Reading reflection 3

In this week's reading I resonated particularly with principle 3.7, which states: "prompt user to experience substance (not technology) -- good design uses th emedium to highlight a narrative, while hiding the medium itself." I once heard something along the lines of "great design goes unnoticed," which feels very similar to this. I think it's not the case that great design is entirely unnoticed, though, but rather that great design is highly intentional about what you notice -- all things should further a narrative or provoke the desired emotional response or physical interaction. In this way, good design is careful about what is hidden and what is shown. In other words, good design is effective abstraction. Complicated, irrelevant details are abstracted away from the user; the only interfacable elements of the design are those which were meant to be interfaced with.

I think this is a great principle to keep in mind especially in a highly technological environment like Stanford or the Silicon Valley at large, which can sometimes be prone to building new technology for the sake of pushing the bounds of new technology. Creating technology is one thing, but designing said technology for pleasantness, interactivity, ease of use, and accessibility are just as important, if not more important.

To me this is like when we used to have people over to our house -- we'd abstract away things like dirty laundry, extra toilet paper rolls, etc. to the guest, because though they are essential for our daily lives, in designing for a hospitable experience, they are obscured. The guest (in other words the user) is provided all that they need to know and all that they don't is put away and tidied up. In this way, I think my parents were brilliant designers without ever realizing it.

Oftentimes it's easy to think of design as just making things pretty but this principle implies that in fact design is just as much about cleverly obscuring the less-pretty things as it is showing off the pretty ones. The elegance and simplicity of a well-designed object comes not only from the positive space of its decoration but also the negative space of all the things which contribute to its function but not its form.

This principle clarifies the relationship between form and function -- the design must have all necessary components to be functional, but in order to subsequently or simultaneously create good form one must be mindful of how to design the functional aspects into the form properly.