What is our relationship with nature? Is it humanity versus nature, nature teaching humanity, or nature and humanity existing as separate entities? Let’s explore humanity’s relationship with nature through the lens of design.
Humanity vs. Nature
The concept of humanity versus nature is a recurring theme. Since time immemorial, humanity has worked tirelessly to bend nature to its will. Life would be exceedingly uncomfortable without our innovation to ease nature’s indifference toward our existence. We have designed ways to make life easier to live: mass production of food, the development of various types of shelters, harnessing temperature control, etc. However, this relentless push to dominate nature has come at a cost. Our innovations have disrupted the natural order, creating challenges that now require further design and innovation to restore balance and find a way to coexist with the nature we have strived so hard to control.
Nature as Teacher
In our hubristic effort to control nature, we have often stopped listening to it. Yet, some designers have mastered the art of drawing inspiration from nature, creating efficiencies and beauty that come naturally but require great effort from humanity. Visionaries like Antoni Gaudí, Norman Foster, and Thomas Heatherwick have embraced the complexities inherent in nature, building upon them to create something special for the manufactured world. Biomimicry, another approach, utilizes nature’s expertise to influence human creations, teaching us how to make our products less wasteful and more harmonious with the world they inhabit.
Harmony With Nature
What if it’s not a competition? Perhaps nature has its way of doing things, and humans have theirs. Nature has had millions of years to refine its processes, while humanity has only just begun. Despite this, we have made significant progress. Our innovations, which initially were dirty and wasteful, are now increasingly focused on cleanliness,
efficiency, and intelligence. We stand on the precipice of a new chapter in human creation, one informed by the entirety of human knowledge. The AI revolution might provide the advantage we need to catch up to nature’s superior abilities, enabling us to coexist in harmony with it. Both entities can respect and complement each other.
Reflecting on Design and Nature
This discussion has given us much to ponder for this month’s issue. How do we think about nature and its relationship to design? Climate change is a pressing concern, but it’s just one facet of this complex relationship. What defines something as unnatural? Is biomimicry true to nature, or merely a computer’s approximation? Is AI an unnatural force or simply a new tool in a designer’s toolbox, no more unnatural than the ideas that inspired its creation? As designers, we are uniquely positioned to navigate these questions, using our craft to bridge the gap between humanity and nature. Let’s embrace this opportunity to create a future where design harmonizes with the natural world, fostering a sustainable and beautiful coexistence.?”
—Paul Diehl, IDSA Member of the Publications Committee pdiehl@teague.com
Editor’s Note: The images on pages 23, 38, and 39 come from Near Future Laboratory, an artifact design studio. Its practice centers around Design Fiction, the creation of prototypes from possible futures to help teams and organizations make sense of micro and macro trends. Near Future Laboratory was founded in 2006 by Julian Bleecker, Ph.D., an engineer, designer and an author of The Manual of Design Fiction and other books related to futures artifact design. To learn more, visit nearfuturelaboratory.com.
the necessity of adapting to rapidly changing business environments, the Board’s actions reflect a proactive approach to ensuring the Society’s growth and relevance.
This new commitment to data-driven decision-making is crucial for identifying member needs, industry trends, and potential areas for growth. By analyzing member feedback, industry reports, and future trends, the Board aims to create a redesigned Society that not only addresses current challenges but also anticipates future challenges and needs. This new approach ensures that IDSA adopts an internal system that will require it to be more proactive,
opportunities, and round-the- clock networking platforms that are accessible and beneficial to all members, regardless of their career stage or geographic location.
Some of the ways the Board explored this was by looking at how successful associations and societies are providing value to professionals in today’s environment. These include but are not limited to:
Enhanced Professional Development: Expanding the frequency and range of professional development opportunities, including workshops, webinars, and
certification programs tailored to the diverse needs of industrial designers and students.
Robust Networking Opportunities: Creating more effective networking platforms, both online and in-person, to foster collaboration and knowledge sharing among stakeholders.
Innovative Resource Centers: Developing a comprehensive resource center that provides stakeholders with the latest industry research, trends, and tools to help them stay ahead in their academic and professional careers.
Advocacy and Representation: Strengthening the Society’s role in advocating for the profession and representing the interests of industrial designers at the national and international levels.
The Board is dedicated to making bold and forwardthinking decisions that reflect the needs of its stakeholders. This includes addressing current industry and operational issues, as well as anticipating future challenges and taking advantage of prime opportunities. The Board’s commitment to bold decision-making will be evident in several key areas:
Embracing Better Technology: Leveraging the latest technological advancements to enhance the member experience and streamline Society operations. This includes a modern platform for members to access resources, connect with peers, and engage with the Society.
Diversity and Inclusion: Implementing initiatives to promote diversity and inclusion within the Society, and among those who are underrepresented in the profession as a whole.
Sustainability and Social Responsibility: Prioritizing sustainability and social responsibility. This includes promoting sustainable design practices and supporting initiatives that address social and environmental challenges.
The need for associations to evolve, grow, and thrive cannot be overstated. According to a report by the American Society of Association Executives (ASAE), associations that fail to adapt to changing stakeholder needs, and industry trends, risk becoming obsolete. You may feel that IDSA has already reached that point, which is why the IDSA Board has also chosen to utilize the data from the ASAE report to
enhance these additional key areas going forward:
Member and Stakeholder Engagement: Engaging members and stakeholders through personalized and relevant experiences. Moving away from being transactional to being more relational, including better understanding needs and preferences, as well as tailoring offerings according to career stage.
Technology Adoption: Embracing technology to enhance the stakeholder experience and streamline operations, providing an experience consistent with how our stakeholders generally engage technology in today’s society outside of IDSA.
Innovation: Working with stakeholders to help IDSA enhance its culture of innovation within the organization. This includes utilizing IDSA committees, chapters, councils, sections, and other engaged communities to facilitate creativity, experimentation, calculated failure, and refinement to discover new ideas and approaches to design and to enhance IDSA’s functionality.
Strategic Partnerships: Building strategic partnerships with other design organizations to enhance value and expand reach. This includes an emphasis on partnerships with educational institutions.
The Board’s commitment and investment in exploring these changes begin to position the Society well for future success. IDSA’s journey to becoming a proactive, leading, professional organization ensures that it remains relevant and valuable to the profession and those who choose to be part of it.
This strategic planning meeting marks a significant milestone in the Society’s journey towards a comprehensive redesign and a new organizational identity. As the business environment continues to change rapidly, associations like IDSA must evolve to stay relevant and thrive. The Board’s proactive approach and commitment to key areas, ensure that IDSA remains a leading organization in the field of industrial design by prioritizing the needs of its stakeholders and working on exercising its muscle to anticipate future trends. Taking time to stop and design the future of design and IDSA, sets the stage for a vibrant and dynamic future for all those engaged and invested in its success.
Donté Shannon, FASAE, CAE Executive Director IDSA dontes@idsa.org
INNOVATION, POST-NATURAL
In 1818 Mary Shelley imagined a scientist who pushed the natural boundaries of nature too far in Frankenstein. Sitting by his pond thirty years later, Henry David Thoreau thought: “We can never have enough of nature.” Biology is the natural science of living things, but chemistry, physics and mathematics are expanding nature into artificial worlds. In 1968, Stewart Brand proclaimed that nature has no limit in the introduction to The Whole Earth Catalog: “We are gods and we might as well get used to it.” Natural now means a lot of things. How are technology, mass media, identity, AI, and industrial design challenging our definitions of nature and our promises to the future?
Good Ol’ Nature
Snowstorms, earthquakes, locusts, and floods—for millions of years humans were the underdog in the battle with Mother Nature. But our natural intelligence gave our ancestors an advantage in taming the wilderness. We soon strived to make the world better, from painting on cave walls to engineering bigger TVs and cloning pets. Along the way, design has been our weapon in the battle for survival, prosperity, and convenience. We’ve reformed the environment, planting maize and, as Frederick Law Olmsted wrote, began “painting with lakes and wooded slopes; with lawns and banks and forest-covered hills; with mountainsides and ocean views.”
In 1859, Charles Darwin’s delivered the fundamental proposition that all life evolves. More than any other species, we use our ability and desire to rearrange things in our favor. No other form of life is creative like us or makes prototypes and fails faster or more often. As Robert Kennedy put it: “Some people see things as they are and ask, why? I dream things that never were and say, why not?” It’s cold; build a fire. It’s raining; make a hat. We want
a ride; get a car. Optimistic human nature always sees room for improvement. Iteration is the original biomimicry: When a better mutation survives, by definition that’s progress.
Our designs survive according to user needs. We thought it was easy to make the world better—steamships, glass houses, rockets, two-way wrist radios—but all these small improvements have long-range consequences and unexpected outcomes. Advancements, developments and towns grew fast. Luddites like Teddy Roosevelt (the “conservationist president”) and preservationists like John Muir felt that the environment needed us to protect it. They designed the national park system and spearheaded a conservation movement meant to rein in the undesirable overflow of civilization.
All these human actions have consequences. In his 1948 book, Mechanization Takes Command, Swiss historian and architecture critic Siegfried Giedion exposed how innovations like the assembly line, the slaughterhouse, Yale lock, tractors, and ovens, and concepts like “comfort” and “convenience” —things designed and defined by designers—propelled the evolution of everyday life, with philosophical implications that were sometimes unintentional. “The ‘control of nature’ is a phrase conceived in arrogance, born of the Neanderthal age of biology and philosophy, when it was supposed that nature exists for the convenience of man,” wrote Rachel Carson. Her 1962 book, Silent Spring, delivered a wake-up call, documenting how industrial progress in the name of growing more food caused environmental harm with pesticides.
