Visual stereotypes in design

Visual stereotypes in design

Visual stereotypes in product design derive from mechanistic requirements as well as concessions to mass produced items, transportation and material heritage such as can be seen in items ranging from sewing machines to trucks. The human body can motivate certain proportions and dimensions (anthropometrics) as seen with medical devices, bicycles and the like. Stereotypes are hard to break even in the fine arts. You see breaks as artistic revolutions such as cubism, impressionism etc. In the mechanical world, stereotypes become a marketing grip so they are difficult to divorce.  Therefore, a toy gun looks like a real gun and a current staplers look like one from 50 years ago.

      

These are expected proportions of a hot dog, pickup truck and drill

                         New York’s Chrysler building representing Art Deco

  

Repetition of design features in Dyson and Lamborghini products

First step in design?

Methodical approaches to product design can be especially helpful when designing for a foreign culture or working within a strict brand identity. One helpful design technique is identifying the typical shape or form of an object, referred to as the visual stereotype. This identified form represents an archetype upon which to start a design or as a baseline to compare a new design’s non-mechanistic appeal in qualitative analyses.  

Visual stereotypes are exemplars of shape or form that provide a culturally relevant expectation of category, experience and function. The visual stereotype helps us understand such things as the product’s role or its brand association. A good example of the power of visual stereotype is seen in American pickup trucks in which the proportions have remained unchanged for over 40 years.

The visual stereotype can also present a design feature conveyed through a family of designs. This feature could be a subtle part of brand image and is a complimentary feature to include in designs seeking to embrace a brand identity. Certain features are identified with design movements such as repeating geometric lines and streamlined forms in Art Deco. Features are also repeated in brands such as the organic forms in Dyson vacuum cleaners or facets in the newest Lamborghini automobiles. Color has long been used in brand identity but there is a movement towards color customization  that reduces this unique brand affiliation.

Because the amalgam of product shapes leads to a stereotype, outline drawings derived from photographs   can  be   superpositioned as data in establishing stereotypical outlines. Photographs can be digitally enhanced to produce high contrast, at which point they can be imported to CAD. After profiles are outlined, they are superimposed upon one another, a process that creates the visual stereotype that establishes proportions.

 

When a visual stereotype is identified, designers can use it to provide a foundation for starting a design or for guidance in incorporating subtle design elements into brand sensitive designs.

Changes in painting

Fishing Boat Example

 

 One example of using a visual stereotype was in design work I did in Malaysia in which I identified a curve fit of the sheer line of a 'Class B' fishing boat. An equation was developed that represented a curve running between the high point at the bow, the low point amidships and the high point at the stern that was used as a starting point for my design.  This improved the objectivity of this ethnographic design pursuit by using the identifiable feature of anticipated form and proportion.  The lines drawing below shows the final design and you can see its origins in the identified visual stereotype.

 

Range of profiles, Mersing, Malaysia

Some of this writing derives from my book, “Engineering for Industrial Designers and Inventors: Fundamentals for Designers of Wonderful Things" (http://oreil.ly/thomasask). 

Do we still need engineers?

I use gut instinct and math when I design things.  I use tables when I need them, equations where I can.  Good old traditional engineering -- standing on the shoulders of giants and moving with baby steps.  However, so many programs take a CAD file and do magic upon them in such a way that I feel like a Fiat at a top fuel drag race.

We are awash in AI driven knowledge embedded programs that take basic layouts or full blown parametric models and give fascinating results.  My jaw has dropped more than a few times and I am left with phrases like:

     “But do you know what is really going on?”

     “Do you really trust these results?”

     “Are you sure it’s not just a pretty picture?”

      And finally, “garbage in, garbage out.”  The words of all             middle aged know it alls.

However, there is a lot of meat on these analysis programs. 

Engineering is no longer math – it is deep, textured insight into a design.  In the mechanical world, it is understanding how loads, temperatures and flows affect things.  It is knowing how something can be used and misused.  Human insight is the spark we bring to analysis.  Engineers and others in the design professions also bring creativity and beauty to design in a way that these smarty pants programs can only dream of.

Whenever the next dazzling revision of engineering (or rendering) software comes out, pick up your jaw and put your pencil to the napkin.

Makerspace Roundtable Discussion

Here is a roundtable discussion on the makerspace movement.  I talked too much but I was excited.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGM7ZfqPlHQ

Apple's Design Patents

Businesses can be built on utility patents – we would pack as many independent claims as possible into them.  Design patents are desperate measures to create legal hurdles.  The US Supreme Court is getting involved with a court decision that originally won Apple $1 billion in claims against Samsung.  Easier than working I suppose.  While the settlement got reduced to nearly half this amount, it still represents a lot of money.

