Video Blog Bill Moggridge: What Is Design?

Bill Moggridge: What Is Design?

In his video Bill explores the nature of design in everyday life and in society. Since nearly everything in the world is man-made, nearly everything in the world is designed and with these designs, Bill talks about how bad designs are needed in order to show us which designs are the best. In his video Bill Moggridge shows us examples of both bad and good designs. He states that in the design process of a product there is still a big separation between the design of the product and of the applications that are used in conjunction with that product, that is why most of your bad designs today are connected to technology.

In this video Bill talks about the key aspects of the design process and says that if you have a sophisticated understanding of how people think, their needs and desires and have a sophisticated way of building prototypes then you are most likely to succeed in the design process. Good innovation is achieved when you conduct qualitative research in order to understand and interpret what people want and need. When you understand the needs of society, you are then able to design your product from a business perspective and the combination of both these aspects will greatly increase your chances of success on the market. The design process is always important when thinking about a new project and although Bill states that the main aspects of the process are prototypes and the understanding of how people interact with the product, constant evaluation is also important. The design process is not a set list of instructions that you have to follow when designing a product. Depending on your design brief and the constraints of your design, the design process might change as the constant evaluation will force you to look over your mistakes and make you start again.

Another important point made in this video is that when you are designing a product you should always consider every aspect of the design and not just those aspects which relate to yourself. For example, designers who are left handed, wouldn't design a handheld tool that can only be used for left handers, but would consider every aspect of the target market, e.g. left vs right, big vs small, old vs young, strength vs weak, and then would change his design accordingly.