Dieter Rams and Why Designers Will Lead the Future | Hacker News Reader

Dieter Rams and Why Designers Will Lead the Future

theindustry.cc

9 pointsjoshlong7 comments

'Designers will lead the future' - I don't agree here. In the context of startups, designers need to work with developers to make their ideas real, unless they are developers too.

Unfortunately, this is where the writers desire for a good lead in headline bastardizes the gist of what Dieter was actually trying to say.

“…innovative design always develops in tandem with innovative technology, and can never be an end in itself.”

The entire article is filling in the blanks from a series of quotes. At best, the actual quote implies that design innovation and technology innovation are 50/50 partners in future products.

By the way, the road with trees photo might be intended just as a filler and not an example of good design, but if it is, I would beg to differ. We have rounds like that pretty much everywhere where I live, and the trees kill quite a lot of people. Puting you car into a field (when you near miss deer, or druk driver in going the opposite direction or something) and putting it into a tree is very different.

> and the trees kill quite a lot of people

Er, the trees aren't "killing people," the trees are just sitting there. The drivers are driving dangerously and killing themselves (and their passengers, and pedestrians, and bicyclists, and other drivers, and occasionally a tree or two)...

If there's any action that needs to be taken it's to make people drive more safely. [Part of this, incidentally, is to make roads narrower and less open, e.g., by adding trees, to reduce the impression that a road is "fast".]

You don't need to drive dangerously (unless "driving at all" means "driving dangerously") to hit a tree, it suffices if someone else does drive dangerously. Most people in traffic accidents are victims, not perpetrators, and I see little point in making victims suffer.

Yeah shady lanes were good,useful (design) for Napoleon's army (and previously France's Henry the iv's) when they marched to and from battlefields[1] --but those same trees are now responsible for quite a few automobile wrecks in modern times for the reasons you illustrate.

[1] http://www.economist.com/node/2429069

The article would be right if most people didn't buy/use horribly designed products.

Since they do and seem to prefer saving 50 cents to using something decently designed then we should expect good design to have almost no impact on people's lives.

Look at the German Pavillion in Barcelona, sadly 85 years later we all live in houses that emulate thatched roofs. Our furniture usually dates from a few years after thatched roofs but not much.

I've recently been on a search for a can opener that opens cams with out slipping, or jamming, I'm starting to get the feeling that I need to visit somewhere that sells tools for professional chefs just to get something that works. My mom has one but I've been unable to figure out what brand it is, and the store she got hers from has since closed.

It's 2013 and most can openers don't work. We really have no hope to make software that works.

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