Concept

Industrial designers have coined the term “human-centered” design to describe their practice. The name is pretty self-explanatory. Focusing on the people one is designing for. So if the next project brief asks a team of designers to develop the most ergonomic handle of a coffee cup, you can be sure to find a room full of prototypes that have been tested by real people before the design is finalized and produced.

On a functional level, that makes sense. But what about aesthetics? What is the role of the designer when creating a product that is supposed to be wanted and bought by an enormous group of people? Can products be collectively designed to create something that is universally wanted?

Method

I designed and conducted an experiment called The Exquisite Shoe.

Using Amazon Mechanical Turk, I asked about 100 people what their idea of the perfect shoe is (a shoe because it perfectly blends the need for function and personal aesthetic). From the results, I extracted six prompts and used them to challenge my peers to design these shoes together in a shoe design workshop I hosted. The shoes were designed based on the Surrealist concept, The Exquisite Corpse, through which stories and paintings were created collectively.  

Some of the prompts and collective designs:

Prompt: a comfortable shoe

Prompt: a shoe that feels as though I am not wearing a shoe

Prompt: a shoe that feels like I am walking on clouds

I rendered the experimental shoes.

The experiment yielded some interesting observations and insights.

Observations

• When it came to talking about aesthetics, the results varied greatly. When it was about function, a lot of the same words were used, like comfortable or versatile.

• Some participants couldn’t really talk about what their perfect shoe looked like, but spoke to how it should make them feel.

• My peers had fun sketching the shoes, which added a level of playfulness to the final designs.

Insights

• Functionally, most can agree on what makes a good shoe, but it impossible to please everyone aesthetically. It is up to the designer to add their own voice.

• When it comes to things we wear and put on our bodies, the way they transform our emotional state plays a huge role in how useful the end product is.

• Working together in a playful way enables the creation of something totally new and out there, something one may not have thought of alone.