Lamenting about good design

How can we rethink the concept of “good ” into something “better”?

I had been writing about design for quite a while now, but the topic of good design is bothering me.

Here’s my problem with it.

10.

On one hand, I feel disqualified to speak about the topic, as I wouldn’t think of myself as someone who has seen it all and therefore can have a clear conscience of knowing which designs are good.

On the other hand, good design can be such a casual statement, almost similar to someone saying they had a good day or good morning without really thinking if the day was really good.

9.

Someone did say “good design is invisible.” Jared Spool may have come up with this idea, using air conditioning as an example to show the invisibility of design. “Until it fails,” said Bruce Mau in his book, Massive Change. “Perhaps it’s all the thought that goes into the things we don’t think about,” claims Romans Mars, creator of the podcast, 99% invisible, which got its name from a quote by Buckminster Fuller, “Ninety-nine percent of who you are is invisible and untouchable.”

At the same time, a good design wants to be recognised, so much so that 50,000 items have received the prestigious Good Design Award. And that is without counting the rest of the other awards with “good design” in them.

8.

To win a good award design, a stringent evaluation criteria is put in place. This usually comes with a panel of established design juries reviewing the design submission. And from their critique arise the recognition of design excellence, worthy of an award.

However, shouldn’t the general user have the final say over the experience? For a user to be a user, the user must use the design. Only by using could there be a response whether the design is useful. It challenges the notion of design jury, which may judge good design based on how designerly it could be.

7.

But let’s not accept usage as the default answer for good design either. If design is universal, then anything can be designed. So how would the design of recreational drugs or gambling slot cabinets be judged? No doubt there can be repeated usage, but wouldn’t this usage lead to poorer health and wellbeing over time? Alas, even usage can’t be used as a yardstick of good design for any object.

While usage is based on an objective set of actions, there are elements of good design that is highly subjective. Consider the same person using the same design across time. Yes, we may capture a “good” association of the design at the very same instance, but the next few days, that same consistent standard may falter due to a higher understanding of the product, or a situation that causes us to rethink the solution. Or when there is influence when more opinions from other people come in. All it takes is a set of highly (paid) person’s opinion to steer a good design to nothing, which is an irony because while the design object has remained the same, the people interacting with the object has updated their viewpoint, for good or bad.

6.

If so, surely, we can form a category of design known as good design, bad design? We could run a poll across a population of people and find out the average results whether a design is indeed good or bad. After all, even design critics, such as Alice Rawsthorn, urge us to stop praising good design and start talking about the bad design.

The extremes are recognisable. When two objects of the same category, such as a standard mass-produced pot and a beautifully handcrafted pot, we are quick to judge which is good and bad. What if I ask you to expand your vocabulary, just like how Jim Collins describes a company brand (or design) from being “good” to “great”? Similarly, there can be bad design, and there can be a more severe label like “disastrous” or "deceptive.”

5.

However, maybe there is just an absence of “good." A classic analogy talks about how the opposite of illumination is darkness, but the reality is that there is an absence of light. When you apply the same logic, you could recognise that there could be “good design” or “bad design," or there could be just “design." At this point, I am also reluctant to even use the word "just design," because design comes with an intent and a purpose. Could what we create even be considered design if there is no intention?

What then is design?

4.

Due to its very long history, different groups perceive design differently depending on which era they’re from. To some, it could have an artistic angle; hence, beautiful objects from a maker could be seen as design. To others, it could be the advancement of how things work and are used from an engineering angle, hence useful objects could be seen as design. Or from the entrepreneurial angle, hence objects with commercial success through consumer purchase could be seen as design. Or from the human angle, hence empathetic objects could be seen as design.

But the reality is that it is hard to put a mark on what is design. Again from Alice Rawsthorn, “Every word with a long history is redefined over time, reflecting anything from the prevailing attitudes of particular eras and commercial opportunism to unexpected catastrophes, but few words have ended up being as ambiguous as ‘design’. The more meanings it has acquired, the slipperier and more elusive it has become, not least because so many of its newer interpretations sit oddly with older ones.”

3.

Perhaps we need to shift our perception of both “good” and “design”. Just as how world events like climate change, new technologies and different democracies evolve our current choices we make, the same goes with how we determine the goodness of the design we make.

Without oversimplifying, relativity is an important concept in this piece. In physics, it means time, space and motion can change depending on the observer’s frame of reference. For example, someone moving at a high velocity (close to the speed of light) will age slower and see distances shrink compared to someone standing still. In fact, there’s no stationary position in the universe; everything is moving relative to something else.

If so, then we can admit that “good design” is indeed stationary, static and therefore stagnant. This perhaps leads us to use another phrase, “better design” is more suited to show progression and constant positive movement.

2.

Creator of the 10 principles of good design, Dieter Rams, received the iF design lifetime achievement award in 2024. At age 92, very few can dispute the design influence he currently has over many designers. Yet, this was the advice he gave to designers when receiving the award, “Design can help turn the world into a better world. This, I believe.”

Better design does not settle but seeks to continue to find ways to further improve itself. It don’t only target the person using the design but caters wholly to the people around it and also to those who don’t have it. Because designing for a better world means going beyond a self-fulfilling desire. It goes into a community-inspired, soul-seeking, and socially conscious effort of making design a little more real each day. It’s about impacting the 99% of people invisibly, but starting with the first 1% that really needs design. That is about 600 million people as a starter. For them to have the basic human needs the rest of us have.

And a special note for wealthy individuals. As of 2023, there are 2,640 billionaires in the world. And a billion is a way higher number than a million. Here’s some perspective: a million seconds is about 11 and a half days, but a billion seconds is over 31 years. So even if a billionaire parts ways with millions (or billions) of their fortune, there is still a good chance they would easily live comfortably at any given point. This is also the reason why certain wealthy individuals practice philantrophy or effective altruism. You could say that is better design, because such funds when used properly would lead to betterment.

1.

Good is relative. To the high net worth individual and to a rural villager, the definition of good significantly varies. Let’s pick the topic of mobility. To the rich, owning a white elephant is better than not having one in the first place, and so buying plenty of cars of different brands is what determines to be “good.” To the frugal, being able to walk to a destination is “good” enough. But both groups will agree to a shift with “better” experience with design.

Better design brings experience up a notch when needs are met. It provides a proactive solution through empathetic listening from the direct users, but brings a feasible, delightful, and commercially viable design to the people that need it the most. Once the design meets the needs and becomes “good” enough, “better” design acts as a bridge to invite people to participate at the next level. Coincidentally, this is how design goes from being “good” to "great" by creating a movement for people to make their next move.

0.

I think the time for good design is over where we are satisfied with the status quo. We may want to feel accomplished with our greatest design achievement, but even the universe doesn’t stop in motion. As a famous innovator once said, don’t settle. At least for me, I am keen on looking and designing for better.

References

Collins, J. (2001). Good to Great. Random House.

Horn, R. (2022, April 28). Designers need to stop Praising Good Design and Start Talking about the Bad Design — DesignSingapore Council. DesignSingapore Council. https://designsingapore.org/stories/designers-need-to-stop-praising-good-design-and-start-talking-about-the-bad-design/

Mau, B., Leonard, J., & Institute Without Boundaries. (2004). Massive Change. London : Phaidon.

Rawsthorn, A. (2014). Hello World. Abrams.