See data in everything
Design the invisible
See a world as data — document, analyze, find insights
Design things worth keeping
Translate a place into something someone else can feel
Articulate your design principles
Design the collaboration, not just the product
Honest iteration — early work is material, not precious
Edit ruthlessly — what you remove matters as much as what you keep
Know who you are as a designer — and show it
Week 6
Dieter Rams — 10 Principles of Good Design (1976). Innovative, useful, aesthetic, understandable, unobtrusive, honest, long-lasting, thorough, environmentally friendly, as little design as possible.
A 50-year-old reference framework. Read it as a model for how a designer articulates their own values — then look for yours.
Your own work + the designs you admire.
No new external cases this week. Your collection of admired designs (extending your Week 1 table) and the five projects you’ve made become the material to analyze.
Midway Reflection
Review your work from Weeks 1–5. Collect another batch of designs you admire (extend your Week 1 table). Find patterns in both the designs you appreciate and the designs you make. Write about it.
Due anytime before Wed May 20. Improve-an-Earlier-Project track runs through end of course.
Designs You Admire
Extending your Week 1 table — what patterns emerge?
Your 5 Projects
Weeks 1–5 as a body of work
System Clusters
Which systems did you gravitate toward?
Week 6 is the midway point — no new external case studies. Some of you have been adding to your Week 1 table all term; some haven’t. Either is fine. The work this week is the same: extend the table, then analyze it. What do the designs you admire reveal about your instincts, your values, the systems you’re drawn to? Takeaway: The collection you build (or rebuild now) is itself a case study in your taste.
Dear Data, Iconic Beginnings, The 30-Year Object, Everything Is a World, Invisible Senses — five projects made in five weeks. Individually they were assignments. Together they are evidence of who you are as a designer. Which were strongest? Which have unrealized potential? Takeaway: A portfolio is not a collection of finished work — it’s a map of your creative instincts.
Tag each item in your collection AND each of your five projects with SEMINAL letters. Where do the designs you admire cluster — Material, Sensory, Service, Artificial? Where do your own projects cluster? Do they overlap, or do you admire one kind of design and make another? Takeaway: The gap between what you appreciate and what you make is where your design identity is forming.
What do you reach for? Physical objects? Digital? Experiences? Systems?
What do you avoid? What's consistently absent from your collection?
What surprised you about your own collection?
Do your system clusters reveal a bias you didn't know you had?
Dieter Rams wrote 10 principles of good design in 1976. They’ve guided designers for 50 years. Now write yours.
Not a required deliverable — a way into the analysis if it helps. Include in your Week 6 reflection if you do it.
Choose one project from Weeks 1–5 to improve.
Your portfolio so far: Dear Data, Iconic Beginnings, The 30-Year Object, Everything Is a World, Invisible Senses.
Or propose an alternate project. If you have a different project in mind, you may pitch it — provided it is sufficiently clearly defined and has milestones that will carry it to a satisfying finish by the end of the course.
You choose your approach.
Design Challenge 6
Review Your Work
Everything you’ve made in Weeks 1–5
Collect a New Batch
Designs you admire + why — extend your Week 1 table
Find Patterns in Both
Designs you appreciate AND designs you make
Write About It
All goes in your Week 6 reflection
Due anytime before Wed May 20
A midway reflection — collection and analysis of the collection. Some of you have been regularly collecting examples of designs in the world that embody concepts from theory and cases in class; some of you have not. Either is fine. The work is the same either way: review all of your work so far, collect another batch of designs you admire and why (add to the table you made in Week 1), look for patterns in both the designs you appreciate and the designs you make, and write about it.
Which SEMINAL systems do you gravitate toward? Which are absent? Do the designs you collect and the designs you make share a sensibility, or are they pulling in different directions? What does the gap (or alignment) reveal? Write what surprises you.
Plus: the Improve-a-Project track runs in parallel through the rest of the course — see the previous slide.
Monday was midway 1:1 check-ins while you finished Week 5 in class. Wednesday was the workshop we attended together. Much of the Week 6 material wasn’t covered in class — so treat this deck as the reading and respond to it in your Week 6 reflection.
Week 6 Reflection — goes in your WIP doc. See Challenge slide for the full description.
Concept tags — mark which apply to your work this week:
Week 6: Curation as Self-Knowledge · System Clustering · Body of Work · Frame Innovation
Week 5: Multisensory Design · Frame Innovation · Emotional Design · Obsessive Sensory Attention · Place as Story · Making Invisible Perceptible
Week 4: Constraints Increase Variability · Emotionally Durable Design · Craftsmanship · Constraint as Identity · Durability as Desirability · Repair as Understanding
Week 3: Disappearing Interviewer · Curiosity as Structure · Interviewing Users · Invisible Systems Made Visible · Dual Desires · Going Deep
Week 2: Structure Mapping · Far-Field Analogies · Technology Brokering · Experience Economy · Affordances · Anticipation as Design · Controlled Reveal · Sensory Arc · One Resonant Idea
Week 1: Service · Energy · Material · Interactive/Sensory · Natural · Artificial · Longevity
Improve an Earlier Project (or approved alternate):
Pick a project with unrealized potential, identify its biggest risk, design weekly milestones to take it to a satisfying ending by the end of the course. Document V1 and improvement side by side.
Week 6
Dieter Rams — 10 Principles of Good Design (1976). Innovative, useful, aesthetic, understandable, unobtrusive, honest, long-lasting, thorough, environmentally friendly, as little design as possible.
A 50-year-old reference framework. Read it as a model for how a designer articulates their own values — then look for yours.
Your own work + the designs you admire.
No new external cases this week. Your collection of admired designs (extending your Week 1 table) and the five projects you’ve made become the material to analyze.
Midway Reflection
Review your work from Weeks 1–5. Collect another batch of designs you admire (extend your Week 1 table). Find patterns in both the designs you appreciate and the designs you make. Write about it.
Due anytime before Wed May 20. Improve-an-Earlier-Project track runs through end of course.