What do you think about so called "designers products"

[Pawelk198604]

For me it should be rather called snobish products than designers products :-) 

For me designers means, that some is technological advantage rather than visual one. 

If some means too look nice it should be called artistic but not “designer” ;-) 

so for me the word designer should be reserved only who brillant scientist and engineers, like Sergei Korolev ;-) creator of Russian Space Program who designed first man rated rocket R-7 and Vostok Space capsule that carried Yuri Gagarin into Space. 

Or Wernher Von Braun, creator of American Space Program, and V-2 Rockets from WW2 and Saturn V rocket that NASA used to send Peoples to moon! 
, but he was ex-pedant so it’s a bit problem for me ;-) 
Anyway i think the word “designer” should be reserved only for this. 
who produce things useful, and not some "pseudo-designers" who are doing some crappy shoes, whose production cost of less than $ 10 and sell it for $ 250, or a mobile phone that has an interesting looking casing, but in terms of technology is not difference from the previous model!

[p1t1o]

Meh, this is just semantics now. The word "designer" has already become widely synonymous with "overpriced". But also literally, people who "design" crappy trainers are actually designers, to be fair. And a phone whose only difference is the external look: well, the only difference is the design.

I think what you want is another class of products called "Engineered". I'd buy some engineered cheese no problemo. Sounds nice.

 

[Slam_Jones]

3 hours ago, p1t1o said:

-snip-

I think what you want is another class of products called "Engineered". I'd buy some engineered cheese no problemo. Sounds nice.

 

That's gotta be some very precise cheese!

I'd buy it.

[Waxing_Kibbous]

Meh, the word "artist" has become even more watered down and meaningless.

[peadar1987]

And the word "engineer" means anyone who does anything mechanical. The guy who fixes my car is a very skilled technician. Totally different thing.

[Camacha]

4 hours ago, Slam_Jones said:

That's gotta be some very precise cheese!

I'd buy it.

We already have that. It is called Swiss cheese.

[Pawelk198604]

12 hours ago, Camacha said:

We already have that. It is called Swiss cheese.

LOL  

[Emperor of the Titan Squid]

whats wrong with von Braun? also i agree, designer products are just to get people to pay WAY more money.

[Red Iron Crown]

Not really a science thread, moved ot the Lounge.

[legoclone09]

Yeah, 'designer' is a word that lets you double the price. Same with gluten free/low fat/other buzzwords.
It gets me mad, an Evike Airsoftcon T-shirt was advertised as 'designer' on the page. How is a t-shirt any different than a 'designer' t-shirt except in the name and price?

[p1t1o]

People do fall for it though, not everyone, but enough to make a difference to profits. People will see the word "designer" and, even if just a small amount, they will subconsciously assign more value to that item. I've worked on marketing studies where people responded positively to all sorts of words, and we were absolutely not allowed to put the word "moist" on the product. All you have to do is look at the gibberish they put on cosmetic products, but the language will test better in focus groups. Society kinda brought the "designer" plague upon itself.

[cubinator]

Slightly off-topic, but I one saw a place selling ice cream, which had two sizes: "small" and "large". The "large" container cost more, of course. But I noticed that the "small" container was taller and had a smaller diameter, while the "large" container was wider and shorter, the wideness giving it the appearance of being larger. In reality, I could tell that they had the same volume. The clerk probably didn't even know this. Both were really big, though. There are lots of little tricks marketers do to try to make you buy more and pay more than you really have to.

[Camacha]

7 minutes ago, cubinator said:

Slightly off-topic, but I one saw a place selling ice cream, which had two sizes: "small" and "large". The "large" container cost more, of course. But I noticed that the "small" container was taller and had a smaller diameter, while the "large" container was wider and shorter, the wideness giving it the appearance of being larger. In reality, I could tell that they had the same volume. The clerk probably didn't even know this. Both were really big, though. There are lots of little tricks marketers do to try to make you buy more and pay more than you really have to.

