This document discusses the role of product designers in the 21st century and how design can be used as a medium for critical thinking and social change. It argues that designers should create products that invite users to have conversations about critical issues and propose new ways of interacting that can lead to social, economic, and cultural opportunities. The document also examines how technology and emotional design can be incorporated into products to make them feel familiar, usable, and social in order to facilitate important conversations through designed objects.

1. Alvaro Soto
Professor Scott Pobiner
16 December 2010
PRODUCT DESIGN AND CRITICAL THINKING
ABSTRACT
This paper explores the role of the product designer in the 21st century, the
importance of emotions and technology in the design of everyday objects for
critical thinking and social change. Drawing concepts from Critical Design,
Ubiquitous computing and Emotional design, products will contain aspects
never imagined before, interactions will be as complex as the public is involve
on it, but most importantly they will stand as media for communication,
delivering messages as calm technology or facilitating critical thinking in the
public that uses them.
INTRODUCTION
This paper intends to comment and revise technology as a tool for imagining
new services and products that invite users not just to conversations about
critical situations that are consequences of our daily behavior as individuals and
the collective society but as a medium to propose new ways of interactions that
can contribute to the existing or future social, economic and cultural
opportunities.
The designer is changing, approaching a product is not a problem of usability
and aesthetic. Designers have stablished parameters to write creative briefs,
but the complexity of it needs to change, there are many other things that need
to be consider.

2. Product designers are going through a phase of change adapting to new forms
of computing that must touch any possible surface, and the fact that anything
from a chair to a pillow can be a new interface, sometimes part of a larger
system, changes the rules and sets new challenges that we must consider in the
research and design process.
All these challenges have been previously discussed by many bright thinkers
like Adam Greenfield in his book Everyware and the whole school of Design
Interactions at the Royal College of Art under Anthony Dunne. But the point this
paper makes is that product design should retain its nature of mass production
and usability in order to maintain grounded within its boundaries. As Dunne
once said in in an interview for Adobe Designcenter:
For us, it’s important to try and push and stretch design, but this activity
can only happen from within. If we get plonked down as artists then the
dialogue stops (sec. 2).
This dialog that Dunne is proposing is a dialog that the critical design
movement expects from products of mass consumption, which attempt to re-
imagine the world under complex circumstances and how we fit on it as
intelligent individuals then communicating this information with objects that
combine technology and prominent physical technology.
The critical point to achieve design as a communication medium is that in order
to fulfill its purpose and be appreciated it needs to feel familiar, usable and
social, this gives it a powerful place in the house which is where the
conversation about a critical future should start, end or happen. If design is not
familiar, social or usable it tends to be described as art or craft, something
personal to the creator that can be crazy or/and critical but it does not travel to
the masses, so the idea of design as a medium fails.
Then, How can we create these objects that are critical and at the same time
they respond to marketable opportunities? How can designers deliver a
cohesive combination of message and efficiency? Certainly technology and

3. Emotional Design can play a huge role to achieve this utopia as I will explain
later.
QUESTIONING INDUSTRIAL DESIGN
Product designers have been always very conservative when approaching the
possibilities or consequences of their work. Even Karim Rashid whose designs
are clearly based on a poetic very “Rashid’s” way to see the field, different from
anybody else, in his KARIMANISFESTO proposes design as a medium to create a
world that is full of real contemporary inspiring objects, spaces, places, worlds,
spirits and experiences. But Karim focuses design as a tool for contemporary
consumerism and doesn't sees it as a medium to question interactions or
modify modes of usability which is the reason why objects are so trapped in
their archetypes. Will design be just a tool for consumerism, or design will
evolve to a more critical sometimes powerful tool for social and economical
change that sometimes defies the existence of a direct precedence? We need to
bring these technological products to everyday life as they enter the core of the
social structure but design should evolve to be a medium for change in the
present or use to facilitate the dialog for it. Even though designers as problem
solvers is sometimes questionable, the field can certainly help the greater
economic or social structure in the different scales of its application,
contributing to the efficiency, comfort, productivity and many others
necessities of its public.
A BACKGROUND IN DESIGN
To envision product design for the 21st Century its necessary to be familiar
with the nature of it. Sheldon and Martha Cheney defined product design in
their book Art and the Machine:

