lorena Barrezueta’s beautiful and clever series of ceramic pots and pans.. The former are simply pre-designed blank spaces for illustrations and decorations; the latter was a designed composite of a familiar object and an unlikely material. So much for “everyone being able to design anything.” And in the case of the hobbyist gadgeteer (like the MAKE crew), large-scale adoption will simply open more doors for interested designer partnerships.
The internet is partly to blame for the blurred lines between professional design and user personalization. I routinely say I “designed” this blog, but it’s understood that I didn’t design the whole thing so much as tweak the components Wordpress gave me. The most accurate description is that I customized my blog. In casual conversation, this distinction is unnecessary–but when there is so much confusion about designing a thing versus customizing a thing that the very profession of design is called into question, it’s time to start being as specific as possible.
As Jared Spool touched on in his panel, designers will always be necessary to create those things that are “delightful”–those things that Spool cautions are soon familiar, and eventually expected. And then, of course, users and consumers will customize on top of those great designs. In other words: rest easy, designers: you’re still needed.
—Timoni
