A Designer’s Tweet – When walking around the city

I will introduce the mindset of human beings who put themselves in manufacturing from a veteran designer.

The mindset from a veteran designer

The mindset from a veteran designer

I suddenly remembered the time when I was meeting with a veteran designer who had been doing design in a large company for many years. To some extent, the designer unexpectedly muttered when the meeting was almost over.

“Walking around the city makes me lose confidence as a designer.”

I was confused and asked for the reason, and the designer replied:

"I usually see various things when I walk around the city. For example, guardrails, tricycles, and automatic doors. They are being used every day, so they continue to be active there. And they complete the significance of existence without any inconvenience. Who on earth developed and designed these? It's really interesting, but on the other hand, could I have made such practical designs? "

In short, everything on the street has a shape that fulfills its mission strongly in terms of its significance of existence and purpose of use for users, which makes it look great to a designer.

In fact, even a guardrail has passed various strength tests, and is designed under strict conditions in all items such as shape, visibility from the driver, pedestrian protection, installation space condition, durability, product life and manufacturing cost. Still, it is an item that is difficult to obtain approval as a public facility. In a sense, being able to focus on that is the perspective of a veteran designer, but it made us feel that we, as human beings who put ourselves in manufacturing, actually need the same mindset.

We casually use everything in our daily lives as tools. They exist as completed products created by the “dedication” of the inventor, development planning staff, designer, verification evaluation staff, manufacturing processing staff, quality control staff, delivery staff such as shipping and delivery, and sales and service staff. Of course, there are also poor-quality goods in the world, and consumers often suffer the loss. Unfortunately, the reality is that not all manufacturers are that serious. Nowadays, incidents that have become social problems due to data falsification, etc., show that even leading companies that should serve as models have broken their morals.

The saying “I'm going to lose myself” as the designer said is, in other words, going back to the starting point with a different expression that “no matter how many successful products you get to market, never forget the nervousness of making products for the first time.”

It is important to make it ideal for consumers who have the products we made to feel “glad I made the purchase.”

Even today, there are things on the streets that are active as usual.