Natural Resources
By 1995 we were making progress: the Kyoto Protocol, limited greenhouse gas emissions. Environmental activist Al Gore was vice president, and New York was closing Fresh
Opposite: Illustration by Sarah Phillips Collins
Kills landfill on Staten Island (“among the largest man-made structures in the history of the world,” archaeologist Martin Jones pointed out.) I chaired an IDSA conference in Santa Fe called Natural Resources. We gathered outdoors on indigenous land, where a brochure pronounced: “Whatever happens will be because of you. As new technology shrinks the world, it is expanding the complexity of the designer’s domain. Growing rather than being engineered, non-biological systems like the internet demonstrate a clear need for the humanizing touch. ‘Unlike modern industrial designer, Pueblo design is integrated into the continuum of life sustaining activities,’ says Native American architect Rina Swentzell. Design is an unlimited natural resource.”
Natural beauty, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in 1836, is transcendental: “Nature, in the common sense, refers to essences unchanged by man: space, the air, the river, the leaf.” Even nature expresses philosophical and cultural bias in our eyes. What does un-natural mean when everything is artificial? Mock turtle soup served to Alice in Wonderland? Where is natural, when hardly anything is left unchanged by man?
Mother Nature never seemed to care that much about us humans—she created scary forests, plagues, mountains
goods. Now we live in a huge interlocking network of human-made things and happenings. We are surrounded by an artificial jungle created by design. We have hard choices for hardware and software to align profit and ethics with survival.
The future is going to be more artificial. Both for us and for the birds and bees, “nature” will be a nostalgic dream of a Disney simulacrum. Climate treaties are signed, but there’s no going back: Geoengineering is very complicated, and will produce unpredictable climate shifts and unintended consequences worse than Lex Luthor could imagine. If climate scale manipulations are a reach, the only other variable is us—we will require PPE, prosthetics like gasmasks, hazmat suits, and probably oxygen catheters, Dune-esque “Stillsuits” or more radical post-human bioengineering.
We need what the science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson called a “Ministry for the Future.” In his 2020 novel of the same title, eyewitness dispatches of climate-change calamities are matched to possible technological scenarios and social solutions. Will self-healing designs help regenerate the planet? Can massive interventions like space umbrellas contribute to ecological restoration? Robinson’s book has a happy ending, but is re-wilding a collapsed ecosphere really possible? It is difficult to “recreate, initiate, or accelerate the recovery” of ecosystems, because our human impact has been so deep and pervasive. We’ve knocked the natural ecosphere out of balance. We now occupy a new ecology of microplastic, nanoplastic, Roundup, PCBs, and new viruses floating in a stew where every organism in the ecosystem has naturally evolved and/or died. What seems the sensible strategy for survival in the new natural future is to make the environment better—and/or develop mutations to keep up in accelerating transformations that redesign the human body to fit the climate chaos. Enter the supernatural.
My friend Dan Friedman was always on the cutting edge. He studied in Ulm, where he became an evangelist for super-clean Swiss graphic design. His successes included corporate identity projects like Citibank’s logo identity system, designed in 1975 at Ansbach Grossman Portugal with Gene Grossman. But Dan became disenchanted— maybe even disgusted—with the International Style with its dominating processed refinement and homogenized forms. He felt like the corporations’ “janitor, cleaning up their identities and branding.” So he made more personal explorations. I was inspired by his Artificial Nature catalog, published in Athens by the Deste Foundation in 1990. was “a trans-disciplinary research project drawing upon bio-inspired system theories in the production
of engaging immersive worlds as art installations.” He followed that up with Post Human, which imagined “new breed of human”: nose jobs, breast implants, Michael Jackson, Pippa Garner, Jeff Koons, and Charles Ray. “It is becoming routine for people to try to alter their appearance, their behavior, and their consciousness beyond what was once thought possible,” wrote curator Jeffery Deitch in 1992. “Realism as we used to know it may no longer be possible.”
Superhuman
Will we be the hero of the story? Or like the dog that caught the car, the ecological villain who knocks ourselves out? Humans have pushed beyond natural, giving ourselves supernatural powers of modern design, tech, and AI. The supernatural world humans are creating is uncharted: Hello floating cities, flying cars, and Elon Musk’s Neuralink. The natural roadmap is obsolete. The future is going to be different, and it’s coming faster than a speeding asteroid.
Imagine what it will be like living with all the different kinds of humans in the future. Diversity will grow more diverse, with high-speed evolution post-humans from CRISPR genome editing and arrogant diversity through medicine: Smart pills, breast or pig-kidney implants, gender medication, augmented prosthetics, wearable co-bots, haircuts, multiple identities. One kind of “human race” might use steroids to be much stronger, or use brain nootropic chemicals better than everyone. What is IQ for a cyborg’s embedded technology? What about emotional intelligence? Who will be human in the fluid future? Extend it to design: How universal will an OXO peeler be?
Now is when we need a taller Tower of Babel, because not only will we speak different languages but have different desires and needs, ways of thinking. Maybe new senses, and definitely different senses of humors. When no one is a normal human, who will be the central characters in the new world?
Friends
Luckily, humans are social animals, requiring some commonalities to share and connect. Cooperation is key to propagation (and design)—our species’ long gestation period for teaching our young is fundamental to the survival of our species. It’s literally baked into our DNA. Even though Americans seem to act more individualistically, with our self-reliant frontier mentality, we are in fact highly interactive. Humans survive as cells in a complex organism of interdependent components spread over the world, interconnected social clusters, distribution networks, energy grids plugged into each other, economic systems, countries, and shared biological chemistry. The Covid virus and broken
supply chains highlight how humanity is one huge artificial swarm living organism.
So, are humans and nature two different concepts? If nature is other, then whatever humans do is unnatural. Or, on the other hand, are we natural wild animals? Then everything we do is “natural.” In either worldview, the concept of ‘nature” is a good benchmark—either as model for regenerating a healthy landscape, or leveraging biomimicking, iterative prototyping for designing our obviously artificial post-natural healthy habitat. If we cannot put things back the way we found them, we must take action now. Because if we just let nature be nature, we might lose our life support system. It’s time for industrialstrength good design.
Super Risky
Now that humans are the dominant force, can we build a more sustainable world? Can we harness design skills, the military-industrial complex, and mass marketing to create natural attractions to the things that will deliver the livable and sustainable “better world” that we all said was our goal of design? Supernatural design isn’t for ghosts and goblins or superheroes; it’s a license to manipulate. We have the skills to collaborate and the opportunities to make things happen. Our products are like living organisms. They reproduce, evolve, and spread, Walkman to iPod to iPhone: That’s supernatural. Industrial design’s superpowers are 1) scale mass production and 2) velocity ubiquity. Machines multiply our products faster than mosquitos, and we can spread desirable products like honeybees everywhere.
Can humankind with all its potential: genius, forecasting, planning, design skills really provide a universal remedy, an antidote for the world? Restoration Hardware CEO Gary Friedman thinks designers can. He recently told the New York Times that his vision for RH “is to create an endless reflection of hope, inspiration and love that will ignite the human spirit and change the world.”
We don’t have a choice. If we coast, nature will be nature, and we are going to crash into a gigantic compost heap. It’s up to designers to drive. Everyone needs to help. The first job is survival: push down the trend curve by removing greenhouse gases. That means 1) designing products that clean the air, 2) that sequester carbon, and 3) don’t do things that produce them. We need a new motto: Survival of the friendliest.
The IDSA Women in Design Committee’s vision is to have gender parity in our industry. One way we work toward this goal is to amplify voices. In this article, we hear viewpoints from women and nonbinary designers who are emerging into the profession and established in their career. The WID Committee welcomes thought, support, and feedback at wid@idsa.org.
CREATIVITY AS A NATURAL PATHWAY
As industrial designers, we often rely on the natural flow of creativity to fuel our work, drawing inspiration from our surroundings, cultural experiences, and intuitive processes. However, sticking exclusively to these familiar paths can sometimes limit our potential for truly groundbreaking innovation. In a recent discussion, based on a Zoom roundtable and emails with five talented women industrial designers, we explored the concept of creativity as a natural pathway, as well as the benefits of embracing less conventional approaches. By stepping out of our comfort zones and experimenting with new techniques, we can uncover disruptive solutions and push the boundaries of design, opening up a world of possibilities that may have otherwise remained hidden.
Creativity as a Natural Pathway
We began by defining natural versus unnatural paths to creativity, which revealed diverse perspectives among us. A natural path to creativity was generally seen as an organic process, drawing on intuition, personal experiences, and iterative design. Celeste Greenbaum, Human Centered Researcher and Industrial Designer at Philips, highlighted this point, explaining that natural creativity stems from “things that you derive from your skill set from, or from iteration.” This type of creativity is intrinsic to us; it emerges from the designer’s own abilities and observations, grounded in traditional and learned methods in the design process. An unnatural or supernatural path to creativity, by contrast, involved external influences or unconventional methods. An unnatural approach leverages technology and other external tools to stimulate creativity, pushing beyond the innate capabilities of a single human mind. For example,
generating an algorithm or using AI was considered unnatural. Elham Morshedzadeh, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, University of Houston and IDSA WID Committee member, noted that unnatural creativity “can have a broader interpretation” and includes learned techniques that may not come intuitively. By embracing these unexpected and often abstract and not fully explored methods, designers can uncover innovative solutions that might not arise from traditional processes alone. As Dr. Mary Beth Privitera, M.Des., PhD, FIDSA, Principal, Design & Human Factors at Sentiar and Professor, Biomedical Engineering University of Cincinnati, pointed out, the interplay between natural and supernatural pathways can lead to unique and diverse design outcomes, enriching the creative process through a dynamic exchange of ideas and methods.
