Towards a Personal Style of Interaction Design
by DanI watched Sketches of Frank Gehry over the weekend, and while I can’t really recommend it unless you are a total neophyte who has a high tolerance for Sydney Pollack and no idea who Frank Gehry is, it did get me to thinking: there is a Frank Gehry style that has developed over time, and is certainly visible in his work over the last twenty years. Will interaction designers ever be able to create a personal style the same way as architects and other types of designers have, or must we forever stay invisible, out of the way?
Not once in the documentary, I should note, does any architect, Gehry or his minions, mention the building’s occupants–you know, the users. One of his clients (Michael Eisner?) even says something to the effect of, “You have to tell Frank you need locker rooms and such.” No UCD here! The building’s use certainly is mentioned, for example the Anaheim Ice Rink and the Walt Disney Concert Hall, which Gehry makes sure sounds good. But people? They just get in the way of the titanium.
This isn’t to say I don’t like Gehry buildings; on the contrary, I do. At least to look at. They are gorgeous pieces of sculpture writ large and it’s hard to not be awed by them, especially if you visit any of them in person like I’ve done with the Stata Center. But you can’t be invisible when you design the Strata Center, or the Bilbao Guggenheim. The designer’s style is part of the product. Will interaction designers ever have signature styles (”That’s a Luke Wroblewski widget!”)? Or is our work simply too functional and contextual to retain more than a dollop of style, much like, say, our eating utensils or our power tools?
To impose a personal style is to impose more from interaction designers than the user-centered design methodology would normally endorse. This can be a good thing (when someone’s clumsy or ornate style gets in the way of my being able to push a button), but it might also be denying us interaction design’s Bilbao Guggenheim–a building that is more than itself, that transcends the category of “building”, that shows us what architecture can be, and what humans can do.
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