The 10 Commandments of Design: Good Design Makes a Product Useful

This is the second article in my series looking at Dieter Rams's Ten Commandments of Design. Read the introduction and the first article.

Rams's second principle of good design is that it makes a product useful:

'A product is bought to be used. It has to satisfy certain criteria, not only functional, but also psychological and aesthetic. Good design emphasises the usefulness of a product whilst disregarding anything that could possibly detract from it.'

'Usefulness' is, in a sense, too simple a term to capture the nuance of use; it is a term from another age. It cannot hope to imply the multiple interests now at stake in a piece of design. Branding has, in many ways, replaced usefulness as a criterion for successful design. The values or emotions created by a design are now more important than their utility.

Sneakers are a prime example. What is the best sneaker? The one that is most comfortable? The one that is best for your feet? The most durable or weather-resistant? All of these questions are beside the point of sneaker design.

The best sneaker is the most desirable, gives a positive branding to the wearer. The usefulness of the sneaker comes from its ability to reflect consumer identity. This usefulness is not necessarily in the best interest of the consumer; although it is certainly in the interest of sneaker manufacturers.

Much design is, in fact useless. It is neither integral to the product nor does it enhance it in any tangible way, but rather furthers the product's brand in some way. This is the molding of emotional content, but it is far away from what we think of as design, where form serves function.

The 10 Commandments of Design: Good Design is Innovative

The first of Dieter Rams's Ten Commandments of Design is that good design should be innovative.

'The possibilities for innovation are not, by any means, exhausted. Technological development is always offering new opportunities for innovative design. But innovative design always develops in tandem with innovative technology, and can never be an end in itself.'

Innovation has become a very trendy word, thrown about with abandon, by politicians and business people. It has the advantage of not meaning anything particular, but having a kind of 'you-know-it-when-you-see-it' connotation of freshness and novelty. It's cultural, it's technological and it's about contexts: how and when we do what we do.

It is interesting that Rams makes an assertion of the necessity of innovation alongside a caveat to it. In his book The Craftsman, Richard Sennett quotes Robert Oppenheimer's diary:

'When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and you argue about what to do about it only after you have had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atom bomb.'

In a nutshell, this describes the problem of innovation. What and how one does something are surely subservient to why one does it. It is quite possible to be innovative without having any imagination. Making something without knowing why is not necessarily a recipe for innovation. Not every idea is a good one.