Objectified: The Life of the Designer, the Designed and the Degradable

Most people don't think about the process involved in creating certain objects.



Who knew that so much testing, materials, and ideas were needed to create a more usable pair of hedge clippers?  To take the most extreme of people (i.e. people with arthritis) and make things easier for them than the average Jane seems to be incredibly important in how IDEO designs their products because what's comfortable for someone who lives with hand pains should also be comfortable for those who don't.

                               
Before with no hand support                                                                              After with hand support
Both credited to Clip Art Guide


But Tim Brown, the CEO of IDEO, also talked about how everything you make will someday end up in a landfill.  It's a much deeper subject than it sounds at first.  Yes, everything you design will have its life: it will start as a concept, be born, have its use with some family, then once something newer and better comes out, it will be tossed and end up in a landfill.  So why can't we design objects that just aren't made to last?  Why can't we do as David Kelley of IDEO says: why can't we design things that get better with use?  Or why can't we make things that are, at the very least, made by something degradable as Karim Rashid suggested?


Credit to ecofriend.org


Biodegradable furniture: it's a start.  Unfortunately, the concept of biodegradable anything is still in the planning stages.  There's so much to design: concepts, actual creation, distribution, and appreciation.  Some are aware of the process, but most are not.  I just hope that even though everything needs some form of design, we will find some way to make it temporary just because we are temporary.  To know that there might be objects that could possibly outlast us just because it's made of certain materials is an interesting concept just in case there might be life after us that might discover a crushed cell phone.  But I'm getting ahead of myself: design is about the creation of the objects and I hope that it ends up being something that will be helpful to us in every way.  And if can just disappear after we're done with them instead of leaving remnants, the world would probably appreciate it as well.