4. “the artist contribution to mass products in the three-dimensional field.
Primarily as an engineering design which the artist has endowed with
appearance values that are susceptible of aesthetic judgment (3).
a definition that captured the essence of the profession and has been used
independently by other authors, scholars and thought in Product design majors.
Arthur Moss also had clear that it is supremely important to have one’s ideas
about design very broadly based. for him a Narrow view of design will inevitably
produce poor results. The idea of product design hasn't changed from the
beginning of the practice: Consumers opinion or trends, cost, materials,
systematic approach to the problem and cohesive and effective schedule are
basically steps that a project manager should take into account to bring a
product to the market, but the method should change not only as the market
changes but as consumers change too, and are not just more knowledgeable
about design but critical and individualistic.
REWIND AND REVIEWING
in the 80s the future of product design seemed to be guided by
technological advances, basically by computer- aided design, which brought a
revolutionary change in the design process that lately affected the way
designers would start drawing, due to the introduction of the machine as the
mediator between the line and the designer. CAD software, created specific
nodes which the curve would follow and this defined the character of the shape.
Today this method is ubiquitous and as we have seen, craft has become the
valuable asset that defines the value of the object in the market, so the creation
of the object has to be more than efficiency and aesthetic, people realize that
objects can be mass produced and they become universal, so now my computer

5. just looks like any other computer and the only valuable thing that I have is the
digital data it contains. But the problem is not just a fashion trend or
exclusivity, is the de-attachment we now experience with technology and its
cases or packages of screens. A major reason for numerous computers with a
custom skin sticker, acrylic cases and many other personal interpretations of
how the object should look in order to represent the owners preferences or
personality.
It seems then that the answer to revive the importance of the product designer
is to combine craft and technology, this idea has been broadly commented with
the introduction of personal 3d printers or RTA furniture that let the user define
with some constraints the shape of the end product. But the idea should go far
beyond an aesthetic or production revolution. We now have the power to
consider any possible object in the house or the street, we have been working
on doing this since the beginning of the Industrial revolution. Sheldon and
Martha Cheney realized in the 50s that nothing was too small or to obscure to
be redesigned, and we have stretched this possibility far beyond what they
thought it was possible. Design agencies are payed to work on projects like
paint, tiles, hardware, glass and many others that before were either part of
straight industrial production or the medium for artist and craft makers.
THE FUTURE AND THE ROLE OF DESIGN
Ann-Marie Boutin in 1993 envisioned a very accurate future of design as
reaching the 21st century. she wrote in the Industrial design reflection of a
century, edited by Jocelyn de Noblet:
Today, the future seems uncertain and causes for concern numerous: the
limited natural resources of our earth, now turned “global village” ; the
demographic explosion,the develop of the megapolis and its suburbs, which

6. are turning into jungles ruled by violence and gangs; the problem of social
alienation.
some historians compare the period in which we live to the Renaissance. It
is characterized by a crisis of values, profound changes and a questioning
of our relationship with technological progress. Never has man had so
much knowledge, so many scientific and technical tools at his disposal, but
he must learn how to find his way around this vas reservoir of knowledge
and how to share it. He also needs, in order to make wise choices a
philosophy and a vision a relation to meaning and being (418).
Boutin’s inspiring forecast calls designers and related professions for an
intelligent method, the use of technology for a collective benefit one that would
go beyond economic means to ease the transition from analog interactions and
communications to more intelligent systems that help humans to revitalize and
negotiate a better way to live on earth with less dangerous impact on it, Design
as a medium for inspiring change or inhabitation.
Today the future seems even more uncertain than from Boutin’s time but
design has a more responsibilities that Victor Papanek considered:
‘Design can and should become a means for young people to participate
in the evolution of society’. Design will play an even more important role
in the future if it can assume its identity, if it accepts fully its human and
cultural responsibility as well as its prospective dimension.
Designers today are also called for a more ‘holistic’ way of approaching a
product, we have all seen the consequences with plastic bottles, plastic bags,
plastic anything or the damages created by ignorant collective footprint that
could probably be solved with more educational information, and thats just the
environmental issues created by the industrial revolution and poor legislation in

7. the beginning; Designers are also asked to solve problems of social
interactions, social behaviors, economic crisis and so on.
Design for greater purposes or Design Thinking which is a quote by Tim Brown
CEO of IDEO, puts the designer on bigger responsibilities, embarking on actions
that aim to serve humanitarian causes or working with Natural disasters, relief
organizations etc. Are designers capable of solving problems without a critical
approach? or any knowledge of the different reasons that may be causing the
problem?
It seems with so many responsibilities that the profession has been targeted,
and one could think is for obvious reasons; aesthetically pleasing and well
designed products can do powerful things, they change mood, spaces,
interactions, organization etc. But the designer is by no means, in my
perspective, responsible of such a huge weight. It even seems the designer ego
is the same force that is pushing him now to take over so many responsibilities,
arguing that his work is so powerful that it could actually solve many problems,
But the the designers traditional school education never teach him anything
about any of the subjects that he claims to know about. Don Norman wrote in
Why Design Education must Change, an article for the design blog core77:
As a reviewer of submissions to design journals and conferences, as a
juror of design contests, and as a mentor and advisor to design students
and faculty, I read outrageous claims made by designers who have little
understanding of the complexity of the problems they are attempting to
solve or of the standards of evidence required to make claims. Oftentimes
the crap comes from brilliant and talented people, with good ideas and
wonderful instantiations of physical products, concepts, or simulations.
The crap is in the claims.

