Using Deceptive Design Elements to Emphasize Product Features
I think it’s a smart way to design products (from a business perspective) as it will make your products seem better than they actually are, all done artificially through appearance rather than function.
Dmitry Fadeyev
Just those two words in the title of this article, Deceptive Design, brought to mind Aza Raskin’s memory hacking idea I posted here three months ago. At the time I said it made me feel dirty, but I guess the dirt stuck. I really like Aza’s idea, and I like what Jony Ive and his team have done with the unibody (or, let’s all say it like grown-ups: monocoque) MacBooks.
Because let’s face it. All design, if it’s anything more than plainly utilitarian, is deceptive. It makes something cheap look more expensive. It makes this year’s model look substantively different from last year’s. It makes breasts look perkier and lips look fuller and it makes armpits smell better. They’re lies, but we’re better off for them.