CONTEXT LED DESIGN

Empathy is the bedrock to context as context is to design

Sometimes we are compelled to design for self preservation, acceptance or approval.

How do I mean?

Think about your PhD graduation ceremony, you won’t go dressed in a jersey.

Society has shaped your mindset about such events.

So before dressing you think about the occasion, the look and feel same as when you’re invited for an interview or a sporting event, you think about the look, the comfort, sometimes the weather etc.

Now all those characteristics determine the context, occasion, weather, comfort, dress code… Etc. This is entirely what product design entirely mimmicks.

Product design would think of a product as for the user persona. It would view government policy as dress code for occasions, it would view our need to be socially accepted as a product designed for customer satisfaction.

This shows that when designing a product we are invariably filling a social need and for it to thrive it must achieve customer satisfaction measured from pricing strategy to distribution channels.

Truth is product design and management simply imitates social interaction and response.

This is why design is not only on paper, it isn’t pencil drawing or pattern making, it is culture, it is value and very importantly it is nature.

Design therefore can be perceived as a need or as a luxury, context defines it.

So our role as product designer’s or managers just like any human is to follow context.

Context would always preserve the product.