December 2018

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 30 dec 2018

When design trends get too hyped they lose relevance. Co.Design editor Susanne Labarre discussed the future of design with the judges of the 2018 Innovation by Design awards. Following are 3 over-hyped design trends - (1) ALGORITHMS AREN'T EVERYTHING: Jason Chua, the executive director of advanced topics at United Technologies, says, 'I think there's this impatience to say we have an algorithm for something, and that'll solve all our problems. Machine learning is not a panacea, and if you don't apply human-centered principles, you may see some of these things run amok. I think it's very valuable...but it needs to be applied in very careful ways.' (2) VIRTUAL REALITY HAS NOTHING ON THE PHYSICAL WORLD: Edel Rodriguez, illustrator and graphic designer, says, 'I don't like VR...I don't care how many times people say this is great new technology. It's just not how I want to experience the world and not how I want my kids to experience the world. There's a lot of information a kid can get through flipping a page or touching things.' (3) DATA IS PRODUCING DESIGN THAT ALL LOOKS THE SAME: Marcelo Eduardo, founding partner at Work & Co, says, 'There's an oversimplification - a lot of things look the same...People are designing in such a strict way using data all the time and they're losing the creative potential...that's when you're disruptive. Data-driven design...stagnates really fast. Someone takes over by doing something different that you wouldn't do if you were analyzing the data. Read on...

Fast Company: The 3 most over-hyped design trends of today
Author: Katharine Schwab