>One only has to look out the window or into one's own room to see where this schizoid preoccupation with function and the look of things has led us: the world is ugly, but it doesn't work well either! >– [[Design for the Real World (1984)|Papanek (1984)]] [^1] >If the form of an object turns out to be ‘beautiful’ it will be thanks to the logic of its construction and to the precision of the solutions found for its various components. >– [[Design as Art – Bruno Munari|Munari (1966)]] The [[§ Design|Design]] you release is represents your aesthetic. Leaving visual design until last, or calling it a nice-to-have, means your aesthetic is unfinished. If you made a table out of wood, and never sanded, chamfered, or turned the wood, then you have a table in name but not in [[The quality which has no name|quality]]. If you engineered a table from pre bought components, aluminum legs, rubber stoppers and a melamine top, then you have functional, *finished* table, of disposable quality. The parallels to these metaphors in Product Design are obvious, and both are valid approaches. But the [[Externalities|consequences exist too and are inescapable.]] There *are* good reasons to not overemphasis deliberate visual design in [[Product Designer|Product Design]], as good product design process creates the right tension between functionality, usability and aesthetics. Functionality should never be obscured by aesthetics,[^2] and functionality should always be in service of usability and [[Aesthetic-Usability Effect|usability can be enhanced]] by considerate visual design. However [[Fashionable interfaces will age]], this shouldn’t stop aesthetic design, but this tendency must be considered. Considering visual design [[Atomic Design|at the atomic level]] removes the costly approach of leaving aesthetic considerations until the work is nearly done. ## Discounting one part of the whole design creates dead patterns When people ask for ‘an area’ of a design to be shortcut, removed, quickened. They are asking for some small part of ‘a whole’ to not be considered. But we can’t have a world like that, form follows function, but the work we put into the world must be full of positive, self sustaining patterns which give life to the patterns that surround it. That resolve the tensions, and calm us. If you ask the chair maker to not bother sanding, finishing, oiling the wood, leave it as the rump, the function only. Then soon the chair will react to the air, the damp, the roughness will stop people using it, the item will not develop patina, but an aura of danger, strangeness. It eventually will be untreasured, and collapse under its own mistreatment. In digital spaces we see shortcutted software, with bugs and usability gaps that go far beyond a threshold of acceptability. They mock the user, sending a small stress signal each time the frustration occurs. The pattern does not resolve. The person grows to hate the product, talk badly about it. If this is software for work, it becomes part of the landscape of [[Alienation]] they live with, it becomes part of the rough texture of dissatisfaction of their lives. They go home, annoyed, their family jaded by the familiarity, has to deal with this. The family or community space has been invaded by the unresolved forces. - - - ##### References [^1]: [[Design for the Real World (1984)]] [^2]: [First Principles of Interaction Design (Revised & Expanded) | askTog](https://asktog.com/atc/principles-of-interaction-design/)