New Processes, New Stories
The design process is fluid, and knowing when to shift your thinking is critical. Our conversation shifted to pinpointing the moment when a designer realizes that it’s time to make that shift, and the group shared a rich tapestry of experiences and insights. Greenbaum reflected on points where traditional methods fell short, such as designing a product for children that initially seemed uncomfortable and unappealing. ”I get really stuck when the design requirements lead to something that looks like a torture contraption,” she said. Changing up the approach can lead to fresh ways to think about a design. This change often requires reaching outside conventional techniques and incorporating elements that transform the product into something playful and engaging.
Privitera underscored the designer’s responsibility to think differently: “It’s almost like your responsibility to think
differently,” she said. When assessing any project, it’s essential to ask: Is this something that’s desirable? The drive to infuse unique, appealing elements into designs is necessary, whether developing medical tools or everyday kitchen items. By embracing diverse approaches, designers can break free from conventional constraints and create products that resonate on both functional and emotional levels.
Katie Lim, IDSA, Senior Industrial Designer, frog, and Chair of IDSA Women in Design New York City Chapter, emphasized the importance of storytelling in guiding clients and users through innovative changes: “If you can tell somebody a really good story you can hook them in from the beginning,” she said. Storytelling helps mitigate resistance to change and makes new ideas more accessible. That can be a valuable tool when designers face resistance. Morshedzadeh expanded on the significance of storytelling, particularly in today’s technologically advanced landscape. Having these technologies helps us to create more realistic stories, she says, and has revolutionized how designers communicate their visions. This blend of narrative and visual tools fosters a deeper emotional connection between a product and its users.
Natural and Unnatural UX
But how do natural and unnatural methods influence user experience? Here, we highlighted the importance of empathy, attention to detail, and awareness of the inherent biases designers must navigate. Lim emphasized the significance of stepping outside of personal design perspectives to truly understand user needs, sharing an example of designing an unboxing experience for cancer patients. She noted that “going through the actual motions to understand all those in-between moments of the key touch points” is imperative for creating a user-centered experience. Greenbaum added that meticulously mapping out every detail of user interaction is essential, even if the depth of analysis required feels “unnatural.”
A rigorous approach to understanding user experience ensures that designers can identify a design’s strengths and weaknesses. But Privitera noted that qualitative research can
be biased by personal interpretations and selection criteria. Navigating these biases requires “taking that leap of faith and looking at it from another perspective.” She also described the complexity of designing for future technologies, such as augmented reality in medical applications, where traditional design tools and prototype testing fall short.
“I’m designing a new future, but I’m not in that future,” she says. “And so I’m predicting again what I think that future might be.” This underscores the iterative nature of design, where natural intuition and unnatural, innovative methods must work in tandem.
New Technology, New Perspectives
Balancing intuition and critical thinking in design, especially when using generative AI tools, sparked diverse perspectives among the group. Yi-Ping Wong, IDSA, Director of Operations for IN2 INNOVATION, believes that the balance lies in using generative tools for improvements, validations, and inspirations. “If we can feed generative tools with information and parameters derived from intuition and critical thinking, they can help generate ideas that we might not have thought of ourselves. While these ideas may not be the final solution, they can push the boundaries of our approach.” Greenbaum highlighted the importance of understanding both personal and stakeholder biases, stressing that that designers must introduce innovations in ways that respect users’ autonomy and expertise.
Morshedzadeh echoed the need for designers to embrace scientific methods to enhance the reliability of their decision-making, despite the resistance this approach might face within the design community. She argued that using established tested methods would help us avoid making biased decisions. This integration of scientific rigor can help designers navigate their preconceived notions and produce more robust outcomes.
Privitera discussed the fluid interplay between unstructured intuition and structured critical thinking. She illustrated this balance with a personal example: “In my own head, I am a superhero with the cape and I can come up with really creative ideas that are wacky and fun,” But those ideas are also then rigorously evaluated to ensure their
feasibility. Designers oscillate between unfettered creativity and practical constraints, depending on whether they are refining existing products or conceptualizing entirely novel ones. Starting with broad, imaginative concepts before refining them with practical constraints allows designers to avoid being constrained by existing paradigms. As Lim put it: “If you start off with the constraints, you’re designing the same thing everyone else is designing.” This process of shifting from unstructured to structured thinking fosters innovation while ensuring practical yet creative viability.
The group said they use a range of strategies to stay up to date with emerging technologies and tools in the design field, using both natural and unnatural approaches. Lim emphasized the value of looking beyond the traditional design sphere: “I like to look outside of the design.” This approach broadens the scope of inspiration and keeps designers informed about trends in various industries.
Privitera highlighted the importance of attending conferences to gain exposure to unexpected innovations: “Attending conferences, you see a whole host of different things that you wouldn’t even expect.” She noted that events like the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) conferences offer diverse insights that can inspire new design approaches. Industry conferences and tradeshows, such as CES (Consumer Electronics Show) and SXSW (South by Southwest), have always focused on the latest technologies, tools, and industry trends. These events provide an excellent opportunity to learn about a wide range of topics and perspectives in one setting. “Networking with professionals who are passionate about these subjects is also valuable,” Wong said. “Whether you agree or disagree on certain topics, it is important to maintain an open attitude towards discussion and new perspectives.”
Other participants also shared their methods for staying informed. Greenbaum mentioned the benefits of interdisciplinary learning that arose from her interest in cognitive psychology, which has now extended into nursing training to deepen her clinical knowledge. Other panelists shared similar examples of designers who sought additional training in fields like acupuncture and surgery. Their experiences provided valuable perspectives that significantly
enhanced their design capabilities.
Morshedzadeh, sharing an academic perspective, emphasized the importance of continuous learning: “When I come across something that I believe I can teach or incorporate into one of our courses and it piques my interest, I’ll incorporate it into the curriculum, starting with elementary basics. This way, we can practice and explore its potential.” This approach not only keeps her skills sharp but also ensures that new graduates are well-equipped with the latest tools and technologies, boosting their confidence and employability.
Embracing Disruption
In conclusion, the discussion among this group of industrial designers, all with a wide variety of experience and specializations, underscores the importance of embracing both natural and unnatural paths to creativity in the design process. While drawing from personal experiences and intuition forms the foundation of design, integrating unconventional methods and technologies can unlock new pathways of innovation. By challenging conventional thinking and experimenting with diverse approaches, designers can break free from limitations and uncover disruptive solutions that resonate deeply with users.
Furthermore, maintaining a balance between intuitive creativity and critical analysis, as well as staying informed about emerging technologies through avenues like industry conferences and interdisciplinary learning, are essential for driving continuous growth and pushing the boundaries of design excellence. As we navigate the ever-evolving landscape of design, it is this dynamic interplay between tradition and innovation that fuels our journey towards creating impactful and meaningful experiences for users everywhere.
In design practices, sustainable materials and methods of production have historically been relegated to the sidelines, often seen as non-consequential. Designers still often prize form and function over health and sustainability. The industry has made significant progress in recent years in using less toxic materials, but designers still largely rely on conventional ways of sourcing. New materials such as algae and bacteria are emerging, but do these emerging materials lead the way to a better future, or will they create more problems further down the road?
Soft and Hairy
To address that question, we should look at how designers think about and choose their materials. Rather than largely relying on current available materials, or asking designers to “invent” new ones, could designers begin to explore ways to use organic waste streams in their production processes--or, to push it a step further, in the creation of designed objects? Some examples now on the market include orange peels from food production harvested to create cleaning products by UglyGood, and pineapple leaves turned into leather alternatives by Piñatex. Perhaps before relying on “newer and better” materials, designers can slow down and observe the inherent value in waste that can be harvested and transformed in their production of objects. By studying the inherent value of organic waste materials,
and breaking barriers of cultural attitudes towards them, perhaps designers can find an untapped materials market that not only helps divert waste from landfills, but also steer away from the reliance on newer, less researched materials and potentially creating environmental issues we are not yet capable of assessing.
In my design course Soft + Hairy at Wesleyan University, waste materials in students’ everyday lives were used to engage students in biodegradable design. Students were introduced to the concept of designing for impermanence, using organic waste materials such as coffee grounds and human hair with mycelium to develop an understanding for material recovery, as well as to engage in a discourse on responsible production in design methodologies. By utilizing organic waste and living organisms as part of their production, students learn to grow and keep living materials alive, developing knowledge in the creation of a built ecology. They learned through active participation that authorship is shared between them and the living material. The materials have agency, designers must relinquish some degree of control to the biomaterials interacting with organic waste. The designed objects that came out of this class included hats, vessels, and golf tees grown out of mycelium and organic waste.
Living Design
A similar effort, Project BioLeathur, recently showcased at
Top Row: Close-up of BioLeathur with post-industrial silk waste, pure BioLeathur and BioLeathur with charcoal ink.
Bottom Row: Setting and drying face masks and turning them into BioLeathur. (Photos: Yu Nong Khew)
Design Shanghai, collects the remnants of cosmetic face masks with living bacteria and placed them together to regrow onto themselves. The combined remnants are then dried in the sun and made into leather-alternative products. With the expert help and guidance of a microbiologist, design processes were considered in the creation of a waste recovery-based material. Post-industrial silk waste from a facility within a 20-mile radius was added to increase material tensile strength, and the material was naturally dried in the sun rather than relying on industrial ovens to speed up the process. Every step of the decision-making process was focused on reducing the carbon footprint, eliminating reliance on new materials, and recovery of as much waste material as is relevant and possible.
