Design director’s commentary

From Bruce Nussbaum’s design blog I followed a link to metacool, a blog by IDEO “design thinker” Diego Rodriguez. The link that caught my eye was this one about the designer’s commentary for the Honda Ridgeline pickup, something analogous to the director’s commentary on a DVD. One of my peeves is people who talk about design design design in a very hand-wavy way. It’s an easily abused word. The way people really learn design is by doing it, and the very best way to learn it is to do it with people who are really good at it, so you can see how they approach and dissect problems. I think Rodriguez is on to something when he talks about a new generation of designers learning their craft by “the digital equivalent of an oral storytelling tradition.” I would sure listen to a podcast of designers describing how and why they made the decisions they did.