Design for Feeling
Make it simple, but significant.
— Don Draper, fictional character on Mad Men
Aging in place
Once in awhile a Linkedin contributor will post something so insightful it has the potential to be a game-changer in your thinking. Todd Smith, CEO of Odessa Connect gifted us with just such a post.
Todd starts out with the familiar FORM (how it looks) vs. FUNCTION (how it works) dichotomy in design, then quickly introduces a third dimension, FEELINGS (how it makes you feel). This is an earthshaking distention. The author notes: “It doesn’t matter if the interface looks good, if it makes me feel ignorant.”
BINGO! That resonated, because all week I’ve been dealing with a fraud alert on my bank card—which, if this has ever happened to you, the labyrinth this will take you down for the next few days is hellish. Every business I had associated with that card now had to be reinstated with a new card number. This meant contacting all my accounts and updating payment information.
The matrix of passwords, text verifications, calls on hold, voice trees, ai generated “help” lines, and updates that are endlessly circular and like stringing beads without a knot on the end, are crazy making at best. I really began to doubt my intelligence, until I realized the interfaces were designed for high probability failure (not user-friendly designed systems).
More than once I wanted to walk away from the Gordian digital knot I could not seem to untie and escape back to a simpler time.
Simple
Todd confesses “its hard to make something easy to use” and quotes da Vinci, “simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” No truer words have ever been written. He had me at the start, because as I struggled with digital design for efficiency, my feelings went darker and darker towards self-loathing: Like what’s wrong with me (enter inner ageism voice)? When in fact, less-than intuitive systems design (being kind here) was to blame.
So, his driving mission to keep simplicity at the core of his design philosophy in order to win over the customer (interface) by engendering good feelings about the self and product, are not lost on me.
Ultimately, Todd’s goal is to make Form, Function, and Feelings integrate into a system that serves and delights the end user. To those ends I say Bravo! He has my support.
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