8. The issue might then be one of scope, the responsibility left to the designer as
he believes he can solve the entire problem in all the scales, or assuming
solving the problem in one scale automatically takes care of the others, a lack
of experimentation, knowledge and a scientific method.
Considering that all these tools, knowledge and rigor should be thought in
design schools This paper proposes and follows up on design as a medium; the
designer as the mediator, as the agent that is able to enter the private life of
the public and using this as a tool to deliver messages. It could possibly be
seen as an opposite or contradictory, but the product designer as a
communication designer, in that one that has a a critical thought, that does and
methodic research and proposes change or delivers the message through
objects and technology.
THE ROLE OF TECHNOLOGY
The gold mine that the designer has, is the ubiquitous use of objects and the
open mind that the public has for new products that solve or help on any given
situation. If the designer envisions an object from this perspective he would
eventually come with new objects that have no precedence and thus the result
is more innovative. Interactions should not be imagined as simple
straightforward encounters with technology or the form. People are smarter and
more demanding, different needs should be taken into account to deliver more
effective solutions. In other words, the designer should serve fare to the
different problems that the new generation of humans have. In this way he
would become the designer of the media that carries significance on its own
and invite the users to discuss or think about the message.

9. The designer of this century is one who knows that technology is a constant
variant and the need for mutation is important all the time, so how can
products of everyday life can include these technologies and remain usable for
long periods of time?. Technology as an utilitarian tool embedded in these
products is clearly not the answer. we must use technology in the same way we
use form an material, to define the character, the emotions and the role of the
product on peoples life. Then Technology can become timeless as an Eames
chair, a chanel jacket and many other objects that become pieces of care and
start from critical point of view, very different from new technological objects
like computers, printers, televisions etc; this pieces were not created to solve
problems they were created as an answer for revolutionary periods, they took
important roles in the revolution.
Eames chairs were revolutionary in their materials, the scale of the approach,
thinking in holistic greater reason for its existence. they serve as a
complimentary asset in Eames spaces, but the most important thing was the
idea of design for the public, good design for the masses, the american dream.
Chanel jackets for example were created as a response to the need of woman
on the workforce of france while their husbands were in war, a result of a
visionary woman, Coco, who believed the woman had to dressed for her and
not for men. Eames and Coco Chanel were designers who believed in their craft
as a revolutionary method to communicate messages, they understood that
their product could be more effective than any other method, and these
messages changed the public indeed.
How Can we design the electronic objects of the 21st century to create our
version of these designs? how can we create objects today that can be part of
social change, playing a bigger role than just utilitarian objects? and how can
we design these electronically objects that can survive several generations
because the don't become obsolete?

10. CRITICAL DESIGN
Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby refer to critical design as Design Noir as they
recorded in their book by the same name humans are complex and often
unpredictable creatures. This, of course, should come as no surprise to anyone
who reads the news, but, in the context of design, it raises interesting and very
basic questions. What, for example, makes us happy? Has the incredible
abundance of technology have made our lives better? Is the answer to our
collective malaise that technology is too difficult to use? Would people really be
happier if their technology was more intuitive? Do we need to upgrade our
software? Or is there something broader and more basic that has to do less
with interaction design, and more with interaction? they add : Critical design
does not answer these questions, but it does provide a way for the questions to
be asked. products should be designed for the people and less for the industry,
objects should make us happy or at least comfortable and the electronic object
needs to make this step that the analog object already has in its complexity of
relation with the user.
In an article for Core77 Clare Brass and Octavia Reeve wrote:
It is normally taken for granted that economic growth is vital for
maintaining economic health, but research has shown that wellbeing
depends less on material goods than on our lifestyles. The New Economics
Foundation in the UK publishes a global Happy Planet Index, which
measures the combination of environmental impact and wellbeing, to

