Adam Mastroianni had a great piece titled, You should not open a door and see someone pooping about bad design in everyday objects and experiences. That was the start of rabbit hole I tumbled into, about the instances and the consequences of the way we think about objects. I was even lent the Design of Everyday Objects, and found myself using the words affordance and signifies in regular conversation.
The conclusion from Adam's piece is a Design Museum -- where the entire experience of entering, engaging, and exiting the space is delightful. If there's a TV, the remote will never be lost. If there's a door, there's never confusion about how to open it. If there's queueing, it dynamically responds to how many people are there. He envisions this space as a school of sorts, offering firsthand experience of inhabiting a well-designed environment. Design isn't described, it's experienced -- an experience that could heighten our awareness of flaws and openness to change.
I have only one reservation - the title. Apologies in advance, but a museum conjures an image up of a dusty old place filled with relics of the past. Don't get me wrong, I love museums and their preservation of ideas and items that we must remember. But that's just the problem. They're remembered, a distant memory of an ancient past that we can only try and understand better. The Design Space is a vision of the future. An imagined reality that we could really inhabit, if we only knew what it could feel like.
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