Principle 1.7: Design is an articulation of preference

Let's talk about the evolution of the electric guitar design during the last half century; There has been no evolution. Well, some can say at least there had been some attempts for radical new designs, but as we will further discuss below, such attempts ended up only attracting the attention of a minority of anti-mainstreamers. Otherwise, every guitar fan in 2023 still wants to buy classical-shaped electric guitars from the 50s or 60s, like the Fender Stratocaster or Gibson Les Paul, which are considered "authentic" designs by guitar fans.

Guitar fans are really funny and weird creatures; While they never stop talking about or mocking the design bugs of classical-shaped electric guitars that harm the stability of tuning or playability on internet forums, they still refuse to buy new designs. For example, there were numerous attempts at the ergonomic design of electric guitar bodies for better playability (see Fig. 2). However, from the consumer's perspective, guitar fans were not very excited about them since they did not look "authentic." (Only a few super-technical guitarists who play fast, technically difficult, complicated, but very minor genres actually buy and play them.) From the company's perspective, these kinds of ergonomic guitar boy designs were only done by very small companies or independent guitar builders, while big names like Fender and Gibson never gave a glimpse of interest; they just kept reproducing their 50s and 60s designs. Even other second-mover companies like Suhr, James Tyler, and Schecter basically follow Fender and Gibson's classical guitar body designs and just change minor details.

In 2015, Gibson tried a sort of "progressive" or "evolutional" design in which they installed an automatic robot tuner on the backside of the guitar head of their flagship models, including Les Paul and SG. Besides various concerns and anger toward this robot tuner, the first reaction from guitar fans was sheer aesthetic repulsion; they believed the robot tuner, even though audiences cannot see the robot tuner behind your guitar head, injured the "authenticity" of Gibson guitar.

Why does this happen? Aren't the playability and stability the purpose of the electric guitar as an instrument? Why do guitar fans not welcome new designs that provide better playability and stability? And even most professional guitarists also prefer classical-shaped electric guitars from the 50s or 60s.

I believe there has been a transfer from the form to the purpose of the electric guitar due to the preference in the electric guitar culture and community; The form of the "authentic" electric guitar bodies from the 50s and 60s eventually became the purpose per se of possessing an electric guitar. That specific form is the electric guitar's satisfying, beautiful, and aesthetic value for which guitar fans pay money. And this transfer was induced by the strong preference due to a successive series of our guitar heroes who have been playing those classical-shaped electric guitars since the 50s and 60s and made us want to be like them. The power of this strong preference is very remarkable and interesting in that the purpose of possessing a certain form surpassed the playability and stability, which was supposed to be the original purpose of electric guitars. The guitar companies, therefore, made a choice that it is better to just keep the design by keep re-issuing their 50s and 60s guitars.

Radio-installed tape measure

When I first encountered this tape measure, I just laughed with sheer thrill and delight. "I have never imagined installing a radio into a tape measure nor expected to see this, but someone actually did this." At first, this chimera looked so whimsical to me since a radio and tape measure felt like something very apart from each other. But, soon, I realized this chimera was designed out of a purpose for a certain group of jobs. For construction workers or carpenters whose working place changes every day, it is really hard to set up a radio and speaker system. They need a handy and portable radio, but by merging a radio into one of the most handy and portable tools that they keep using or carrying, they can reduce the things they have to carry all the time. Although, nowadays, thanks to 5G and smartphones, you can even listen to any podcast with a smartphone in your pocket almost everywhere, this radio-installed tape should have been useful like 8~10 years ago when less wireless internet was available.

Squeeze Ball

Is this just a cute cat-shaped plush doll? But when you see the item tag, it says this is a "Squeeze Ball". And then you squeeze this cute cat's face with one hand and realize this one has the perfect elasticity that feels so satisfactory and relieves your stress. But why the cute cat face?? Would it be better with your enemy's face to squeeze it? For the interaction and experience that this squeeze ball provides, I think it is a two-step process:
1. You want to touch it with your hand.
2. You try squeezing it.
3. You feel it.
Even if you haven't read the item tag, this process is spontaneous.
So, for the very first step, it has to be a cute face that makes you want to touch it, not an enemy's face that you don't want to touch. Then why do we spontaneously squeeze this cute and innocent cat's face? I don't know. Why do uncles love to (gently) squeeze their baby nephew's cheek? It is just spontaneous.

Detergent Packs

This is one of the designs that saved my life. Before I came to Stanford, I always had a laundry machine in my room or at least on the same floor. But, at Stanford, I am living in Kennedy graduate residence, which consists of four different dormitory buildings and one commons building, but there is only one laundry room in the commons building. I have to go down from my room on the 4th floor, walk to the commons building, and go down to the basement floor in order to get to the laundry room. And then I have to come back (Repeat this three times for laundry and dryer). In that sense, putting only a needed and handy amount of detergent in one water-soluble pack made my life so much easier. I can just pick one handy pack, and that's it. I don't have to carry the whole bottle of detergent. Moreover, while they could have just made it as a simple rectangular pack, for some reason, they chose this yin-yang symbol-ish shape. To me, it also looks like a Beyblade (spinning-top toy) and conveys a sense of "sharpness", which makes me feel like it will wash my clothes properly.

Guerrilla Design???

This week, I am very focused on preparing my student club's promotion presentation, which will be presented to about 200 students at the Korean Student Association of Stanford. It is only a five-minute presentation, but this short time length makes me pour more time into pondering how I have to design the presentation to be more fluent and impactful. Although I already have a list of content I want to convey, I can't help but keep editing the order of content. Because I can feel even with the same content, the order of content can change the perceived correlation between content for the audience and thereby change the overall delivery and effectiveness of the entire presentation. I feel this is a process of design.