11. quantify the environmental efficiency with which—country by country—
people live long and happy lives.
The method should change so that the critical aspect of design is not an add-on
but part of the process, essential to the product. Similar to what the quality
aspect of a product or to the sustainable one which we have been increasingly
seen as a main concern by students and corporations. Sustainable products are
a revolutionary force in the industry were designers are concerned about the
impact of materials, process and the life cycle of their creations they aim to
send to the market, and it is thankfully so ubiquitous that it must now be
consider as an inevitable part of the process.
Embodied, a project by “The Agency of Design” formed by Rich Gilbert, Adam
Paterson and Matthew Laws in 2009, students from the Royal Academy of Art,
help visualize embodied energy to make it easier to understand and think about
in the design process, within that project they developed the The Megajoule
Challenge where they redesigned the angle-poise lamp in a more sustainable
way in terms of energy needed to produced it. While the Anglepoise’s ingenious
mechanism allows adjustable light at any position, this functionality comes at a
cost of approximately 142 megajoules and the redesign that The agency of
Design produced is a clever method to communicate the message with another
ingenious more sustainable mechanism that that serves the same purpose. This
project is a close example of what the designer can do to have a greater impact,
been critical yet keeping his designs within the boundaries of useful marketable
objects.
NOTHING BUT EMOTIONS
Don Norman in Emotional Design wrote:

12. Without emotions, your decision-making ability would be impaired. Emotion is
always passing judgments, presenting you with immediate information about
the world: here is potential danger, there is potential comfort (11).
Emotions are clearly part of our decision making and they invite the public to
use the products or to buy them, emotions create an attacment to the product
so it can be consider in a small scale as way to create sustainable design
because we wont get rid of something that make us smile.
Emotional design can be consider as poetry in design, which in words of Ralph
Ball as stated by Tim parsons in his article, Is irony killing design? :
Objects which are elevated above the pragmatic and formal requirement
of the functional artefact, and deliver ambient observations in condensed
form for reflection and contemplation.
Good Design can sell, good and emotional or poetic design not just sells but at
the same time create attachments with the user that are consequently causes
for reflection and critical point of view if the object has been designed to
communicate something and it is targeted to right audiences.
CONCLUSIONS
Design needs to change, but we don’t need more art projects, those are perfect
for discussion in the galleries but haven't demonstrated a greater impact. What
I believe we need is products that can live in our houses, that marketing groups
can get excited about and that the public accepts with joy, but that at the same
time are designed over a rich and critical thought. Metaphors in design, poetic

13. and playful interactions are tools that the designer can use in his advantage to
combine this two strong sometimes complicated combinations. All the designs
don't need to reach the market, and they shouldn't, some designs should be
fictional but as real as possible so it convince the audience. With this products
we can deliver messages about negative futures cause by our practices,
communication now can lend to a different tomorrow. The fictional user needs
to be real, designer should research, read the news and be very grounded in
todays world. Product design education needs to change, the public needs to be
educated and the profession should halve greater impact.
We could rely on communication design, digital graphics, billboards and any
other type of graphics media, but none of these are as close to the user as the
objects they buy. Sustainable design is and should remain a fact of every
product, the designer needs to learn how to reduce the impact, the scales of
the solutions need to reconsider and the inclusion of different methods to solve
the problems have to always be considered. Designer needs to drop the ego
and be more knowledgeable; he is not the solution for problems but he can be
the one who communicates the problem and offer possible solutions within its
scope. or possible fictional solutions that make people reconsider the acts they
do, thats the magic and the skill he has and should embrace.

14. Works Cited
Brass, CLare. Reeve Octavia, The chanllenges of teaching Sustainability: The
RCA’s approach, by Clare Brass and Octavia Reeve. Core77. Web. 5 October
2010.
Boutin,Ann-Marie. Industrial design : reflection of a century / edited by Jocelyn
de Noblet, Jocelyn de Noblet, Paris : Flammarion/APCI, c1993.
Cheney, Sheldon and Cheney, Martha Art and the machine: An Account of
Industrial Design in 20Th-Century America, New York : Acanthus Press, 1992,
1936.
Dunne, Anthony. Hertzian tales : electronic products, aesthetic experience, and
critical design. Cambridge, Mass. MIT Press, c2005.
Gilbert, Rich. Paterson Adam. Laws, Mathew, The Agency of design,
agencyofdesign.co.uk. Web.
Moss, Arthur. Successful industrial design: its creation by good management.
London, H. Witherby. 1968.
Norman, Donald A. Why Design Education must Change. Core77, Web, 26
November, 2010.

15. Norman, Donald A. Emotional design : why we love (or hate) everyday things.
New York : Basic Books, 2004.
Papanek, Victor. Design for the real world; human ecology and social change.
With an introduction by R. Buckminster Fuller. New York, Pantheon Books
[1972, c1971].
Parsons, Tim. Is Irony Killing Design?. Object Thinking.
objectthinking.wordpress.com. Web. 24 Nov 2009.
Uncertain futures: A conversation with Professor Anthony Dunne, Adobe.com/
designcenter/Thinktank, Web, 21 feb 2007.
Karim Rashid. Karimanifesto, Karimrashid.com, Web.

17. References
Tim Parsons, is Irony killing Design? http://objectthinking.wordpress.com/
2009/11/24/is-irony-killing-design/