Good Design, Good Use pt1
Good design = Use
Ugly and frightening have been removed in the design of the new Home Hero™ line of products designed for Home Depot’s® new venture with the Arnell Group to create ORANGE WORKS. The mission of ORANGE WORKS is to work with vendors to redesign products that work into products that meet the public’s growing awareness of design aesthetic thereby encouraging use.
Form following function is not new to designers. The Home Hero™ fire extinguisher is a wonderful example of the function of the product being well thought through. A fire extinguisher is meant to be placed somewhere that it can be quickly grabbed in the event of a fire. Let’s face it, even if the greatest interior designers, alive or dead, had to incorporate the standard issue fire extinguisher into a contemporary room design they would put in the closet like the rest of us mortals do. It is ugly, it is red, and it is frightening. It also has too many moving parts that are not intuitive that make if difficult to use in an emergency situation.
The Home Hero™ fire extinguisher is an elegant design solution encouraging its incorporation into any room in the home thus making the product more likely to meet its basic function – to put out a fire quickly.
I heartily applaud this use of good design. It is a great example of why design is not a superfluous extravagance to be overlooked. Design is a basic necessity to life.
