Furniture Design
What is good furniture design? What about interior design? It’s what we live with, every day. Our furniture becomes as much as a part of our lives as any person does. The bed that’s perfect on a Sunday morning. The couch that’s a little too lumpy. That chair by the window we sit in every morning while you drink coffee.
It serves a function, of course - that’s the point. Maybe it’s the simplest of functions, like a side table. Hold something at this height. But this approach always seemed to me to be steeped in how industrial designers viewed problems, or user experience designers - can the user solve the problem, and learn to use the tool, in a certain amount of time, under a stopwatch. I used to run these tests, and make these tools with my team. We worked in software used for industrial manufacturing, so that was the name of the game - fast, efficient, accurate. Everything else was moot.
But I still think that there is function in the realms of furniture design. To me that’s the emotional requirements.
How do you want this room to feel? Do you want it to be warm, and inviting? Do you want it to be contemplative? Do you want it to be cooling, or refreshing? Is there a view out the window already available? How does what you see there make you feel? What furniture do you already have and love? How about those?
This is what I would call the emotional requirements. And maybe it’s putting too logical, or rational terminology ontop of it - but I would like to think that maybe, in this world of functional requirements, by using this as a technique it’s a chance to enter into the emotional language that the real substance can come from. What do you need in your home to make it feel like the sanctuary you need it to be, or that place of thriving productivity?
This is where I love working with clients and collaborating with people - because I know what I want and need, and that’s fine, but I would rather open my heart and my eyes to what other people need, and how they live their lives, and support that. It’s like the flint meeting the steel, and that’s where the spark is.
