Memories of the 28th Century
Misdesign
by , 12-26-2013 at 04:31 PM (4619 Views)
Sometimes I wonder about designers of various things, including architects, designers of consumer goods, industrial goods, computer software, and so on. I have known for a long time that they seldom use the things designed, so they don’t know how to get things to work correctly. But that’s old news. I am wondering now if it might be a good idea to train people who design things to consider how those things will be used.
I recall having heard that Marcel Breuer said something along the lines of “If people want to use buildings that I design, that’s their problem.” He just designed things that he liked the looks of. Apparently there are two schools of thought on industrial design and architecture: Those who. think that it’s a matter of pure aesthetics, and people who use buildings and things think it’s all about utility, and if something looks nice, so much the better. Unfortunately, the people who do designing of things and buildings are, all too often, in the aesthetics camp.
Then there’s the matter of the designers not knowing what is desired as the end product. This often crops up in computer software, where someone writes up specifications and sends the specs to software writers. The ones who write the software never did whatever is involved and try to write something fits the specs. The code that results may be good enough for Microsoft to send it out, but don’t expect it to work. Microsoft stopped trying to make their software useful years ago, except in so far as it made money for Microsoft, and it appears that people are still buying the foolishness. There should have been good specifications written, but all too often the people who write the specs aren’t all that “hands-on”, so the software fits what the specs say, but the specs were incomplete, and there wasn’t enough communication between the code writers and the client. Even when the specifications are good, they may, and bad specifications probably are, as much of a problem as inept software writers.
It is not rare for marketing people to demand poor design and to sell that to the gullible public. Electric automobiles come to mind as excellent examples of this. Those things cost much more than internal combustion vehicles, and the total operating costs are higher but subsidized, and the pollution from producing electricity for the grid is about the same per vehicle mile as from internal combustion engines, but the cars aren’t the points of emission, so who notices. But the designers love them, and the marketters pass on that enthusiasm. If only steam engines were available now. . .
When we look at other manufactured products, things are dismal. I especially detest shoes since most production moved to China. I sometimes wonder if Chinese have feet that are shaped differently, but even shoes that are made in U.S.A. are not as well designed as in some earlier periods.
One of my original reasons for writing this was my annoyance with the materials wasted in tower buildings. Regardless of the use, towers need to dedicate a rather large part of their cross-sectional area to elevators, stairs, and piping. The exact proportion varies, but usually one eighth of the area has to go toward elevators and similar. If one were to take a similar amount of building materials and build a low build of no more than eight stories, then a much smaller proportion of the floor area would have to be dedicated to stairs and elevators. I won’t go into building structures that are built solely for appearance, but those buildings are obvious. It makes a good argument for dumping central cities.
I realize that builders and manufacturers want to make more sales, but why would anyone buy any more of something that is poorly designed? Wouldn’t it make more sense to design things well, so that they would work? Everyone knows of things and buildings that don’t work well, so I’ll give readers a chance to fume about their favorites. If you can’t think of any poor design, then consider Microsoft Windows and Office, and you can contrast those with Linux and Open Office, software that works.
If you know the exact quote from Breuer, then please let me know.
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