Futures in Design with Kip Voytek

Kip Voytek's great design presentation today was, in my mind, underattended.  I am sometimes concerned that there isn't the right developer/designer mix here at MIX.

Kip is from the R/Greenberg Associates design agency.  Here are some of my notes from the talk:

Create Simplicity by being subtractive AND additive: it was refreshing to hear him echo the insightful John Maeda (who writes the Simplicity blog at MIT) and say that good design is not about being subtractive, it’s about managing, rather than avoiding, complexity.

Use Effective practices, not "best" practices.  I love this.  We talk so often about these mysterious "best practices" at Microsoft and disregard the importance of context and asking what's effective.

A Design Challenge: Can you can create an error message that is sufficiently fun that you inspire your users to re-create the error to see the message again?

Kip's Examples of Delight and Discovery in design:

• Flickr: " Great" happens when unexpected or emergent behaviours can occur.
• World of Warcraft: talk about emergent behaviour!
• Nike iD: the concept, "what if we let people customize their shoes?" has turned into a dialogue and a playground
• Oxo: the interesting handles on kitchenware that say "that's so much better!"
• Uniqlo: a counter-conventional approach to a catalogue (as featured previously at Where Design Comes From)
• ... and there were more... watch this session!

Kip's Closing Note: Do more. Strive for delight.

(My Closing Note: I don't purport to be a designer, but I have immense respect for good design.)