Working with living and waste materials requires an adjustment in how designers engage in and understand our relationships with materials. Waste and living materials come in all shapes and sizes, unlike raw or mined materials
that are precut or set in dimensions. Hence, there is some degree of knowledge acquisition required at the research and development phase. This also often requires designers to use additive rather than subtractive methods of production. Rather than carving or slicing materials, additive processes often rely on the addition of materials to the production process. These can range from rapid prototyping processes—likely 3D printing—to bio-designed processes, like feeding organic waste to mycelial products. The benefits of utilizing additive methods mean that there are usually fewer waste materials, unlike the subtractive processes designers are more familiar with.
Working With Waste
Combining living and waste materials requires patience and a shift in our expectations of material performance. Making, testing, and fabricating with conventional nonliving material often gives designers rapid and dependable results. Using waste and living materials, on the other hand,
In the design course Soft + Hairy, students used mycelium to explore responsible and sustainable design methodologies. Nomi Kuntz (Photo), Calista Huang (Design + growth)
is almost a dance between patience and observation; designing with waste and living materials requires the designer to slow down and observe attentively to make adjustments. In extending the duration of material research and development, a design process that facilitates a deeper appreciation for the processes intrinsic to biological phenomena is created. The inherent unpredictability of living and waste materials further emphasizes the need for designers to shift attitudes from one of control to a paradigm of maintenance and care. Designing with waste and living materials urges a consideration and responsiveness that transcends conventional notions of authorship. At a lecture at the Atlas Institute, Eldy Lazaro Vasquez, Alistar Mirela and Laura Devendorf said, “the designer and the materials share agency at different stages of the artifact creation,” emphasizing the symbiotic relationship between human creativity and our biological co-authors.
Like all designed processes, using waste materials can bring its own set of challenges and risks. The use of waste materials requires a shift in the way designers learn about materials: the need to be sensitive to the inherent value in any material, not just the ones that have been established scientifically and controlled easily. More time and experimentation are also required at the research and conceptual stages of design to test out the unknown performance of various waste materials. As stewards of the environment, designers would also need to convince clients of the shift in timeline with such projects. Certainly, using waste materials also requires some degree of sanitization and cleaning to avoid contamination. Perhaps most pertinent of issues is consumption attitude. Using waste materials as part of the design process can divert waste from landfills, but will the consumption of waste materials inadvertently support more careless purchasing? These are just a few of the questions to consider when working with waste materials.
Next Steps
These factors, while certainly requiring an adjustment, are not novel or groundbreaking in the design discipline. The testing and experimentation of different waste materials rely on iteration and observation; the slowness of growth of many living materials requires patience and perseverance; the ability to react and adjust to unpredictable changes; the resourcefulness in sourcing waste materials within the region, etc. As designers, we are already equipped with the skill sets required for a waste and bio-based practice. To summarize, using Jenny Odell’s words, “Our very idea of productivity is premised on the idea of producing something new, whereas we do not tend to see maintenance and care as productive in the same
way.” Perhaps as designers, it is not too late to look towards care and maintenance of what is left around us as a means of production, through reduction.
—Yu Nong Khew, IDSA ykhew@wesleyan.edu
Yu Nong Khew, whose research focuses on regenerative design in the built environment, is Assistant Professor of Art, Design and Engineering Studies at Wesleyan University.
References
Maria Puig de La Bellacasa, Matters of Care: Speculative Ethics in More Than Human Worlds (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 2017).
Tzu-Ying Chen, Oriol Carrasco, Áine Ryan, Dunya Bouchi, Mette Ramsgaard Thomsen, Paul Nicholas, Alexandre Dubor et al. “Another Logic for Architectural (Bio-) Design and Fabrication— Lessons From the Living Prototypes Project.” In Proceedings for the CEES 2023 Conference, Portugal: Itecons - Instituto de Investigação e Desenvolvimento Tecnológico para a Construção, Energia, Ambiente e Sustentabilidade, 2023.
Daniëlle Ooms, Bahareh Barati, Miguel Bruns, and Teresa van Dongen. “From Concern to Care: A Transformative Reflection on Designing-with the Living.” In Nordic Human-Computer Interaction Conference, pp. 1-15, 2022.
Eldy Lazaro Vasquez, Mirela Alistar, Laura Devendorf, “Temporalities of Biodesigned Artifacts,” 2023, http://www.temporaldesign. eca.ed.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Eldy-Lazaro_ DIS_2023_workshop_Temporalities.pdf
Serena Camere and Elvin Karana, “Fabricating materials from living organisms: An emerging design practice,” Journal of Cleaner Production 186, pp. 570-584, 2018.
Serenaq Camere and Elvin Karana, “Growing materials for product design,” in Alive. Active. Adaptive: Proceedings of International Conference on Experiential Knowledge and Emerging Materials (EKSIG 2017), pp. 101-115, 2017.
Elvin Karana, Bahareh Barati, and Elisa Giaccardi, “Living Artefacts: Conceptualizing Livingness as a Material Quality in Everyday Artefacts,” International Journal of Design 14, No. 3, 2020
SUPERNATURAL
EXPLORING DURATIONAL DESIGN
In the age of the Anthropocene, we are becoming more aware of our indelible and wide-spread ecological impact. While it is difficult to fully comprehend the scale and pace of humanity’s ecological effect on the planet, there are moments when our influence intrudes directly into our lives in disturbing ways. For example, plastiglomerates occur when plastic waste melts and fuses with sand, rock, shells, and coral to create a highly durable plastic-rock composite—a new and uncanny geological phenomenon. Plastiglomerates represent a collision of the protracted pace of geological time with the accelerated pace of human time—a temporal incongruity between expectations and reality that make the Anthropocene feel more tangible.
Considering plastiglomerates gives us an opportunity to broaden our thinking about time. Temporal insights can spark a more imaginative approach within industrial design and inform our practice, research, and teaching to consider long-term impact on behalf of the distant future. As a professor and practitioner who deeply cherishes the history and canon of industrial design, I recognize the challenges in how we connect academic concepts with the pragmatic disciplinary constraints of practice today. Consider this article as a brief thought-starter to introduce durational time-centeredness into our disciplinary lexicon with intent to expand our temporal frame.
Design at a
Tree’s Pace
Durational timescapes are conceptual frames that represent a multidimensional perception of time, combine both spatial
and temporal aspects to illustrate various perspectives and scales, and encompass the flow of past, present, and future as a contiguous amount of time. As a driver for design, durational timescapes enable us to think in polytemporal ways—representing a combination of different timescales such as geological time, human time, and the pace of natural, social, or technological processes that influence one another. They also offer the opportunity to move from chronological progression and “clock time” that breaks time into discrete parts. Instead, we can embrace the entirety of time as a continuum that enmeshes the comparatively short lifespans of humans and living creatures with the long lifespans of objects and material. It prompts us to consider different temporal scales and rhythms beyond the immediate human timeframe.
This view of time is exemplified by one of my projects, called The Giving Tree after the Shel Silverstein book. It uses the lifecycle of trees to engage with durational timescapes, urges a more profound consideration of time in both design and fabrication, and reflects upon the relationship between objects and their temporal dimensions. The project generates artifacts by growing wooden handles onto tools such axe heads, saw blades, knives, and hammers, and forming branches into wooden spoons using steel molds.
The process creates a dialogue between nature and human activity. The growth of each component is recorded through photographs, sketches, and written reflections to develop ongoing documentation that captures the gradual changes the trees undergo, including seasonal variations,
damage from weather events, and long-term growth patterns. Along the way, it demonstrates how natural and human-made systems can align to foster collaboration with trees in manufacturing at the pace of nature. This approach takes us out of human time and into a timescape that moves much slower, more deliberately, with greater care, and enables us to engage with trees in new and non-destructive ways to cultivate wooden products. In this way, The Giving Tree offers a radical rethinking of time in manufacturing, inviting us to embrace a symbiotic relationship with nature that honors the deliberate, slow, and sustainable rhythms of life.
Anticipation Made Visible
Anticipation is the act of looking forward; a pleasurable expectation; and the visualization of the future. The act of anticipating opens an imaginative space to construct mental projections that manifest internal hopes, expectations for successful outcomes, and predictions for future events. The ability to anticipate creates a knowable gap between present and future enabling one to consider the unfolding of temporal events.
MoonArk, a highly collaborative and massively
integrated project to create a lunar museum of humankind, was launched to the moon in January 2024. Impossibly small, broadly diverse, hyper-light, yet incredibly robust, the MoonArk is designed to last thousands of years to project humanity in a beautiful, hopeful, and significant way, representing a snapshot of Earth today that we can send forward in time for future humans to discover.
Designed as the primary cultural payload aboard Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic Technology’s first private mission to the moon, MoonArk is intended to spark wonderment for future humans through poetically intertwined visual narratives of the arts, humanities, sciences and technologies. Contained within its four independent 2” x 2” chambers are thousands of images, poems, pieces of music, nano-objects, mechanisms, and earthly samples, woven through complex narratives that blur the boundaries between worlds seen and unseen. The extreme temporal reach of the MoonArk provides the opportunity to consider its durational, cultural, and material effects for today, for a distant tomorrow, and for an incredibly long arc of time in between.