Did you actually measure this? Because volume can be deceptive. You really need to calculate it or empirically confirm your suspicions. It would also be counter productive, as they could have used less ice cream for the small one. Finally, having a small and large cup is irrelevant if you, for instance, serve two and three scoops. I imagine you took that into account, but a lot of places sell different amounts of ice in different containers, where container and amount are not necessarily linked.

[Kerbart]

16 minutes ago, cubinator said:

Slightly off-topic, but I one saw a place selling ice cream, which had two sizes: "small" and "large". The "large" container cost more, of course. But I noticed that the "small" container was taller and had a smaller diameter, while the "large" container was wider and shorter, the wideness giving it the appearance of being larger. In reality, I could tell that they had the same volume. 

I once saw a YouTube be video showing something similar. In a football stadium (or maybe baseball) they showed how a "large" sized cup of beer (completely full) could be poured into a "small" sized cup without any spillage.

I guess it makes sense if you have automatically timed beer pumps that dispense a fixed amount; now your staff doesn't lose time having to select "large" or "small."

Large portions are a generally applied method in retail of making customers volunarily pay more for the same product. It doesn't cost starbucks anything extra to give you a large over a small. But they can charge more for it.

 

[cubinator]

3 minutes ago, Camacha said:

Did you actually measure this? Because volume can be deceptive. You really need to calculate it or empirically confirm your suspicions.

 

What I do is imagine moulding the first shape in clay into the second shape. By that method, the volumes appeared the same. I am aware that humans are terrible at judging volume, though. I would have measured it, but I didn't have a ruler on me unfortunately and I don't know the formulas for a truncated cone from memory.

3 minutes ago, Camacha said:

It would also be counter productive, as they could have used less ice cream for the small one. Finally, having a small and large cup is irrelevant if you, for instance, serve two and three scoops. I imagine you took that into account, but a lot of places sell different amounts of ice in different containers, where container and amount are not necessarily linked.

Good point. The "small" container I got was pretty full though, so I don't think there was really much difference except in price.

[Camacha]

23 hours ago, p1t1o said:

People do fall for it though, not everyone, but enough to make a difference to profits. People will see the word "designer" and, even if just a small amount, they will subconsciously assign more value to that item. I've worked on marketing studies where people responded positively to all sorts of words, and we were absolutely not allowed to put the word "moist" on the product. All you have to do is look at the gibberish they put on cosmetic products, but the language will test better in focus groups. Society kinda brought the "designer" plague upon itself.

Yes, the term design is no different than handmade, precision, professional, premium or any of the other upselling terms that are common. Apparently it works, so they get used. If people would not respond to the terms, they would not be used. Meanwhile, the terms are slowly but surely deflated to the point where they have lost all value. This leads to cringe-worthy terms like director of first impressions when referring to a receptionist and environmental maintenance officer for a janitor - yes, both were spotted in real life. Does that not simply scream that you are an overworked, underpaid grunt that needs to be pleased with a title because you will certainly not get anything else? Meanwhile, everyone is a manager of something, and actual managers would kill themselves if they were to be referred to as manager.

However, I feel I need to speak up for design and art in general. Whenever either one is discussed by the general public, it is always with a healthy dose of complaints and disdain. These people just shine something up and sell the same product for a lot more. The folly! You can see it happening in this thread. People love to pile on and express their disgust with the phenomena. At least once every weeks, someone posts some contemporary painting and scoffs about how much money it brought at auction. However, having a background in both creative and slightly more technical fields, I feel creativity and, by extension, art and design are severely underestimated. Yes, there are idiots/savvy people (pick one) out there that sell the same t-shirt for many times what it should cost, or that ride the wave of money that gets poured into art, or that just bumble about and disguise their incompetence by calling it creative as if that is some kind of shield for criticism. However, those are not what makes art nor design, an otherwise very industrious and useful group of professions.

