Intuitive design is everywhere — from something as basic as your phone beeping (to alert you to a notification) to Samsung’s The Frame (TVs that look like art when not in use). They are disruptors in their own way, pushing design down newer paths, like Steve Jobs did with the Macintosh and the iPhone. Or like Uber Lite today, says Abhimanyu Nohwar, founder-director of Kiba Design. “It is a version of the app that works on basic smartphones in limited connectivity, and the redesigned interface is more intuitive through innovations such as guided pick-ups, selecting from a list of destinations (which gets smarter through machine learning), and optional maps.”
An intuitive approach — which aligns a product with, and builds upon, its customers’ mental model (what users know, or think they know, about how things work) — is essential to good design. Such innovations are also key in a world where the proliferation of digital services requires a level of ICT (internet and communication technology) literacy. “This can be a hindrance for those at the margins that do not possess such skills and knowledge. Organisations are recognising this invisible access barrier and creating solutions. At Kiba, we recently completed a project where we designed a digital platform to deliver soft skills content to low income school students — essentially designing a digital user experience for users that are completely unfamiliar with the digital realm,” Nohwar explains.
We are at the cusp of a tremendous shift in design, he believes. “If your phone buzzing is one of the most basic examples of intuitive design, how do you take that paradigm and expand it? Do you need to carry your phone around to have a conversation? Maybe you could just be in an environment that is already calibrated to isolate sound as you move through the room, with speakers embedded in the space recognising your position to give you a noise-cancelled projection that only you can hear.” While these may just be conjectures now, technology like AR (augmented reality), VR (virtual reality) and MR (mixed reality) are propelling us towards that future.
Rocking it
One of Nohwar’s experiments with intuitive design, the Jolly Rocker stool, comes with a happy side effect — it helps children with autism. “It had started off as an idle sketch, to explore the form. But when I started researching rocking, and what it does to the brain, I found out that the motion induces the release of endorphins which helps calms them and regulate their mood in a stressful environment.” The design, which won the Godrej Design Lab competition last year, also works as ‘active seating’ for adults, constantly engaging the core muscles, leading to improved posture. “I’m planning to bring it to the market soon,” he says.
Nohwar is one of the speakers at IDF 2018, a part of Bengaluru ByDesign. At UB City Amphitheatre, on November 23-24. Details: indiadesignforum.com