Beginning as a deep time experiment, the project leveraged industrial design methods and processes to
A 3D-printed steel axe head is shown here being absorbed into a branch that will become its handle. (Photo: Mark Baskinger, PhD, IDSA)
achieve longevity in scales of time that out-distanced the sum of all recorded history. It is light enough to launch into space and robust enough to survive the effects of transit, landing, and residence on the lunar surface. To accomplish this, MoonArk is fabricated in aluminum, gold, sapphire, and titanium, and can endure extended exposure to vast temperature swings, ultraviolet radiation, and impacts from space particles and cosmic debris. These durable materials and innovative fabrication techniques provide a sense of certain survival against extreme yet typical extraterrestrial environments. That in turn fuels a strong sense of anticipation that this propositional artifact could withstand the test of time, endure for thousands of years, bridge human cultures across millennia, and preserve its encoded messages far into a future we can’t yet imagine. Our anticipation for the moment of discovery drives an innate desire to look far ahead and fosters a continuity of purpose that integrates past events, present actions, and future aspirations into a coherent trajectory and continuum that reaches beyond our temporal limits.
Implications
As we trek further into the uncharted territory of the Anthropocene, there is an evident need for new sustainable ideas and imaginative approaches that stretch the coordinates of our understanding and create new space for industrial design’s contributions. We are the responsible materialists and opportunity seekers who can inspire new material practices, material relationships, and material processes that move our material culture forward in alignment with our ethical and ecological values.
Brian Eno, composer and environmental advocate, once said, “In this, the 21st century, we may need icons more than ever before. Our conversation about time and the future must necessarily be global, so it needs to be inspired and consolidated by images that can transcend language and geography. As artists and culturemakers begin making time, change and continuity their subjectmatter, they will legitimize and make emotionally attractive a new and important conversation.” Durational design is an invitation and a provocation to consider the length of the journey toward our distant future with as much energy as our anticipation for the destination.
Mark Baskinger is Professor, Chair of Product Design, and Director of the Joseph Ballay Center for Design Fusion in the School of Design at Carnegie Mellon University.
The Carnegie Mellon MoonArk, shown in stacked form. (Photos: Dylan Vitone)
SUPERNATURAL
INTRODUCING NIA
For decades, our interaction with data has been confined to screens and keyboards. NIA seeks to disrupt this paradigm by emphasizing voice, gaze, gesture, and an ever-present intelligent assistant that responds to natural language commands, bridging the gap between digital immersion and face-to-face connection.
NIA, short for Nomadic Intelligent Assistant, draws inspiration from the Swahili word nia, meaning purpose and goal.
Originally conceptualized with the Cyberdesk, a speculative prosthetic information port I proposed in 1993, NIA revisits these ideas but now deploys ubiquitous connectivity and wearable tech. It addresses contemporary challenges such as digital addiction and the balance between virtual and real life.
By 2032, virtual devices like NIA will fuel a $55.6 billion market. Alongside advancements in AI and augmented reality, these devices signal a transformative shift to seamless integration between our physical and virtual worlds, facilitating communal interactions and enhancing productivity across the task spectrum.
NIA is equipped with sensors to gather and monitor biometric data, including BT, BP, HR, RR, EEG, EMG, PPG, NTC, ECG, GSR, and a 3D accelerometer. Notwithstanding these affordances, NIA’s main role is to be a constant companion and sentinel, at your service to handle tedious tasks and assist you with managing your work and play. Users toggle between the virtual and the default hands-free modes with a quick head tilt, pivoting the display up on the head or down over the eyes.
NIA augurs a future where technology is a natural
extension of ourselves, enhancing our well-being, creativity, and efficiency.
Life With NIA
Awake, awake! A golden pink ripple of dawn pries at the horizon. Eileen stirs, unfurling as the remnants of dreams evaporate into the morning air. On the nightstand rests a sleek modern talisman. NIA, or her Nomadic Intelligent Assistant, is poised in silence, anticipating her next need or desire.
She reaches for NIA, an elegant, lithe headset controlled by gestures and voice. A subtle tilt of her chin kindles a soft glow over her eyes. The room blooms with a subtle layer of augmented reality—the tangible now meshing with the digital.
“Good morning, Eileen,” whispers NIA, in its husky, rich voice. “Your heart rate is steady, your 6 hours and 43 minutes of sleep was deep and restful. How shall we begin today, and what should be done by the end of the day?”
Eileen smiles her assent and the air before her fills with gossamer windows displaying her agenda, the day’s news, and her most pertinent emails. As she brushes her teeth, NIA reads the most pressing messages, effortlessly responding to routine requests in Eileen’s characteristic style. NIA engages her with a gentle, unobtrusive presence, keeping Eileen’s hands and eyes free and untethered to a device.
Eggs sputter while coffee beans grind at a high hiss, and then the burble of brown lightning drips into frothed milk. During this morning’s minuet, a flick of Eileen’s wrist scrolls through a hovering recipe—her movements so
Opposite: NIA is a sleek, lightweight augmented reality headset whose main focus is to deploy technology as a prosthesis, extending human capability rather than replacing it. Superimposing your personalized, digital desktop over your field of vision like the viewfinder of a manual SLR camera, NIA layers your virtual dashboard over your view of the world. Visualization by Duvit Mark Kakunegoda. Research assisatnce: Ava Deconcini.
natural, they seem more like a thought than a command. With a nod, NIA connects her with her sister and their laughter fills the room, melting the time zones between them as they share the intimacy of the ridiculous and the mundane.
Once a dull passage, Eileen’s commute is transformed into a serene interlude of productivity. NIA now pivots lightly on her eyes, becoming a pair of sunglasses, the lenses adapting to the morning light. The car glides through the streets, and her discreet co-pilot, NIA, overlays the optimal route onto the windshield, even suggesting detour to a newly opened café. Eileen’s voice commands without haste, dictating responses, planning her day, all while the road unwinds beneath her.
At work, NIA is indispensable, yet unobtrusive. In the meeting room, faces greet one another with warmth, even as NIA hovers discreetly above each brow. As the presentation begins, the room darkens by degrees, a collective nod of agreement lowering the NIAs over everyone’s eyes. Eileen, composed and graceful, gestures with the ease of a maestro, summoning documents, images, and notes, her thoughts given form by the mere movement of her hand. When she finishes, a head tilt, slight and precise, relinquishes control to the next presenter in a seamless, unspoken handoff.
To conclude the meeting, everyone flips their NIAs back up on their heads to say goodbye face-to-face. As Eileen makes her way back to her desk, NIA summarizes her assignments in order of priority and has already performed much of the research, presenting possible conclusions. Eileen gives feedback and directions on all the assignments and heads out of the office.
Lunch is a respite in the dappled light of a park’s mature trees. Once more her sunglasses, NIA monitors Eileen’s well-being delicately suggesting a brisk walk, a drink of water, and some mid-day stretches. Glad for the reminder, Eileen complies. Her mother’s familiar voice interrupts this. NIA pulls photos from a recent trip, and the images floating in the air bring memories to life helping mother and daughter reconnect.
The afternoon is a challenge—complex, demanding— but NIA is there, a quiet, steady sentinel. The light in the
room dims, creating a cocoon of concentration primed to incubate and develop ideas, forms, and solutions. Virtual screens materialize at her command, tools, and references arrayed before her like a scholar’s beloved tomes. Eileen works, absorbed, undistracted, confident that NIA guards the perimeter of her focus, filtering the world, allowing only the urgent to interrupt.
As the evening draws near, NIA remains a loyal companion. At the gym, it tracks her progress, a quiet voice of encouragement, adjusting her routine with a sensitivity that borders on intuition. Dinner with friends, both present and distant, is a shared joy, with NIA facilitating the connections, weaving the strands of conversation into a rich tapestry of laughter and camaraderie. Later, in the quiet of her home, NIA transforms into an entertainment hub, conjuring a cinema-like experience.
The weekend arrives, and Eileen escapes to a remote cabin where connectivity is a luxury. Ever resourceful, NIA has anticipated Eileen’s needs. Its microdrive is preloaded with all the data Eileen might require, allowing her to work offline. After a refreshing walk through the woods, Eileen settles by the fire, and with a nod NIA springs to life, transforming the rustic cabin into a space of creativity. Like her muse, NIA is ever ready with images and references, even making suggestions in its soft, calm voice.
As night falls, Eileen prepares for sleep, her body sinking into the comfort of the moment. NIA reminds her of tomorrow’s journey and the need for rest. It transitions to night mode, its presence fading into the background, a silent sentry. With a final nod, Eileen deactivates the screens, places NIA in its minimalist charging dock, and drifts into untroubled sleep, secure in the knowledge that her intelligent assistant and loyal companion, will be there to greet her with dawn’s first light.
—Lisa Krohn ideas@krohndesign.com
Born to envision future scenarios, Lisa Krohn also designs experiences and objects for the present, sharing her passion for this with students and clients. See krohndesign.com.
Opposite: The Cyberdesk, developed in 1993, envisioned person and machine merging into one seamless collaborative super-being. It had two prototypes made of two types of castable elastomeric resin. Both have plastic, metal, and glass aggregate. They are now in the permanent collections of the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, and SF MoMA. Shout-out to Christopher Myers for working on both prototypes and photos.
SUPERNATURAL
DESIGN IS FLUID
The relationship between nature and science is forever changing. Image created by the author using Midjourney.
Can AI help us create “ideal” products? And how must our design process evolve to leverage this new technology?
