product design

Visual Acceptance

In one way or another, visual acceptance is what makes our world go around. Think about the clothes we wear, the cars we admire, the foods we eat - not to mention interior design, home and office furnishings, landscapes and watershapes. So much of our response to these and other features of our environment is based on the visual. It may sometimes be a shallow response, but human beings tend to like things that look good, even if they don't completely understand why some things are visually appealing and others are not. Design education teaches us that

Insights at the Kitchen Table

You're sitting at your clients' kitchen table, putting the finishing touches on their backyard pool/spa plan and getting ready to have them sign a contract. Then they say, "We really appreciate that you listened to what we wanted. That salesperson from the other company kept telling us what kind of pool he thought we should have. He just wouldn't listen. "Well, that's why we chose you to build our pool." And you think, how could he have been so blind? What was he thinking? Doesn't he see that his approach drives customers away? The lesson to be learned from this story is simple. It's taught in all the business schools, at countless seminars and innumerable conferences, and it boils down to one big