Rob: you said:
"it is not the users who purchase the furniture but usually specifiers who
tend to select furniture that is easy to install, maintain and replace
rather than use. They make the purchasing decision not the user. Because the
user is several stages removed from the design decisions and the
purchasing decisions their needs are subordinate to the needs of the
manufacturer who selects the favored design directions when the product
is being designed.
I won't say this as carefully as Gunnar did: Designers who get caught in the
purchasing logic of the distribution chain aren't designers I want to know.
If they can't think of what its like to use the chair - to sit in it, feel
it, look at it as part of a life they aren't likely to design anything that
I would care to purchase.
This isn't latter day anthropology, it is the essence of what designers
should be doing.
George Nelson and Charles Eames were not dictated to by Herman Miller,Inc.
They sought to realize things that had what I will call an "integrity of
use" in the markets which Herman Miller, Inc. sought to address. Specifiers
then recognized what was presented to them as fulfilling needs they wished
to meet (often without their full understanding that the need was there.)
There should be no opposition between whether a design is easy to install,
maintain and replace and its ease of use.
Charles Burnette
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