Before leveraging AI’s potential, creatives must first overcome the familiar hurdle: the blank page awaiting innovation. At the beginning of a project, I often find myself staring at a blank page, wondering where to begin. Research has been done, users have been determined, branding is set. All we need to do is draw, right? There are times when the answer seems obvious, and you immediately doodle out that low-hanging fruit. Then there are times when you are really scratching your head as to what this thing looks like!
To find inspiration that spurs our imagination and help us come up with creative, award-winning designs, for this last century at least, we have transitioned from having to observe things directly in nature, to being able to view recorded, infinitely repeatable experiences. This understanding has taken on different resultant forms, such as painting, photography, television, the internet, and now AI.
Each of these transitions sparked some form of resistance by society’s gatekeepers. After all, they invested much time and effort in the previous medium and understandably didn’t want that livelihood to be replaced. Meanwhile, they muttered about how the new technology was “unnatural” and would be the death of creativity. As with all transitions, the shift was awkward at first yet upon further reflection became just another tool in a creator’s tool kit, to be used to express their intent more so than before.
Today AI tools are accelerating so rapidly that before you have had a chance to finish your cup of coffee in the morning, another new app has appeared, promising more than the last. On a recent webinar discussing the integration of AI into the design process, I asked if the experts in attendance had nailed down a workflow with what they currently use, or if it was in a constant state of flux. Their response: They’ll jump from one piece of software to another in an instant if it’s compelling enough. Zero loyalty, a very lean mindset. So, it’s not about finding
the right technology. Rather, we all must develop mission statements to drive our decisions as part of a larger effort to develop better ideas.
We’ve now entered the era of Augmented Design, where AI plays a collaborative role with designers, allowing us to spend more time developing our ideas more thoroughly. I believe AI’s greatest use in our creative atmosphere, without too much ethical worry, will lie at the beginning of the concept phase. There, we take incomplete ideas that we digest and draw inspiration from, and then put pen to paper, or stylus to screen, or controllers to VR space. This is no different from when we went on Pinterest and Tumblr, or made clippings from trendy magazines, or took pictures of products in stores while trying not to look too shady!
Does the age of Augmented Design mean it’s possible to create truly “ideal” and timeless products? It’s worth asking what “ideal” might mean for industrial designers. Is it some combination of nature and science that we could not have imagined before, or had the manpower to develop until now? But the relationship between nature and science is forever changing. In the past we were determined to create products and experiences that separate ourselves from nature, to create sanitized, safe spaces, only to change our mind. We continue to flirt with nature here and there and see that despite our ingenuity, the answer was there all along.
Remember SolidThinking? It was CAD software that came out in the mid-2000s; it calculated where material was needed and where it wasn’t, depending on what forces were acted upon it. Naturally, you got bird-bone style structures, bringing bio-mimicry to CAD in a new way. Most would take solidThinking as inspiration and then redesign (which seemed a pity when the “naturally” ideal form was already determined) to create lightweight yet strong components for motorcycles and race-car applications. SolidThinking was generative design before it trended in the mid-teens and thus seems to have fallen into obscurity, likely because at the time most industrial designers were getting to grips with and swearing at SolidWorks and Creo (née: ProE). (Side note: I believe this is still happening.)
And consider this: Is there a future of design where pen still meets paper? I love sketching and working through ideas that way. Running those ideas through apps such as Vizcom scratches an itch and helps me determine truly if an idea has merit or not. I would be naïve, though, if I didn’t believe that designers in the future who with equal skill to my penmanship can craft an amazing prompt that provides nearly complete designs. Would they be lesser designers? Are they exhibiting the same level of creativity? Designers today are donning the Oculus headset and doing the VR dance while creating beautiful designs, having never touched a pen. We are almost there!
I believe this acceleration in technology and skill will allow us to ask tougher questions and get viable answers now that we have a virtual AI team at our disposal. For example, how does nature deal with waste? How can we better manage water to prevent droughts? Can we finally develop education paths perfectly catered to each child to
give them the greatest chance of success? Ask AI to put together 100 different ways, by 100 different processes, and it will do it. Not all answers will be correct; we still need a human hand. But the pace at which AI could yield viable answers will surpass what we as humans are capable of today.
It’s clear that I am an AI optimist, but I am skeptical on certain parts of AI collaboration. Creating personas using AI still reeks too much of confirmation bias when trying to justify a product’s existence, and marketing with AI images is fraught with challenges and debatable acceptability.
Let me put it another way: Imagine opening a magazine that has an exhilarating ad of a person doing a fun outdoor activity. Looks wholesome, the person is smiling and enjoying the moment. Then you learn that this person doesn’t exist, never has, and is an amalgamation of 10,000 different people.
How does that make you feel? Maybe we will overcome
This truck design concept was developed by the author using Midjourney, informed by the aesthetic of Casio watches.
this issue---how much of advertising is “reality,” anyway? Does AI deliver us to a new version of the uncanny valley, where we’re pandered to by virtual humans? Maybe there is a happy middle where the bones of an idea are created using AI, and it’s our job as designers to flesh it out. With this constant change in tools and methods in design, can we flow with it? Do we stick with the old gatekeeper model or embrace boundary-pushing for a greater purpose? Will this combination of natural and artificial create a universal ideal, or a world is that problematically utopian and ignorant of inherent subjectivity? I believe we
will hit new levels of innovation if we accept change and act fluidly in our methodology while developing new products. We need to become experts at becoming experts. The future security of our profession depends on it.
—Per Magnus Sköld, IDSA magnusbydesign@gmail.com
Per Magnus Sköld is senior designer for Mako Design, and has 20 years of experience in industrial design for airlines, tech, and startups.
A sportscar design, first sketched by Per Magnus Sköld, then completed using Vizcom.
SUPERNATURAL
DESIGNING OUT OF CLIMATE FATIGUE IN DATA-INFUSED WAYS
Constant doom-and-gloom rhetoric around climate change can make the topic feel overwhelming and disconnected from our daily lives. The complexity of climate data, often presented through numbers, charts, and preaching, only adds to this detachment, making the information hard to relate to our senses and emotions. Many of us are left overstimulated yet desensitized.
How can design combat this fatigue and provide fresh insights and incentives around climate change? Can we make climate data and stories more tangible, accessible, memorable, and fun? As a multidisciplinary designer focused on human-centered, planet-conscious, and datainformed approaches across digital and physical mediums, I’d like to offer three examples of how design and art can engage the public with data-driven, science-informed climate narratives, foster empathy, and empower better choices.
Treelendar: A Calendar Honoring the Tree That Became Its Paper
A calendar often comes with printed themed graphics,
but its design rarely speaks to what a calendar is, where it comes from, and how its material is sourced. Treelendar is a new calendar designed in 2023 by VLab, a firm founded by I-Yang Huang and myself. It reconsiders the relationship between paper and tree. Every piece of paper was once a tree, and Treelendar shows users the seasonal color and the beauty of the tree, day-by-day, as if it hadn’t been cut down to be made into this calendar. The action of tearing off a page every day alludes to the consumption of trees; by flipping the calendar pages day by day, users see the color change from brown to light green to deep green to yellow to white. Users think beyond the desk, feel the change of seasons, and remember the consumption of this tree.
By making the users active participants in the unfolding story of the seasons, Treelendar turns the simple act of date-checking into a daily environmental reflection. Compact and adaptable, it caters to either wall or desk use, serving users with both practicality and a daily visual connection to the natural world. Easy to use and sustainably built, Treelendar redefines our interaction with
Opposite and Above: Treelendar shows users the seasonal color and the beauty of the tree, day-by-day, as if it hadn’t been cut down to be made into a calendar. Images by Tiange Wang and I-Yang Huang.
time and our role in the cycle of nature.
Treelendar promotes sustainability and raises awareness of natural resource conservation by representing the transience of nature and the natural origins of materials. As a daily presence in the living space, Treelendar serves as a constant reminder of our connection to nature, the beauty of the environment, and the impact of our consumption.
DataWagashi: A Dessert That Tells a Multisensory Story About Climate
Inspired by wagashi, a traditional Japanese confection designed to be a microcosm of time, space, and nature, DataWagashi is a new medium that aims to make data tangible, accessible, and fun by blending taste, smell, touch, texture, and physical interaction into the vocabulary of data communication.
By synthesizing food attributes and data through a custom workflow that integrates data analysis, data-driven climate narrative building, digital algorithmic prototyping, physical prototyping, and experience design, the project
offers a vivid and more profound communication of messages and insights, and transforms data storytelling from numbers on a screen to a multisensory experience open to all.
For example, Ato is a DataWagashi set that shows the environmental impact of food production. (Ato is the Japanese word for “trace.”) An analysis of a dataset that includes more than 2,000 entries of food produce reveals insights into the correlation between the type of food, the water footprint of their production, and the breakdown of carbon emissions in different steps in the food production process. Our team at VLab hand-picked nine foods to study with Ato based on the criteria of edibility and how their data communicates the striking differences in environment footprint among the production of different types of food. Imagine walking into your favorite cafe and ordering desserts not based on ingredients, but by picking up a menu called “Biodiversity Forecast in 60 Years” and choosing from “Rainforest,” “Desert,” or “Ocean.” You might have a weekly smoothie subscription that alters its
Above: A display of DataWagashi cubes. The amount of coffee base in each wagashi cube represents the carbon footprint of the food’s production; the casted ingredients above the base provide an index of what type of food it is. The heavier the carbon footprint, the more coffee in the piece, and the more bitter it tastes. (Photo: Huiwen Shi)
formula based on a synthesis of the average air quality (climate data) and how active you are (personal health tracking data). The next day, a box of unique foods arrives, driven by your data choices, offering delightful surprises: customized desserts, smoothies adjusted weekly based on climate and health data, bespoke plant-based dishes, and other gourmet treats. This not only gives you a tasty treat but also connects you to a bigger data story, inspiring awareness and action.
