I loved Jeff’s posts about Interaction Criticism, largely because they helped me to start to think about design – and what makes good design – in new and more explicit ways. Criticism is clearly a good framework in which to articulate reflections on things that already exist.

One of the implications of encouraging designers to think about criticism, though, is that they will do this during the design process as well as afterward. Thinking about the types of rich connections and associations brought out in criticism would surely have benefits. However, I am wondering if this could also encourage a tendency to design for criticism in a way that might not be entirely relevant to users. For example, if you are designing a toaster, would, say (and I’m completely making this up) a clever reference to early-20th century conceptions of modernity be relevant?

These thoughts were prompted in part by one of the more disturbing features from the current fall issue of Surface: an overview of Graham Tabor’s fashion design. Some excerpts from the article give a good sense of what his work is about:

[Tabor explains]: “I was fascinated by the traces cultures leave behind after they’ve disappeared.” The delicate garments were knitted out of nylon, silk, merino and rubbery synthetics, in shades of cream or black. While preparing the collection, he pored over photos of works by artist Gordon Matta-Clark that feature buildings with entire sections cut out from them. The images inspired him to construct his pieces around openings and missing fragments, such as leggings with slash-like holes or an open-weave top. Rather than skin, these apertures reveal contrasting textures underneath. The clothing is both fragile and slightly menacing, like a jacket that deforms the wearer’s silhouette with shoulders that pitch backwards.

Tabor’s models walked down the festival runway looking like an undiscovered tribe of svelte aboriginals. Patches of white makeup covered thir faces like birthmarks and macramé accessories dangled from their waists. Meanwhile, twisted and primitive-looking masks hung from their heads, made from bits of bone, horsehair and black, rubbery yarn. They were combined with human hair extensions gelled and powdered in braids so rigid they appeared, in Tabor’s words, “dessicated.”

This seems to me to be a good example of design that works well for criticism, but maybe not so well for users. In this case, I imagine that the average woman/’user’ would want to feel beautiful as opposed to, well, dessicated.

So do ‘good’ designers just know how to walk the line between over-intellectualized design for the critics and inane design for the unwashed masses?