The Context of Design

In design, as in art, Context is meaning. Without Context, there is no meaning and no relationship.  

Behind any mechanical approach to the creation of artifacts, what transcends cultures and historic time is the Spirit that the artifact contains. When we seek to identify international design trends, we have to look beyond the temporality of form and find the eternally present Spirit. In this case, Spirit is an attitude which can include feeling, personality, mood and humour.

Further, what makes a product wanted is not the aesthetics of Form--the way design has been promoted for many years-- but the aesthetics of Value, or more specifically, Play Value. Remember the Play Value of the pen!

In coining the term ToolToy I have tried to emphasise the importance of re-examining the process of design from the perspective of a behavioural model in which play and the values play represents have a major role. ToolToys are products that satisfy not only the requirements for functional tools, but also give the user pleasures associated with toys.

Tool represents the function and a form of need; Toy represents desire or spirit. Where the functionality of a tool is judged by its efficiency, by how it gets the job done, the measure of a Toy lies in its potential for creating a relationship, either between user and Toy, or among users. Relationships are, by their very nature, emotions.

From this perspective, design is not only what the object gives you (the aesthetic of form); it is also what you can give back to the object. Design becomes once again a relationship of purpose. In a ToolToy, form follows the spirit of the relationship and in effect, becomes "it". Form Is the Spirit of the Relationship. The user's relationship with the object is the design outcome as it determines whether a knife will be a weapon or a tool for buttering bread at a dinner party, if a ball will bounce or be used as a projectile. One (Tool) does not follow the other (Toy). It is both. One of the first products to answer the demand for both functional and emotional appeal was Apple's Macintosh desktop interface.

Before the Mac, we "erased" files in a "vacuum" , in a space seen only (if at all) by the tiny circuits inside the computer. We had no feedback confirming our action, no measure that we got reed of the documents we did not need anymore. The designers of the Mac interface recognized that humans are creatures of habit, dependent on sight and sound for confirmation. They gave us a place to get rid of our "garbage" : a waste basket. And more: a waste basket that gets "fat" when things are thrown into it, further confirming that our mission is on its way to being accomplished.. To a functional need, they have added a playful twist and a measure of imagination. Real waste baskets don't get fat when full, but emotionally, we, the users, get the joke. And with it, the understanding that good design is no longer only a matter of function. Neither is it only a matter of aesthetics. The Mac interface has demonstrated that minimal design criteria must now include emotional appeal.

A waste basket on our desktop is both a functional tool and a fun toy. After all, a ToolToy puts the "fun" into function.

ToolToy in itself is a Conceptual Framework. It dictates that the designer says, "I will design the product according to the required functions of the tool, but I'll add to it what I think the users want, which is the play value. I will add an emotional quality that appeals to the play behaviour I know everybody instinctively has." From that moment, you have a Conceptual Framework.

In order to succeed, a Toy must satisfy five criteria: it must be engaging, fun, challenging, absorbing and rewarding. This can be applied to the game of tennis, which comes from our innate desire to play, test our skill and compete.

As we play more, our skills improve; the challenge and satisfaction of the game continue. Rubik's cube, on the other hand, was a short-lived toy success. It was a puzzle that was frustrating...until you solved it. Then the only challenge was to see how fast you could solve it. It was a fad that didn't last because there was little or no repeat play value.

Lego is an excellent example of a good toy. The physical fit of the pieces expresses the rules of the game, and all Lego parts obey the rules at all times. Lego toys have no recognizable character and no permanent structure. Within Lego's established constraints, the bricks can be used to create any form. As the structure comes together, the Lego bricks gradually lose their identity to the whole.

What is the design brief for Lego? To create a toy that is engaging, fun, absorbing, challenging and rewarding. The challenge in creating a ToolToy lies in adding as many of the five play value characteristics as possible to a functional product, and to do this without destroying the function of the product or the Big Idea.

You can apply play value to a watch by making a Swatch. How would you add play value to a coffee maker? One way is to design a coffee maker with which you can make espresso and cappuccino--not by simply pressing a button or adding boiling water to powder--by including an element of challenge. Making foamy espresso is a challenge; incorporating that challenge into a coffee maker maintains the Big Idea of coffee, while making the product challenging and rewarding.

Great design, like great art, is compelling story-telling; it is the story behind the visual that creates the relationship with the work. References to other art forms--movies and paintings, for example--can be used to illustrate design concepts.

Consider the painting The Fall of Icarus by the 16-century Dutch painter Bruegel. If we are not familiar with the story of Icarus, we can only have a two-dimensional relationship with the painting; we might assess its formal aesthetics, its composition, colour, size and technique, but never enter into a full relationship with the work, its author and its message. The story in this case is very much like a design brief. The painting itself is the medium which communicates the theme--ambitious venture and failure--which is applicable to most human endeavour.

We see a pastoral landscape near the sea where four people are going about their business: a shepherd, a ploughman, a fisherman and a sailor. What is going on in this painting? Is it an illustration demonstrating the importance of agriculture during the 1500s? When you know the title of the painting and the significance of the title, the work takes on an entirely different meaning.

In Greek mythology, the sculptor, architect and inventor Daedalus was imprisoned on the island of Crete with his son, Icarus. They escaped using wings Daedalus had fashioned from feathers and wax. Ignoring his father's warnings, Icarus flew too close to the sun which melted the wax and sent him plummeting into the sea.

Bruegel shows us nature as a magnificent, yet detached presence to the tragedy that is unfolding; Icarus is reduced to a hand and two legs jutting out of the waves as a few feathers hover above him. Nature is not the only indifferent entity here; the four men absorbed in their work have noticed neither the heroic flight nor the rather unceremonious - and probably quite noisy- fall.

Indeed, the myth itself not only alters the way we look at the painting, it is essential in giving the painting meaning. The viewer's knowledge of the myth creates the context for the art; when you look at the painting you bring your knowledge, your background to the painting, establishing a two-way relationship with the work.

In design, as in art, Context is meaning. Without Context, there is no meaning and no relationship.

In the next instalment, we will be forging ahead into other "arts"--food, wine and movies--as models for the way we approach design. We'll be discussing the current obsession with technology and how it affects our assessment of art and design.

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