Preface for DO NOT TOUCH It is not easy to write an interesting as well as useful book about the purpose and practice of consumer product design. However it seems to me that Professor Rungtai Lin who was once my student and is now my valued colleague and friend achieves these worthy goals by means of his novel and refreshing technique of incorporating (largely imaginary) conversations between us. The conversations are a pastiche - a sort of “cut-and-paste” the author uses to combine, embellish, clarify and flesh-out our combined years of teaching, work, writings, thoughts and actual conversations on product design. In addition to synthesizing much of our analytical reasoning about design Professor Lin offers his own new thoughts and techniques to the designer. My own natural inclinations supported by my educational and engineering background predispose me to an analytical approach to design. With its large synthetical (some might say - “creative”) component, design lends itself closer to the one-on-one interactive method of instruction using examples rather than to the “equations and diagrams” of the analytical (some might say - “scientific”) method suitable for the one-on-many instructional mode. Synthesis is putting together or forming a whole from parts. Art and design tend to the synthetical. Analysis is taking apart or breaking down a whole into its parts. Science and engineering tend to the analytical. Analyses can be broadly characterized as rational-logical and synthesis as irrational-illogical .These italicized words refer not to mental states or good and bad but rather to the fact that the analytical lends itself to verbalization (written or spoken) in which reasoning through deduction and inference is the foundation while the synthetical, emphasizing the intuitive, does not. Science/engineering can be written about and even (theoretically) learned “from a book”. Art/design is learned largely from examples and practice which are themselves difficult to describe. Analysisand synthesis are not mutually exclusive nor should they be antagonistic. They may live in separate houses but they share a common passageway and facilities. The artist/designer is not exclusively synthetical nor the scientist/engineer exclusively analytical. Albrecht Durer (1471-1528) - a leading German painter and engraver of the Renaissance (14th through the middle of the 17th centuries) - was the essential founder of the modern mathematical study of anthropometry in which the body is defined by measurement and numbers. The artist Cezanne (1839-1906) stressed the structural components latent in nature and analytically broke the body down into canonical geometric shapes in order to synthesize them again in his paintings as human form. The scientist Einstein (1879-1955) synthesized time and space into a space-time continuum in his creation of relativity to provide a powerful new analytic understanding of the universe. For every Mona Lisa there is an E=MC2. No useful endeavor is exclusively analytical or synthetical. Without powerful analytical techniques from the scientist and engineer a modern bridge could not be built nor long stand. Without the powerful synthetical vision of the artist/designer it would not be pleasing to the eye nor, even more importantly, uplifting to the spirit. However, science and engineering instruction are aimed at the “ear” more than at the eye. Art and design instruction are aimed at the “eye” more than at the ear. Perhaps an anecdote can clarify this somewhat. When I was teaching at Tufts University in the Engineering-Psychology program with its concentration on consumer product design, an undergraduate student in my courses wanted instruction in Industrial Design. One could say that our program gave her instruction in the rational analytical approach to product design and she now wanted the irrational synthetical approach. Through connections with a prestigious school of Industrial Design, she was placed for one semester in a class of industrial design students who already had one year of training in ID. She returned to our program the next semester having had a truly mind expanding experience and related the following. A typical synthesis project for the ID students was to use a box of “junk” (bath tub stopper, chain, funnel, etc.) to make a model of some specified object. She worked diligently and at evaluation time placed her effort on the table with those of the other students. The instructor passed among the projects giving his comments on how well and how creatively each had met the objective. Coming to hers he said it was terrible. She asked why it was terrible and what was wrong with it. Pointing at other examples on the table that he said were better, the instructor told her to: “look at that one,’’ look at that one”, “look at that one”. look, look, look. eye, eye, eye. She said that if she had asked me, I would (in effect) have said: “listen to this explanation”, “listen to this explanation”, “listen to this explanation”. listen, listen, listen. ear, ear, ear. I think that neatly encapsulates the difference between learning (and teaching) the synthetical (irrational) and the analytical (rational). The former is: “learn by looking” and the latter is: “learn by listening”. One for the eye, the other for the ear. One visual, the other verbal. Why the title ‘Do Not Touch”? Much of my product design experience has been with hand-held objects including shaving razors, toothbrushes, baking dishes, catheters for IC hospital rooms and such. Immediately after beginning my teaching career at Tufts University in 1970, I began collecting tribal arts to satisfy an aesthetic need. At the same time I also began design consulting to satisfy financial and intellectual needs. Tufts University like many others gives its faculty one day per week for such “personal development” rightly believing that it would eventually find its way back to enhancing student education as well as increasing the recognition of its faculty and prestige of the university. Through both collecting and consulting I became increasingly sensitized to the need to address the “feel” of an object as a major factor in user satisfaction and moreover as it influenced how the user judged the performance of the product. This subjective aspect often supplanted any objective aspect. For example, if a man using a razor “felt” like it was not delivering the “shave” he wanted, the blade could be wrongly blamed and it was useless to point out that it was the sharpest that could be produced and identical to others he had used. He could in fact be disliking the handling of the razor – the “feel” of it in his hand or against his face – but blaming it on the blade. Or his shave quality might be impaired (or he might think it was impaired) because of the less than optimal “handling” of the razor. This concern is not simply academic. User satisfaction strongly determines issues such as purchase and repurchase – in this case, the company’s blades - the bottom line issue for a company. Much product design progresses (or should progress) based on user evaluation. However, I have experienced repeatedly that users generally do not have the necessary vocabulary to describe or discuss their feelings in terms useful for design. However they are definitely good at deciding whether they like (buy) a product or not (do not buy). Such observations inspired the need to study aspects of “feel” and “touch” vocabularies for describing them. When I hold an artfully painted clay pot made long ago by a woman of the Acoma pueblo in the American Southwest, I enjoy the feel of it in my hands as well as its visual appearance. I also “feel” a connection between my hands and the hands of the woman potter. I “feel” a spiritual connection with her. I once told an elderly Acoma potter of this feeling especially with pottery from her pueblo. She replied that it was because they always said a prayer to the god of the clay before beginning and that was what I sensed. Perhaps she was correct. I have the same sensation seeing, touching and feeling objects as simple and as utilitarian as old Taiwanese wine jars I have collected during my visits to Taiwan. Each was handmade and decorated by a skilled factory worker. This is also true for an aboriginal Taiwanese Atayal weaving box in my collection made perhaps 100 years ago by an unknown man for an unknown woman weaver. The feel of a fine piece of Chinese jade is also al pleasure.They all please my hand as well as my eye and, as importantly, they please my virtual sense of feeling. Touching is a primitive and primary need. “Do Not Touch” signs are like signs next to a painting saying “Do Not Look”. More attention to the “feel” of a product during design as well as (and as part of) its visual appearance can be expected to enhance the general satisfaction with the product. And satisfaction leads to purchase and repurchase. The author of this book furthers the analytical contribution to product design using examples, theories and paradigms as aids. They may not be transparent on first viewing but have proven their worth and once internalized can be expected to aid without compromising the synthetical “creative” aspect of product design. He has made an important contribution to product design. John G. Kreifeldt
Posted on: Fri, 19 Sep 2014 02:30:02 +0000
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