I caught a commercial for some Braun product this evening, and became intrigued by the mention of “German engineering.” I can’t remember the product, and I’m not sure it matters, but it occurred to me that Braun thought “German engineering” to be a selling point.
This got me thinking about the evolution of design thinking and the struggle against the idea that advancements in technology (or engineering) define product worth in the minds of consumers versus advances in product worth through interaction.
Will we ever watch a commercial that claims a product was created with “[Country of your choice] interaction design”?
At this point in time, obviously, this won’t happen, as no one knows what interaction design is—including interaction designers. Perhaps that’s not important. Though it is interesting to think about whether design will ever be comparable to engineering in terms of worth in the eyes of consumers.
Comments
3 responses to “Interaction Design Not a Selling Point”
Maybe it’s starting to happen. I was surprised to see “good user experience” as a selling point for vehix.com during a commercial the other day.
Yeah, actually, I saw a commercial for the Infiniti G that touted design that would “alter your experience.” And from their website:
So perhaps it is beginning to happen.
Thus my strategy of throwing out a huge generalization to taunt the universe into proving me wrong to advance the perception of design as value worked like a charm.
If the folks at RIM had hired some more of you guys when designing the Blackberry, the world would be a better place. -It seems what you guys represent is what allowed Apple Computer to take over the PC market in the 80’s (for a brief period of course, until someone ‘borrowed’ their PC interaction scheme!)
keep on trucking