Poorly designed!

The above phrase has always been a part of my life. I realize this may not be true for the average human being, but when you grow up with engineers in the house, that is the effect. Shampoo bottle cracks: "poorly designed!" Field implement piece breaks off in your hand: "poorly designed!" Bi-fold doors never work right: "poorly designed!" Vegetable you don't like: "poorly designed!" The inevitable phrase following that: "I could've designed a better one!" Needless to say, the concept of design has always been present for me.

For this reason, I notice when things aren't quite designed "right" (I know, an opinion), or when they have a fantastic design that won't let you quit looking at it. I have had several experiences recently that reminded me of design. The main thing is that I'm currently reading a book called, "A Whole New Mind," by Daniel Pink, explaining why right-brain (conceptual, big picture, creativity) thinking is the wave of the future. One of the things he claims is coming to the forefront in culture is design, because we are at a point in history in which (in the US) all available items perform tasks fairly well, the main distinction now is the design.

One place I noticed a lack of thought in design is when flying on a small regional jet last week. By a fluke that enraged my husband, we didn't get the seats we chose online, but the the VERY back seats in the very small plane. In case you didn't know, it is HOT and LOUD back there. Fine, that may not be fixable. However, the major design flaw was that those seats were IMMEDIATELY next to the restrooms. So, for the entire (90 minute) flight, people streamed to the restroom, non-stop. (It's 90 minutes, hold it, people!!) It was amazing. One woman went in with 2 kids! Either way, the design flaw was that if someone didn't close the door after them, I reached over (I wasn't stretching either) and closed it. At one point, I was holding it closed because it wouldn't stay shut. Ridiculous. I shouldn't have to do that. (We thought about posting a picture of this situation on FailBlog but didn't.)

Sometimes though, a design is so good, that it stretches the mind. I experienced this in college, when some of the classrooms had prints by M.C. Escher. (See above.) I stared, and stared at these pictures that seemed to interconnect forever. They did not seem like stable images, as I kept following the lines trying to figure out how they seemed to play visual tricks on me (hopefully not to the detriment of my education). Above is one simple example of one of his images. Below is a lego version (doesn't it twist your mind inside out?) and a joke about his work from one of my favorite webcomics, xkcd. By the way, Escher's type of design uses something called "tessellations." The next one is a machine/art piece I saw at a museum in Boston with Fjaere. I looked at thing forever trying to figure out how it worked :-) It's all in the design. The last one is a building on the campus of MIT. It figures. :-) Even machines and buildings can be beautiful and fascinating :-)