O.K. so here are the summaries...
In "Ten Principals of Good Design," Dieter Rams lists and defines what he thinks is good design. In "3 Ways Good Design Makes You Happy," Don Norman explains 3 ways that design can make you happy (only its more like 4, because his slide show brings up 4 headings, but maybe they thought 4 was too large of a number for people to grasp, or maybe I missed something, whatever).
Oh, and the question for Don: "Do you think that one of the three (or four) ways design can make you happy takes president over the other?
But really, What is good design? I have been putting nearly 100% of my academic efforts to design related things for the past two years now, and I still don't really know what good design is. I am more confident now to voice an opinion about something that I think is bad design, but I still cant really answer that question. I try to go to all the Hallmark lectures, and a good number of those speakers have made statements about what they think is good design and no two are exactly alike, but they all sound good when I hear said, as part of a greater lecture. It seems to me that every designer out there has their own definition of what makes design good. More interestingly, they all try and define good design by breaking it into some sort of category. For example, "Ten Principals of Good Design" and "3 Ways Good Design Makes You Happy." That is weird. Its not like every scientist stresses over which category of stuff they can lump together to define science. That would be so painful! "Hmmm, well I think, that good science should be innovative, useful, understandable, unobtrusive, honest, long-lasting, down to the last detail, and worded as simply as possible." HOLY SHIT! Those are 9 of the 10 things good design is according to Rams! The only one not in the group: aesthetic. The funny thing is that all of those things are true of good science. Having an aesthetic quality is the only thing that separates the two, according to Rams. That's probably why Norman has recently (recent to 2003 that is) decided to devote his life to exploring what can be done with changing around aesthetics (it can make you happy!).
So is design science? No, science is not aesthetic. But is that the only difference? If it is, then why aren't these profound lists put to some sort of scientific or psychological test and organized so that we designers don't have to keep worrying about when its good to make something stand out. Or when its more important to make something so that people will buy it or make something so that people will enjoy the feel of it. Or so that we can just know if a good book cover is one that it captures the essence of the book with out making obvious references to focal points in the plot or if someone can see it from a mile away. Is aesthetics the only thing getting in the way? I think maybe. When you add aesthetics to the equation, nothing is fact anymore. But then again, it could be because we as designers expect different things from designs we are critiquing. For example, the first day of class, I told my small group that I thought "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" cover was ugly. Then Lauren said that it was voted one of the best of the year by Print magazine. They had chosen it because it was highly recognizable. Recognizably wasn't even in my criteria when I was evaluating the covers success, but I couldn't deny that book covers in general may profit from being recognizable.
Overall, I think that one thing that every designer agrees on is that design must work. As far as I am concerned, it can end there. good design works. That's it. Everything else is subject to opinion and once that happens nobody can really be right. The challenge though, I think, is evaluating the ways that design should work and which ways are more important than another.
That's my rant. No disrespect to either Rams or Norman intended. I also have my categories of words that I pompously think have relevance to each other.
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