Building 'life' and 'radiance' into 21st century design
By Victoria Kuan

(Published in 'Campus & Beyond', a weekly column written by Swinburne academics in the Borneo Post newspaper)

 
While it is true that products are today not purely designed for their functionality and sustainability for environmental factors in the marketplace, there is more depth into the knowledge of how an application, product or service can be a 'buddy' to its end-users.

In an article published in CNN’s "Spirit Of" website, Charlie Devereux commented that the customer is king and quoted Fran Samalionis, a global leader in service design and innovation at IDEO, as saying that customer experience is everything in today's businesses.

As a result of technological advancement and its deployment in every sector of the economy, we now enjoy a seamless and pleasurable experience as we encounter and interact with various systems of design made available to us in an integrated environment.

Compare today’s lifestyle with that of the past decades and you will notice the difference technology has brought into our lives. A superb example is how easy and convenient it is to make business transactions on-line while in the comfort of your home via an Internet-enabled computer.

Product designers of the 21st century have to be resilient in satisfying audience’s "emotional needs" towards the product systems. The product must have an appeal to its audience in order to compete in today's market.

Technically, the systems of design ought to be 'charismatic' while at the same time satisfying and exciting its end-users.

While it is true that most products are created with a user-centered approach that focuses on functionality and usability, the "affective" values of the systems will nevertheless become some of the success factors that determine the level of persuasion with its audience.

The inquiry into the problems of how a product or an application should 'behave' has therefore been tagged with a recent questioning into the emotional or affective aspect of the design.

Try to imagine this scenario: A product system that has 'charisma' and is capable of not only drawing your attention but at the same time intelligently captures your interest as you approach it, with a system that prompts you for high frequency and lasting attention every time you pass by an interactive billboard on a highway.

It is that 'radiating' nature in the product system that we call a 'people power' product and or service. Consumers will surely be excited about the ‘persuasive’ nature of the product and return for more.

Hence from a designer’s perspective, to design for sustainable needs, the designer team or the company responsible for product development needs to consider the other side of its 'face' value: that is, the affective attributes for which the object of design is capable of generating a source of human value or 'social power' from its targeted audience.

Having the yielding power of ‘people value’ to be built into the design process in the product development cycle would enable the system to be perceived as behaving more 'human' and sensitive to its user's needs.

Therefore, the ideal model could be the enhancement of building 'life' and 'radiance' into our designs, to suit the demanding needs of today's audience within an interactive-rich environment.

It is also noted by Charlie Devereux who reported that IDEO has its own human factor team to ensure that end products created by the development team possess 'humanistic' and 'resilience' appeal to its audience.

We have to learn from IDEO's product strategy: by having a little reshaping in the design process to allow the possibilities of a 'customisation' of user experience will then ensure us to position our product well to meet the diverse needs of today's consumer market.

The excellent example of engaging the resilience strategy is, the fast changing landscape of today's social media (social networking tools such as Blogger by Google, MySpace and Facebook), with the distinctive feature of providing user-generated and user-filtered enabled content-type represented in a connected environment.

Some economists predicted that today's social media will slowly replace the traditional passive or mainstream media (newspapers, print and broadcasting).

Just like in the 1980s, the invention of VHS recorders and the availability of improved quality screen devices and display technology have revolutionised the screen business.

Today, most of the tech-savvy young generation is used to the interactive-rich and streaming media such as podcasts, radio and video on demand rather than conventional film and the cinema.

It is all about having the wisdom to build and promote a high level of persuasion factor that determines the 'desirability' in the systems of design. Be it a tangible product or a quality service, both entities need to remain as cutting-edge as ever for today's interactive market's consumption and distribution.

There is always something more than just an extension of the tangible assets -- the appeal: the intangibles or emotional side of its 'face' value as it appeals to its audience.

Overall, a product should possess a 'persuasive' nature to its audience; similarly a quality service should be delivered in a genuinely 'desirable' mode that makes its customers tick.

One key question is that perhaps a strategic design model will be needed for crafting 21st century products, applications and systems with emotional values. This definitely is an area that will revolutionise the world we live in, an exciting vision to be realised in the not too distant future.

Victoria Kuan is a lecturer with the School of IT and Multimedia. She can be contacted at vkuan@swinburne.edu.my.