What is a good design?

I see there are thousands of great designers around the world, they all have their principles in designing and stuff. However designing something is a serious job, and you need to know what impact your design will have on people. Most importantly to look at the pros and cons of the design. As the first base of design, we need to design as per the person who is using it (user) by getting some feedback or review.?well, these are categorized as a persona in the design industry. It’s a set of specific traits and behavior of a person, but every person in the world ends up with a legacy persona, and that’s human. One of the most important traits of humans is they cannot be exact. Humans always answer in maybe, even if they have an exact set of answers when you deep dive into their answers they have abstract answers in maybe or “I feel” or “I think that”. This concludes an important nature of humans that they cannot be used as a quantitive part of research — Henry ford quoted once “If I had asked people what they want they would say faster horses”

So persona feedback may help your product increase your usability but may not help you create a leap in the design field or innovate. As designers to innovate and bring this industry one step forward we need to design something which is out of the box, something which solves a problem but also makes it astonishing for the user. A product that produces a new design within that technological limitation is a design leap, but a product that challenges technology to develop it for its product is a technology leap. However, both of these require a high level of imagination and risk to do, since these involve large amounts of man-force and budget.

Putting this as the baseline we start to create a product for a human, there is a vastness in the human factors, one which we know are the brain chemicals that are triggered when any human is emotionally involved, which are - dopamine, serotonin, etc. I bet you have heard these terms before. This is a very interesting field cause has to make the decision based on the chemical transition in the brain. But the more research we do on the human mind, the more careful we have to be with them. We need to avoid as small risks as possible cause that may end up opening a door to a huge problem, which will need a solution from the design itself.

Here I am underlaying two major design issues that are affecting the entire human race.

The paradox of social media

While social media gave us the ability to be connected to our friends and relatives all the time and meet new people online, over a decade it has given birth to the problem called social media addiction, for which we need to install solutions like putting a time limit on the app usage. Along with time research has shown that social media is impacting the mental health of the user and is defining their behavior in real life.?

Social media has significantly impacted many aspects of society, including communication, social relationships, and how people consume and share information. It has also had an impact on politics, with social media platforms being used as a tool for political organizing and communication. However, social media has also been criticized for fostering echo chambers, spreading misinformation, and contributing to the erosion of privacy. Overall, the impact of social media on society is complex and multifaceted.

There are many potential negative side effects of social media, including:

• The spread of misinformation and fake news can lead to confusion and harm.
• The erosion of privacy, as personal information is often shared on social media platforms.
• The negative impact on mental health, as excessive use of social media, has been linked to anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues.
• The negative impact on physical health, is as excessive use of social media, can lead to sedentary behavior and other health problems.
• The potential for cyberbullying, harassment, and other forms of online abuse.

Since Social media platforms were somewhere a design decision and were approved by stakeholders/investors at that particular time for the well-being of humans, but a decade later things changed. We now have apps to restrict the use of social media, which is considered a design decision failure.

The drive of Consumerism

Consumerism is the theory that a country that consumes goods and services in large quantities will be better off economically. This theory is based on the idea that the more people buy and use goods and services, the more money will be put into the economy, leading to economic growth. However, this theory has come under criticism in recent years, as some argue that excessive consumerism can negatively affect the environment and people's mental and physical health.

Have you ever noticed you have more things than you need, take a look around you? When you give this a second thought you will realize that there are so many things around you which have no use. Then why you made the purchase unnecessary - the key to this question is people place a lot of value on money being expressed in terms of consumer items because it serves as a gauge of value. Without having any brand or any product we as a human feel worthless. The reason being this is we are being bombarded by the company’s slogan and they are selling the idea of the life that you imagined. For eg. “Coca-Cola - Open Happiness” “Old Spice - Smell like a man” ”Gillette- The best a man can get” and thousands more. However the entire world is not like this, there are also companies that sell their products without advertising and just with mouth publicity and their qualities.

Purchasing a product for use is better. Purchasing a product to add value to life, should be rethought. Well in that case we might think that do we really need to live a life to live minimal only for the needed, and what about others? Wouldnt it feels weird sitting between the group of people with selfie sticks and you sitting there with just a dialer cellphone? The thing is we compare ourselves with other people because we have been thought to compare and grow, to do what others are doing to get what everyone has and if you get better at doing that - you look ahead amongst everyone. But if you really talk to people deep down you will understand that the basic problems are still there, no matter what you do. Like if you want to call someone doesn’t matter if you have a dialer phone or a smartphone. both do the same purpose.

As a takeaway, we need to understand the user is human, and sometimes it’s inaccurate, it’s always changing, and sometimes it doesn’t know what decision is being taken by itself.?

Being in technology is not a goal, but using technology for the well-being of humans is the goal. By understanding the users, and designing everything minimally and purposefully we can reduce the clutter in human life and that way humans can enjoy what matters most.?

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