Yves Behar: Creating objects that tell stories

Just a eighteen minutes's talk, but do really enlarge my world. What Yves Bhear showed were amazing to me. Considering "value" is how we creat things and design things. Yves said that design is the glue of different values: value for business,users ,functions and beauty etc. I think this is saying that the results, or the objects we design out influence greatly on the subjects of value, so we have to consider and dig up what the value is before we design.

Returning to the products that Yves showed in the talk, we can learn more about what is "value" and how it affects design.

Firstly, the watch for Mini cooper company that the time displays both horizontally and vertically gave users a fresh new feelings when seeing time. The transformable furniture also created new experience for users. The value of the above two products are the new experience achieved by functionality.

Taking other examples, the leaf lamp and the Jawbone headphone, I can see passion in the design. There are humanities in the designs, there are values that users and companies can see, there are beauty and new conversations, and I think these are the stories that the objects tell.

The next three products, the Why water, the OL laotop, and the NYC condom involved the process of designing with original ideas. They all begin with "why". Why they were created and why they are loved by users. Begining with these points, Yves explored the circumstances and created things that not only solved the problems but also brought soul to the products and the companies. He kept the value of the work in hands.

"Designing objects that tell stories", I think this is a new way of thinking design and exploing the possibility of what we can design. Considering the value of various subjects, the relationship of the work and the world will really asist us in solving a design problem. Moreover, we may discover some more ideas and creat new stories for our products.

Yves Behar: Creating objects that tell stories

7sketches of Exhibition products

Good design : Grael

The Grael is a helpful medical device that can diagnose users' sleep disorder. It is good for the patient, nurse and also physician. In terms of its design, It is neat and instructive. The control map that in grey on the top can provide guidence to the patients. The wide and flat face also give sufficient space for the sensors. With the four round corners and curved tail, the body looks soft and delightful. Its cradle offers a perfect angle, making it robust and easy to hold.

What I see from this task is that different products have different focus when designed. For medical device, It is important to make it informative and pleasant. Moreover, functionality not only can improved by technology, but also can be enhanced by design of appearance.

Don Norman: Emotional design

Don Norman's talk was really interesting. The main idea in the talk was emotional design, which I can also see from the way he conducted the talk. Don's humour delighted the audiences and made the talk work better. That was same in design, pleasant things work better.

Design is not only about beauty and functions. Taking the example that Don used in the talk, the Mini cooper，which was loved by many people for its funny shape and experiencei inside. People felt happy when using it, and some technical drawbacks were minimized because people were enjoying more fun. I think it's a really good design combining beauty with emotions.

Don also indicated that there were three levels of design. Firstly, the visceral level. This was designing with the common feeling when most people saw things. For example, most of the people in this world disliked enviormental disaters, so people designed things to avoid disaters. The second level was the behavioral level. As its name, it was about people's acting. Don had an insight of behaviors. He said behaviors were about feeling in control. As for me, many behaviors were came without notice, and sometimes we even did not know what we were acting. However, design at this level was to figure out what these small unnoticed behaviors were and designed considering them. The last level was reflective level, as Don stated, it was the voice in our head. And I thought it was a really emotional level. And it was to make people happy and enjoyable about design. At this level, there were stories behind the design. And the stories were people's special feelings and desires, which became to the reasons of purchasing the products.

Don's three levels of design is really helpful for industrial designers. It is good for products' development because we think more about human's feelings and adapt products to satisfy people's minds.

Don Norman: Emotional design