In February of 2015, the Speaking of Design meetup hosted Matt Fletcher of Atomic Object. Matt brought an insightful design presentation from the Design Management Institute. What is good "design"? is an article recently published in the Design Management Institute's yearly journal. The researchers queried over a hundred industrial designers, from both corporate and consultancy backgrounds, to learn what specific traits a good design exhibits. The results are absolutely fascinating and interesting to everyone. Join me as I present the results in the article and facilitate an open conversation about "what is good design?" Read our blog post for a full analysis of this content as related to web design. https://www.commercialprogression.com/post/what-good-web-design

1. What is good design?
Matt Fletcher
Atomic Object
A research driven investigation

3. What Is “Good Design”?: An
Investigation of the Complexity
and Structure of Design
Julie H. Hertenstein
Marjorie B. Platt
Robert W. Veryzer

5. WHY DOES GOOD
DESIGN MATTER?
Firms are having a harder &
harder time differentiating on a
number of traditional factors.
Even a slice of the good design
picture is incredibly beneficial.

6. The study
• 109 industrial designers at a DMI conference
• Corporate and consultant designers
Please tell us your definition and criteria for ‘good
design’ (please be as specific as possible in listing
aspects/elements of ‘good design’ in your view).

7. 7
CATEGORIES
The breakdown
418
THOUGHTS
14 customer experience
10 business
24
THEMES

8. Category Themes
Customer perspective
• Customer awareness / empathy
• Quality
• Makes life better / simpler
Brand and brand history /
evolution
• Brand
• Enduring design
• Consistency of product design &
representation
Emotions and feelings
• Emotional bond
• Positive impact
• Desirable
Business performance
• Business profits / results
• Appropriate for market / culture
• Good design process

9. 0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
% Tota

10. Three tiers:
1. Aesthetic & functional
2. Customer experience,
emotional bond, innovative /
creative
3. Everything else
Percent Theme
13 Aesthetic
11 Functional
9 Customer experience
8
Emotional bond
Innovative / creative
7 Ease of use
4
Brand
Business profits / results
Provides value
3
Form-function relationship
Communicates effectively
2
Enduring design
Quality
Positive impact
Appropriate environmentally
1
Reflects period
Ergonomic
Desirable
Makes life better
Consistency of product design
Evolving history of design
Appropriate for market
Appropriate to product
Good design process
Aesthetics & function may
dominate, but capture only 24%
of good design.
The other three quarters is
spread amongst the other
attributes.

11. “The complexity of good design is suggested by the variety
and diversity of themes that were identified, ranging from
aesthetics to sustainability to emotional bond to business
results.”
Hertenstein, Platt, and Veryzer

12. “The potential conflict among some of the themes is
further evidence of good design’s complexity.”
Hertenstein, Platt, and Veryzer

14. Corporate vs. consultant
General alignment - 19 of 24 themes were within 2% of each other.
Consultant designers prefer :
• Business profits / results
• Reflects period
Corporate designers prefer :
• Customer experience
• Ease of use
• Quality
That said,

15. “…the corporate respondents generally have the higher
percentage for the customer-related themes…whereas the
consultants have the higher percentage for the business profits/
results…where they differ, each group appears to place a higher
emphasis on its direct customer.
Hertenstein, Platt, and Veryzer

16. Implications and future research

18. Further research (continued)
• Understand how people process good design
• Brand-emotion linkage
• Design assessment & aligning team objectives

19. “Having a shared understanding or definition of good
design can be essential to the success of a design team
and helpful in resolving conflicts between interdisciplinary
design team members.”
Hertenstein, Platt, and Veryzer

20. Limitations
• The three authors sorted and categorized the
thought units. Others, especially other types of
designers, will likely categorize differently.
• Credit where credit is due : the authors have not
necessarily uncovered anything that craftsman
internalized hundreds of years ago.

21. Questions for discussion

23. Are these results something you feel you can
use and apply, or are they too abstract?

24. Thank you!
Title slide logo created by Jonathan
D’Mello from the Noun Project