One of the great things about design is how diverse the field is. Yes, in our online design world, we think directly about interaction design and visual design, with bits of information architecture thrown in at times, but our influences can be so varied. Things like industrial design, architecture, fashion, set and lighting design. The stimulating common thread is there is creativity and expertise being thrown at tricky problems to find deeply satisfying solutions.
So its exciting to see the intersection of various design professions that allow us fresh insights into how best to solve problems. Take the design for the JetBlue passenger terminal at JKF Airport in the US. In designing the “interior experience”, architect and set designer (David Rockwell) hired a choreographer (Jerry Mitchell) to arrive at new ways of understand the movement of people to ensure the design did in fact produce a satisfying experience.
What was also interesting was the way they analysed public spaces in New York to determine exactly what did and didn’t work. It’s something we can always be mindful of. Often people come to us and say “let’s build one of these exciting thingies, just like ”. Rather than taking that at face value, what we can bring to this is the abstracted analysis to draws out the elements that work, why they work in that context and the principles that could be applied to the design challenges we face.
Here’s the article and look for the “audio slide show” link, which gives you the story with pictures.