You can have technologically marvellous products, built by brilliant engineers, that are absolutely horrible to use and look equally terrible. Almost anything you touch and live with, from this website, to your house, shoes, the packages your food comes in and the computer mouse in your hands has been touched and shaped by a designer. Some designers are focusing on the user experience, making sure those technical capabilities are intuitively understood by the public. Other designers focus on creating objects that please people aesthetically, that they wish to own and love to look at. The relationship one has with an object is often much more than a purely functional one. People build bonds with the things they own, sometimes even identify through them. Eliminate all the designers in the world and you would end up with a mismatched assortment of technically functional products that somewhat function and that you really do not care for too much. Designer translate technological potential into real world usefulness, and sometimes even drive the development of technology to fit certain needs or visions.

Probably the most underestimated is how much time and energy it takes to create something new, especially if that new thing has to feel as if it should have been there all along. It generally takes many, many experiments and failures to get to that one new thing that actually does work. The same goes for defining something until the bare essentials are left. Making something complex is relatively easy, making something complex that looks and feels simple is terribly hard. When you see a design chair you think is utterly overpriced, it might very well be, but you should remember a few things - the price also incorporates all the failures that were required to get to that point, making something look simple often requires more expensive manufacturing and the volume is low, so the price is divided by a much smaller number. Though the big names grab most of the attention, most of it is made by small time people and companies that do it because they feel an urge to do so, earning significantly less and working substantially more than anyone in a normal daytime job. This is equally true for practical design like furniture, and full blown art. Looking at it and thinking to yourself you could have done that is too easy, since you did not. That is pretty much the whole point of it. And yes, there is a fair amount of lazy art out there, but that does not mean we should be dismissive of all of it. There is shoddy engineering too, as there is bad plumbing and inedible bread. It seems people do not understand it and therefore dislike it - which is not that dissimilar from things like literature.

I feel it is sad that people are so easily put off when it comes to art and design. If they could just overcome their urge to blurt out the inevitable my daughter/niece/whatever could do that, there is actually a lot to appreciate and enjoy. Even things that improve the quality of your life every day, be it by enhancing your experiences or creating pleasing aesthetics. Rather than looking at all the things you do not like, find that one thing that blows you away. Do it a few times and you could even start a collection.

 

Edited June 26, 2016 by Camacha

[kerbiloid]

Designer - one who makes signs on a piece of something.
Artist - one who makes art.

But why they call engineer them, who doesn't make engines? Perhaps, a game engine programmer is engineer, while a electronical or chemical engineer - isn't.

[RainDreamer]

As someone who works in advertising, care about that much as you would "doctors' recommendation" or "premium choice", etc. They are not lies, they are just biased surveys with absurdly small and skewed sample base.

[cubinator]

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

But why they call engineer them, who doesn't make engines? Perhaps, a game engine programmer is engineer, while a electronical or chemical engineer - isn't.

I believe the term "engineer" used to refer to someone who worked with train engines. But, as more types of engines were invented, and more people started tinkering with fancy new gadgets, the term "engineer" came to mean what it does now.

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, cubinator said:

I believe the term "engineer" used to refer to someone who worked with train engines. But, as more types of engines were invented, and more people started tinkering with fancy new gadgets, the term "engineer" came to mean what it does now.

Perhaps, even more poetic.
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=engineer

Engineer — from Latin ingeniare, from ingenium, i.e. "The Inspired One".

[cubinator]

13 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Perhaps, even more poetic.
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=engineer

Engineer — from Latin ingeniare, from ingenium, i.e. "The Inspired One".

Cool!

[Bill Phil]

22 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Designer - one who makes signs on a piece of something.
Artist - one who makes art.

But why they call engineer them, who doesn't make engines? Perhaps, a game engine programmer is engineer, while a electronical or chemical engineer - isn't.

Define "engine." If you use the common sense of the word, that's a heat engine. Computers are math engines.