Reflection on Product Design
When I was little I would eat ice cream for dessert EVERY night. I loved my sweets like most kids, but what I loved most was deciding what to eat it with. I’m not talking about the toppings I would use, but which utensil (usually spoons) I would use that night with my ice cream. Was it going to be the tiny spoon kind of night so I could slowly eat the ice cream in small bites like I was royalty? Or would it be the large soup spoon kind of night so I could slurp the ice cream I had already allowed to melt and mixed to create that creamy soup consistency? Odd, I know, but hear me out. As I look back on my choices I was presented with, I was able to infer what each utensil was used for just by experimenting with it. Or so my imagination as a kid thought so.
I have always been fascinated with product design and believe this was one of my first memories of understanding what products have specific purposes. Even though my parents have been putting spoons in front of me since I was in diapers, I was able to decipher their exact purpose through expermienting with it. A spoon may be a common everyday household item, and one of the oldest tools to have every been created, but we still use them to this day and know their place and purpose in the world of products. I believe this is a clear characteristic of great product design; knowing that this product is useful, useable, reliable, and desirable.
