In a recent a response to Bruce’s blog I was going to post a comment, but have had problems with the 1000 character limit. So I have decided to put the response into my blog.
The questions Bruce asks is …

Are Designers The Enemy Of Good Design?
So what should I say? How should I say it? And what should be done about it?

I believe Bruce is right in saying ‘designers are the enemy of good design?’ I have witnessed that a lot of designers against design at both work (on my internship at Resolute) and during my time (and time to be continued) at Middlesex University. At University when undertaking live projects we do weekly ‘crits’ where  we present our work in front of the rest of the class, the other designers then comment on the work. The problem with this is, is that most designers have a lot of perceptions of ‘good design’ and they can end out making the designer run around in circles to only come out with a mediocre output. This is because the designers are leading the design, and its not being lead by the user. Often even if you create a concept that is ‘for’ a user group most designers won’t see it as a ‘good design’ as they don’t understand a market.

An example is my Rio ‘Dezac’ project which wasn’t fully understood by a older generation of designers. A great example is a recent arctial about social networking sites and the way its changing a generation, yet I have seen that the designers just aren’t thinking of the users a great example is a recent piece of work from the Microsoft Techfest 2007 and the BubbleBoard I even e-mail Tim Regan comments on this device, and will post the comments on this blog soon. Why is so much energy going into working with Voice mail?? Who sees voice mail as a important in this connected world?

I think Bruce should talk about

  1. Out dated design teaching. (My university doesn’t even have an updated website, let alone a video, blog, shared source of data, everything that would help distribute information in my university)
  2. Designs being flippant when looking at Design Portfolios, Designers just love Design porn, they want amazing visualization skills and don’t care about students being creative within manufacture, Human interaction, niche products or a greater knowledge of selling experience and service over products.
  3. Designers are up there own a*se, we all copy each other and get now where, Student designers don’t read, and don’t understand business and greater design methodology’s. <div style="text-align: center" />

In the deffence of Designers I know many great designers like my friends at Slipstream design, these guys work for a consultancy and come up with amazing products and proposal for products. But when they show business they get shunned but hopefully with designers in the boardroom everything should start to becomes a lot more integrated to business. I think that the best thing will be a shake up in the design education, to a more holistic approach with business and design, and for business to put more designers in the board room.</p>