As a sometimes visual artist, I appreciate the protections afforded to works of art and design.  However, if someone buys your painting – they own it.  If they decide to cut a notch out of it so it fits around a window frame that is there business, although I think the artist should have the right to have his or her name removed from the work.  However, industrial design is not art, it is a commercial enterprise that creates alluring products and environments for consumers.  While the talents expressed can include aesthetics and manifest themselves with intriguing form factors and color palettes – these are subtle element and do not deserve the same protection as the technology that operates behind them.

The US Supreme Court will now look at who owns “rounded corners” and boxy forms.  This slippery assault will always be a losing battle.  The 1987 Braun ET66 calculator looks a lot like the Apple iPhone and so do some of the rocks I find in nearby creeks.

Minimalism is in vogue now but it is a difficult design attribute to protect.  So move on and keep designing.

Flying in airplanes to get on cruise ships

I’m a big fan of ethnographic design and design thinking.  However, I have lived through many fads and the "right" approach to design will never be found, it is some blend of intuition, smarts, guts and ambition that doesn’t follow a well worn path.

So here is my simplified flow chart for successful designs:

Yes, a lot is missing but the missing parts are particular to a specific industry, application, market etc.   Just imagine arrows going all over this chart, backward, forward, up and down.  Design is not a neat line with an arrow head on it.  You do not ideate and then prototype.  You do not develop empathy and then define.  You are mixing these together in a blender until the words and arrows are ripped to shreds and what remains are dangling participles and confusion as to how you got to the point you are at.  While there can be system and structure -- there is a place for mind maps, affinity diagrams, experience maps and all the tools of the professional designer.  But they are your tools, not mandates.  Do you always use a spoon when you eat dinner?

Understanding the user and other stakeholders can be derived using tools ranging from ethnography to economics.  You are seeking not only what they want but what they could want.  The biggest design advances are when a product or system is developed that satisfies a user need that is not yet fully recognizes.  Who would imagine we would be sticking giant rectangles into our pants pockets or flying in airplanes to get on cruise ships?

Money is important too, it drives commercial design.  I love working in the void of market forces but these are ideas that live in sketch books and never see the stores.  I paint too….  Of course the financial environment isn’t just determining what the market will pay but how the market could grow.

Breaking down the stakeholder portion into another oversimplified infographic gives the following.  Note the neat lines:

Order out of chaos

Designers create order out of chaos, but design is not science – we need more than science in our quest to manipulate our environment.  My mechanical engineering education was a theoretical, calculus based presentation of concepts.  Much time was spent in deriving equations and quantitative analyses.  When I worked as a product engineer, I found that this knowledge didn’t serve me well.  I couldn’t analyze something I hadn’t designed.  Even after concepts are agreed upon, the detailed design of a part requires many decisions that allow it to be lighter, stronger, cooler or whatever the design goals are.  You had to put your best guess up for analysis.  The multiple design decisions on an objects’ thickness, radius, roughness etc. are based on having an intuitive feel for how solids, liquids and gases behave.

Typically design methodology calls for a sequence of events, which in their simplest form are the clear definition of design requirements, development of concepts, and finally engineering the final design and manufacturing approach.  However, many more ambiguous factors get introduced into the design process.  Because design is done by humans and typically for human use, a long list of factors are introduced into the development of designs, ranging from the sociological forces of group identity and organizational behavior to an organization’s politics, individual egos and ethics.  Aesthetics assert a subliminal force even on the most non-consumer design.  Moreover, technical and business issues arise to provide design direction, such as ergonomics, performance, longevity, capital costs and profitability.  Regulatory forces such as safety standards often provide some baseline for starting a design while corporate attitudes toward environmental sustainability and manufacturing preferences can suggest design approaches.

Traditionally design requires technical skills and experience to ensure that the product or system works in the way it is intended.  Therefore, product design is often left to the engineers.  However, intangible forces become integrated into the design and direct the final appearance of the design.  The sometimes subliminal forces can be brought to light through an interdisciplinary study such as occurs in the industrial design discipline. Although industrial design has technical aspects, the discipline carefully considers aesthetics, social, cultural and organizational forces -- the non-technical affairs that make a product fun and relevant.  I think all good designs have surprise and playfulness.  We all have the capability to engage many disciplines in pursuit of excellence in creating products.

Maker movement