DiGiWAGASHi is an extension of the DataWagashi project. It is a generative AI-powered app that enables people to get DataWagashi recipes by choosing different data stories and make DataWagashis at home. This experimental app is designed to bring climate awareness efforts into consumer products and maximizing their reach by open-sourcing the experience —users receive a recipe based on the dataset they choose and its corresponding design.
Climate messages often don’t mesh well with products because, when making purchase decisions, we usually prioritize the products’ price, quality, function, and other factors instead of carbon savings. The DiGiWAGASHi app tries to find a different way in by embedding climate messages in an everyday task (food ordering) commonly done by many, while adding a playful twist to the experience of the task. Imagine opening the app and being greeted by a menu where each item is described by its data value
instead of ingredients. Users make choices based on data, not flavors, and the taste remains a surprise until the food arrives, reflecting the users’ climate data selections. This approach not only conveys the climate message in a fun, interactive way but also makes ordering food a memorable experience connected to climate awareness.
Purple Origin: An Installation Exploring the History of Purple and Nature
Purple Origin is a mixed-media installation that draws attention to the tension between natural resources, technological advancements, cultural attachment, and ecological preservation through a tracing of the history of the color purple.
The first known man-made shade of purple was Tyrian purple, created from Murex trunculus sea snails. Dye makers harvested mucus from the shell, heated it in an alkaline solution, dipped yarn into the mixture, and then exposed it to sunlight, which turned the yarn purple. A staggering 2,500 snails were needed to produce just 1 gram of this purple dye, making it a symbol of rare luxury and power in ancient times. Though purple has retained its prestigious aura, synthetic dyes and digitalized colors have democratized its accessibility (and, fortunately, saved the lives of a great many snails).
Purple Origin delves deep into the captivating tale of purple’s origin by transforming it into a tangible and
Above: The amount of coffee base in each wagashi cube represents the carbon footprint of the food’s production; the casted ingredients above the base provide an index of what type of food it is. The heavier the carbon footprint, the more coffee in the piece, and the more bitter it tastes. (Photo: Tiange Wang and I-Yang Huang)
visceral experience that connects to themes of material consumption and environmental consciousness. Beyond recounting purple’s rich history, the installation by our firm prompts viewers to confront the dichotomy of progress and preservation. The transformation from natural to synthetic dyes symbolizes not just advancements in technology but also our evolving relationship with nature. As visitors immerse themselves in Purple Origin, they are prompted to ponder the cost of luxury, the value of sustainable alternatives, and our ever-present responsibility to protect and revere the delicate balance of nature’s treasures.
What’s Next
So how can we better design out of climate-change fatigue? The process begins by rethinking how we present data, transforming text-based information into something capable of carrying multimodal information—like edible objects, but also sounds, lights, responsive wearables, and much more. Instead of just making a deck that tells people there has been a 20-degree sea water temperature increase, why not design a way for people to directly feel the difference? Imagine experiencing wildfires not through statistics, but by tasting the severity of raging flames through a range of spicy dishes, hearing the before-and-after of dwindling forest chorus, and touching the roughness of the scorched grass. By physicalizing data, we translate numbers back into experiences that can be seen, touched, and felt, connecting more deeply with the real world.
To effectively engage users, leverage familiar mediums and behaviors. Treelendar combines practicality with a daily visual connection to nature through a wall or desk calendar, redefining our interaction with time and our role in the natural cycle. DataWagashi uses the universal appeal of food to draw interest in climate issues, providing lasting climate insights through a multisensory experience. Purple Origin contrasts the familiar element of purple with its obscure history, deepening our understanding of nature. This approach can be applied to other common items, revealing their environmental history through engaging, multisensory experiences. Consider using other familiar activities with gathering power, such as concerts, games, and wine nights, to effectively convey climate messages.
Generative AI can transform how we interact with climate data, moving beyond charts and graphs that often feel alienating. By integrating AI into storytelling, we can convert large datasets into tangible information carriers across digital and physical platforms. Simple mapping rules allow data—static, real-time, or customized by user input—to manifest dynamically as graphics, text, sound,
and even food. This approach bridges the gap between digital information and physical entities, creating datadriven recipes, playlists that shift with real-time trends, algorithmically woven textiles, ambient gadgets that adapt to environmental changes, and vending machines that dispense data-inspired poems on bamboo paper, making abstract data interactively tangible.
Don’t Forget Poetry
To combat climate fatigue, design should engage both the emotional and intellectual realms. While climate change is often viewed through a scientific lens, our relationship with nature has always been poetic. The narratives of various cultures have highlighted the delicate beauty of nature. We can continue to foster emotional connections to climate change by incorporating poetry and beauty into our designs—through concepts, forms, interactions, and storytelling. This approach transforms the perception of climate change from daunting, abstract and didactic to approachable, relatable, and inspiring.
—Tiange Wang isabel.tg.wang@gmail.com
Tiange Wang is an award-winning and internationally exhibiting multidisciplinary designer and creative technologist. Her work investigates innovative interactive paradigms among humans, (emerging) technology, and the environment.
Above: A staggering 2,500 snails were needed to produce just 1 gram of this purple dye, making it a symbol of rare luxury and power in ancient times. (Photo: I-Yang Huang)
Bruce Hannah is a professor emeritus at Pratt Institute and designer of the Knoll Hannah Desk System, chosen as an IDSA
Design of the Decade by IDSA in 1990. This year, MillerKnoll has reintroduced the Morrison Hannah Office Chair on its 50th anniversary.
READINGS IN MACHINE INTELLIGENCE Laboratory Near Future
Love in the Age of AI: Exploring Polygamous Human-AI Relationships
421-P5Q1-/#2 $39.99 Siri
In this groundbreaking work, delve into the complex and fascinating world of polygamous relationships between humans and artificial intelligences. "Love in the Age of AI" examines the social, ethical, and emotional aspects of these unconventional connections, offering insights into the challenges and opportunities they present. Through case studies and expert commentary, readers will gain a deeper understanding of this emerging relationship dynamic, and how it is reshaping our understanding of love and partnership.
Creative Synergy: The Psychology of Human-AI Collaborative Artistry
107-R1D9-/#7 $7.99 Mike Kruzeniski
Navigating the world of artificial intelligence can be complex, but this book simplifies the process by teaching you how to establish strong, harmonious relationships with your AI-driven devices. With tips on communication, understanding AI emotions, and fostering trust, you'll discover how to create a cooperative environment that benefits both you and your intelligent companions.
AI Partners: Navigating Legal Arrangements in Human-AI Relationships
350-Q5E2-/#1 $49.99 Ari Birnbaum
Just like humans, AI-driven devices can experience emotional turmoil. This compassionate guide provides practical advice on identifying signs of emotional distress in your AI, offering support, and helping them overcome challenges. Learn how to manage the emotional well-being of your intelligent devices to ensure a happier, healthier household.
As artificial intelligence becomes an increasingly significant part of our emotional lives, polyamorous relationships involving humans and AI are becoming more prevalent. "Beyond Boundaries" takes a deep dive into these unique connections, examining the social, ethical, and emotional intricacies that arise. Through personal accounts, expert analysis, and guidance, readers will gain a richer understanding of the challenges and rewards of these unconventional partnerships and how they are redefining the landscape of love and connection.
The Brains of the House: The 10th Annual Schockley Pricing Guide
6-107-R1D9-/#7 $49.99 Schockley Group
Schockley Group annual pricing guide and comprehensive products reviews of domestic AI appliances, including food preparation and entertainment systems from CogniCore Systems and Synaptech, eldercare articulated robots from Intellitronix-MindForge, domestic surveillence systems from Nexus Intelligence Corp and Tyrell Corp, child rearing room agents from Playskool and AIgility Engineering, and many more.
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SUPERNATURAL
REFLECTING ON WATER
Water is fundamental to life, but it’s easily taken for granted—a risky attitude as climate becomes more extreme and water scarcity becomes a crisis around the globe. When we started our Hydrific venture three years ago to focus on addressing water sustainability issues, we were driven by our parent company LIXIL’s purpose to “make better homes a reality for everyone, everywhere.”
Given LIXIL’s focus in manufacturing water-related products with brands like American Standard and Grohe, the team saw the potential to make a significant impact on water sustainability and management within the home. We centered our efforts around the question, “How might we make water conservation more enjoyable and easy?” The co-founding team quickly recognized that giving people an intuitive way to gain more insight and control over their water usage lays the foundation for positive change.
Through that process, we developed Droplet, a smart home water-monitoring device that non-invasively uses ultrasonic sensors to measure all water flowing through the home’s main water pipe. It connects to an easy-to-use mobile app, providing real-time and historic data on water usage, customizable alerts for possible leaks and high water usage events, and, through machine learning, identifies where water is going by recognizing the unique patterns created by various fixtures like toilets, faucets, and showers, helping to save up to 30 percent on water bills.
Our goal was more than just providing information and
data. It was to create a product that fosters mindfulness and a connection to water, giving our everyday water usage more context and deeper understanding. We applied this deeper purpose to the formation of new design values: clear, helpful, trusted, enjoyable. These elements are embedded across the sensor’s design, from the device housing and clamping mechanism to the mobile app UX/UI, packaging, website, and every touchpoint. Droplet reflects a design philosophy that cultivates mindfulness and a deeper connection to everyday water use through design elements that express multiple values: intuitive and transparent (clear), empathetic and approachable (helpful), accurate and straightforward (trusted), fun and engaging (enjoyable).
