Designing for Kids, Designing for Dogs

Designing products for dogs and kids is rather complicated. The design itself is a negotiation of both the user and the customer.

For example, the iconic "bone" shape that you see everywhere isn't designed solely for the dog. Whether it looks like a real bone or a cartoon bone, the dog doesn't care all that much. It's mostly for the people that's buying it. The most important factor as far as the dog is concerned, is the material choice and durability of the toy. Everything else is probably more so for the owners.

A good example of a great toy for dogs is the Bad Cuz Dog Toy by JW Pet Company. It is one of the more durable rubber toys out there. Sure, the designer could've simply made do with a simple ball made from the same material, but that's not gonna drive up the sales. The designer and the company made a great decision to incorporate something fun and quirky into the toy to get owners interested. They added two small horns and a pair of feet. Sure enough, looking at the dog blogs all over the web, the owners seem to be very pleased with it.

The same goes for designing for young kids and infants. I don't think that the kids are naturally inclined to like one style of a design over another from the get go. I think children's preference for design is environmentally based, and is directly influenced by the wants of their guardians. As such, products designed for the kids are often the negotiations of both parties.​ In the end, the user isn't actually the real user but a fake one:

An imaginary user.

The imaginary user is not quite the user parents or owners know of their kids and dogs respectively, but what they imagine them to be. This is an important distinction, because the kids and dogs do have their preference regarding products, but they cannot voice their opinions adequately. Thus, the guardians and owners are the ones that decide what sort of person/animal they are when buying a product. It's a negotiation of what the ones with power wants, and what they think the opposite party wants.

Negotiating designs between the user and the customer is difficult, because not only is the designer having to design a product for the user, but they have to design it from a marketing perspective.

I predict that after a while, the imaginary user will eventually become the user as the consumer sees fit, therefore, the early design preference for users is dictated by the type of stuff the consumer purchases.

So the best way to design products for the imaginary user is to design something the consumer think the user wants. Negotiate the design. Make it not-so-kitsch but not too high-concept. Corny and not too corny. It's a balance, really.

One of my assignment for MDes is to pitch a conference paper. As mentioned in my earlier post, I've said that I like to let things settle for a while before acting on it. Because of that, I've got a nice collection of different projects and topics that aged well enough to become a solid topic (whether it's already written or not). The topic for this paper? Something I hold close to my heart:

Playgrounds.

I've ranted in the earlier incarnation of this blog about the mass upgrade of the playgrounds in Toronto, as well as the unreleased rant about the incoherent structure theme at the soon-to-be-opened Mooney's Bay playground in Ottawa. Seriously, it's an eyesore, go look at it, but I guess if that's what kids want -- no. They're plain ugly. We can't let kids think that badly designed things are OK or inevitable. That's learned helplessness at the core.

Anyway. Yes. Playgrounds. Their role is to help promote physical, mental, and social well-being of children. No, seriously. How do people design for such vague things? What's the criteria for a well-designed structure vs badly designed ones? These are some of the questions I had. And from that, I thought how nice it would be to have a framework to assist in the design process. Like some sort of drivers that must be met to pass for production.  So it's the twin of safety protocols for design, but it's more educational. Or that's how I see it. If I worded it strange, don't blame me. I've only been in this whole academically scholarly side of things for a month. But that's what I want. So I'm gonna research this.

Now my background on why I want this to be a reality: there's not much available resources on designing for kids. There are some for interaction and UI/UX design, but not much (excluding anthropometrics and ergonomics) on the physical side of things. I'd like to see a manual on design for kids. I think there are some available on "organizations" such as PlaygroundIdeas.org, but you need to join it, pitch an actual product, and give out payment information before you get their resources. I don't actually have a project, and I doubt emailing them and plead to them to hand their confidential information will go that well, so I'm just gonna have to wing it with whatever sources are available. Plus, I doubt their manuals are accredited sources of information anyways.

I've just sent in an abstract to see how it goes. If it's well-received, I guess I'll have to actually do some research on them? Or not? I don't know how conference paper work. It just seems somewhat speculative.

​I guess I'll just wait and see...

Critics are saying how industrial designers have it good nowadays, with the general public becoming more accepting of the ways of design -- thanks to the efforts of Steve Jobs and Apple. But I do not concur. In fact, I think industrial design is dead. Yes, you can go to school for industrial design. Yes, you will do traditionally industrial designer-y curricula. But no, you will not be hired as an industrial designer. Well, not anymore, I think.

I've come to this conclusion lately after looking around, and reading a small excerpt from a book titled "The Art of Atari" by Tim Lapetino.

It's a pretty hefty book that outlines the design, brand, and art of the legendary game company Atari. Although majority of the book talks about the art for the game manual, cover, and promotional works, there's a section discussing the role of industrial design in the company. It talks of the defectors of the electronic company Ampex, and how they created the company known as Atari. The section I found fascinating, and the reason to why I started thinking that industrial design as a profession is obsolete, was the huge role the design team had inside the company.

I'm gonna be truthful. industrial design doesn't really get the credit it deserves. When someone asks you what you do for a living, if you say "Industrial Design", first, they want to know what exactly that is, and after we tell them, they quickly lose interest. The same is true for everything else. Walk into a bookstore, and you see shelves of graphic design, architecture, fashion design, and interior design. But no industrial design. Seeing a book that talk about industrial design in a very open and tame way was quite exciting.

In the book, the author talked about the role design had on the Atari brand. This was evident in the meticulously designed logo and the graphic style that bound everything together. The industrial designers did more than design cabinets and consoles, they also illustrated and done graphics. I've got to mention that the concept art around that period had a similar aura to ID sketches. I wonder which came first? (this'll probably be a topic for the future once I've found a credible source)

But I've digressed far enough. What I am trying to say is that Industrial design in its pure form doesn't exist anymore. It's either industrial design + X or it's evolved into something almost entirely different. For example, designers that specialize in anthropometrics and ergonomics become ethnographic designers, or those that enjoy the human-object interaction side become UI/UX designers. And on the other hand, as an example, industrial designers with a background in biology may do something like biomimicry. Or those that are more environmentally-conscious become sustainable product designers.

In other words, it's difficult to become a successful jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none-type designer. One must either specialize in a single aspect of industrial design or attain a certain mastery of industrial design-plus-other disciplines. It's rare for a pure industrial designer to be hired in this rapidly evolving business climate. Because very soon, even UI/UX designers will be obsolete and run into the same exact problem.

This is what I've felt during the 4 years as an undergrad, and I've failed to decide which path to go. In the end, I've become the one type of designer that is the least palatable as a hire: a jack-of-all-trades. But I don't actually regret my decision to choose this path. In fact, I love being someone that's knowledgeable in varieties of skills. I get my joy in life by learning new things, and teaching it to others. I guess this is a testament to how much I adore teaching.

But of course, this is simply my observation. Please take it with a grain of salt.

This is Sir Ken Robinson's famous video that garnered close to 11 million views (as of October 2016) and over 40 million on the TED website. And it's the concept that fuelled me into pursuing a Master's education.

Basically, he talks about the traditional education system being obsolete, and the idea of producing students in a mass-production format to be terrifying. He argues that factory production mentality may have worked during the industrial revolution up to WWII, but the modern world cannot afford to produce people in a cookie-cutter format. He talks about how creativity is considered irrelevant, an how schools are pushing for STEM curriculum (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math), and creates a hierarchy that places the arts and philosophy at the bottom rung of the academic ladder. He explains that creatives that become successful out of this system made it despite -- not because -- of it. This is especially alarming because society are demanding innovative creatives, while ironically, creativity is stunted early to produce those that lack the full potential to what they could be.