Design - how does it affect you?

How often do you think about the design of something? Not just the look or feel of something, but its layout, its location, the thought behind it?

Design affects us every day, from the packaging on your food to the websites you visit to the way things work in your car.

On Friday, I was talking to Dr Phillip Woolston of Domino Printing Services for the Goodfellow MaterialsInside podcast channel, where they specialise in creating the inks we see every day on food packaging that ensures the ink used doesn't affect the food inside. (Think about the date printed on the shell of your breakfast egg.)

But, on the same day, design affected me in a slightly different way. My car had started flashing up a series of faults on the dashboard - everything from cruise control failure to a warning that would have me banned in every low emission zone in the world suddenly appeared on the dash, so I trundled it down to my tame mechanic who had the full intention of plugging the car in to his computer and seeing what it all meant and, ultimately, how empty my bank account was going to be at the end of it.

This meant he had to plug in to the OBD-II port (me neither). The Onboard Diagnostics II port, to give it its full name, is where the garage can simply find out everything that's been going on with your car and decide on how to fix it. Every car manufactured since 1996 has this port so: do you know where yours is?

There are lots of after market tools you can buy to plug in to this port to monitor the car yourself but, ultimately, the garage has the best tools for diagnosing and typically your ODB-II port exists somewhere under your dashboard, near the fuse box, or in the glove compartment. A few cars have them under the bonnets.

Mine? It's in the central compartment, under the arm rest, at the bottom, underneath the rubber matt that, over the 8 years I've owned this particular car, has filled more and more with the detritus of daily life.

This meant that tame mechanic had to empty out years old 'stuff'. And, it seemed, some mints that I have no idea how long have been there. Probably 8 years. And, when he finished, he painstakingly put everything back in for me.

So the next time you're designing some furniture, thinking about a new kitchen, building a car or, indeed, designing the wireframe for a new website or email marketing template, think about who is going to use it, and how it's going to be used.

Apple is so successful because of the simplicity of their design.

Google's search page is simple and white, with only one thing on it, because that's all you need it to have when you first arrive.

Lotus is famous for 'adding lightness', taking away the stuff that isn't needed. And a good designer knows he has achieved perfection not only when there is nothing left to add, but when there is also nothing left to take away.