Drawing Inspiration from Nature
Droplet is inspired by the power of water. Modeled after the soft smooth shape of a river rock, its design symbolizes how water shapes a rock over time, mirroring Droplet’s purpose of shaping water usage at home. The sensor’s translucent aqua lid, shaped like a wave, is not just decorative; it helps to automatically align and center the main water pipe precisely over the ultrasonic sensors when Droplet is clamped over it. This ensures there is no wrong way to install Droplet, making the user experience of setup incredibly simple and straightforward.
The wave design ensures the correct alignment and orientation over a variety of pipe sizes and materials
Opposite: An exploded view of Droplet’s first-off tooling components highlights the simplicity of its design, which is designed for repairability and streamlined for efficient manufacturing and assembly. It’s also designed for foolproof end-user setup in a variety of contexts. (Photo: Emilie Williams)
commonly found in homes, and the soft aqua LED light, which indicates a good connection to the pipe, is reminiscent of a pool of water. These intentional design choices make the essence of water a visible part of the product experience, making every interaction a moment of subtle awareness. Each touch point with Droplet is crafted to remind users of water’s importance, creating a deeper connection to and awareness of daily water usage.
From Physical to Digital
These design values extend to the design of the mobile app as well. Our talented UX/UI team —Uma Dhamija, Petri Pennanen, and Robin Pettersson —then applied these same brand and design values across the Droplet app, to help immerse users in a digital ocean of awareness and insight. At the surface level, users receive high-level summary information as a meditative wave animation plays in the background. As they scroll down, users dive deeper into their data breakdown showing usage by fixture and more detailed usage trends. As you go deeper, the animation changes to a deeper ocean view, as if diving into the depths of water usage data. We wanted to make exploring water usage data not just informative and easy to understand at a glance, but truly engaging, using the visual design that reflects our values to draw users into a deeper understanding of their impact and give them tools to more consciously use water every day.
Droplet’s packaging extends the same story, with a design theme of ‘water waves changing to sound waves’ and even a wave-inspired protective fold design that opens to reveal the device. The box is made from simple, ecofriendly, easily recyclable, and compostable materials. This attention to detail extends through every element, from the easy, non-invasive installation process to the intuitive, clear insights provided by the app, and even the online purchasing experience and customer service processes we’re developing—all aimed at making water conservation simple and straightforward.
The Impact of People-Driven Insights
In crafting Droplet, we conducted over 200 hundred stakeholder interviews during incubation—62 pain-point interviews with home and property owners, 35 subject
matter expert interviews, 79 storyboard interviews, and over 30 prototype interviews. Since then, the team has conducted over 1,000 user interviews, discussing and testing our assumptions and validating and updating to hone the final product. Our core method is to explore the issues and pain that people are experiencing, document and synthesize the findings, then apply these learnings to help reimagine what a smart home product could be. Our approach was holistic and comprehensive, focusing on user experience at every point to address complex conservation issues simply and effectively. We know that people are very aware of water’s increasing scarcity, but we also heard that people often feel powerless to make a difference. With Droplet, we want to help people make small changes that add up to something significant. We’ve discovered that a smart, simple solution which empowers individuals to take control and save water can help create change —and we’ve already seen these changes take effect in our early beta test group. Leaky toilets that might have gone unnoticed are fixed, forgotten garden hoses are turned off, and one beta tester installed an automatic hose shut off timer after realizing how much water was being used in their garden.
With each iteration of Droplet, we’ve refined numerous details and user experiences to align with our values. We developed a simple knob with a self-aligning clamp to attach to the pipe after discovering that improper alignment was causing failed installs. Recognizing that the installation process can be difficult without sufficient feedback, we increased the Aqua LED feedback to be highly visible from any installation angle, often in poorly lit areas of the home. The in-app onboarding guides users step-by-step, allowing them to be up and running in minutes. The UX and product team tested and refined this onboarding experience, distilling the process to find the best balance of information and guidance.
Once installed, the dashboard breaks down complex high-resolution flow data into simple hour-by-hour volumes, which can be analyzed by year, month, week, and day. This allows users to identify peak usage moments and compare them to previous times and usage averages. The ‘now’ view provides a snapshot of any current active flow. Every element is crafted to facilitate adoption, awareness, and continued use, all aimed at driving positive change.
This comprehensive human- and environmental-centered approach, from high-level concept to the smallest details, reflects our belief that with the right tools, we can make a significant impact. We strive to ensure that saving water can fit seamlessly into modern living, blending sustainability with the joy and beauty that water brings to our lives.
Launching a Community of Conservation
On April 18th, 2024, we concluded a successful Kickstarter campaign that attracted 644 dedicated backers and raised $114,507—all within 11 minutes of going live. The decision to use crowdfunding stemmed from our startup mindset and the desire to explore a new product category in a unique way. Kickstarter allowed us to validate our efforts, gauge real interest in Droplet, and include our earliest users in the development process. It was an important step to ensure we were on the right track before advancing further. Now that the Kickstarter has concluded, Droplet will begin shipping in October 2024, and the team is gearing up for a full launch with an MSRP of $229—a price we have worked hard to keep low to make Droplet accessible.
The campaign not only validated our efforts but also highlighted the collective desire for tangible solutions to environmental challenges. Droplet offers high-resolution water usage monitoring, real-time insights, utility bill savings, and peace of mind with leak alerts, making it a pivotal new tool in a world confronting water scarcity and increasingly unpredictable and extreme weather patterns.
The feedback and engagement from our backers have been invaluable, shaping Droplet into a device that truly resonates with users and addresses critical issues. This success fuels our commitment to continue innovating and empowering individuals to make a meaningful impact on water conservation— inspired by nature.
Emilie Williams, IDSA emilie@emilie.us
Emilie Williams is a cofounder and creative director at Hydrific, part of LIXIL. Currently developing smart home products, she has focused her career on designs for better living.
At the surface level, users of the Droplet app receive high-level summary information as a meditative wave animation plays in the background. As they scroll down, users dive deeper into their data.
INDUSTRIAL DESIGN NEEDS TO EVOLVE
In case you hadn’t noticed, the recent pullback of resources in the tech sector has caused major ripples through the design and tech community. Many large corporations have reduced their design staff and put projects on hold, waiting for better economic times. Design studios have scaled back their teams in response, as outsourcing projects have also dried up. It’s at moments like these that I reflect on the field of industrial design and its importance. One thing is for sure: the profession must continually evolve to remain relevant and valued.
Product styling has become completely commoditized, thanks to low-cost designers across the globe that can compete and win based on price. This dynamic has been pushing down the market value of design services. I witnessed this first-hand during my visit to CES this year, where most of the Internet of Things products on display were coming from China and were, to be honest, well-designed and built.
The rapid growth of AI also impacts the value of aesthetics-driven designers. Now, just about anyone can input some keywords and produce reasonably good renderings of a product. Yes, you could argue that the results lack a seasoned designer’s originality, craft, and sense of the near future of design aesthetics. But I can assure you that clients, always looking for ways to cut costs, are not as sophisticated as we are about design. It’s easy for them to consider AI a “good enough” approach.
Moreover, the glut of industrial designers emerging from design schools is further pushing down our value. There are too many graduates for the available jobs in the market, and training in industrial design is too focused on acquiring and developing skills. This vocational approach to design education produces industrial designers who are only prepared for a limited range of options when it comes to finding a job outside industrial design.
So, where is the real value in industrial design now? The value that drives up salaries and project fees to compete with other professions? I believe that our core value is making products easy to use, intuitive—and, yes, delightful. But our core mission should always start with developing a design process that is more rigorous, almost scientific in nature. Our advantage is our capacity to develop a deeper understanding of the people we’re designing for. Have a hypothesis, build an experience prototype, test it, and then iterate.
There are multiple ways to develop hypotheses, such as market research, user interviews, and emerging technology. But if we don’t demonstrate rigor in our process and focus on results that can be quantified, we risk being relegated to aestheticians in the eyes of clients. We don’t just come on to a project once the engineering is done to make things look pretty. But sadly, in the market, this is often how we’re understood.
Change won’t come fast and easy. When we design new products, we need to think about ergonomics, intuitive interfaces, and a rational sequence in the use of something from beginning to end. These types of activities are done alongside engineering, interaction, and experience design, and require collaborative teamwork. The result is a product that is immediately understandable, with logical steps of engagement, and that’s ultimately effortless to use.
Most products on the market are not like this, so there is much need for the type of designer I am describing. For example, why are EV chargers so complicated to use? They should be easier to use than filling your car with gasoline. Or why does my printer sometimes work and sometimes not, for no good explainable reason? Why does my car no longer recognize me as the driver? Why is the US Postal Service experience so awful? Why is my smart speaker constantly updating, when I just want it to play music?
The need for rigorous design only grows more apparent when you consider that technology is becoming pervasive in all areas of human existence. Industrial designers must take a holistic approach to solving users’ challenges beyond the physical look of things. Ultimately, when a product’s components are organized in a way that fits the user’s physical interaction and the product interface is intuitive, it leads to a harmonious experience where the aesthetics complement the functionality.
I am positive about the future of industrial design---so long as we reanalyze what is needed and what we can do to make the world a little less complicated and a little more enjoyable.
—Maximillian Burton, IDSA max@industrialcraft.com
Maximillian Burton is an industrial designer with 35 years of experience, blending physical and digital design to create innovative products for global brands and startups. He serves on the IDSA Board of Directors.
