By Pereye19
- In response to the article “Human Scale, the classic design tool, gets a second life” found at https://www.wired.com/story/humanscale-the-classic-design-tool-gets-a-second-life/
An important step in creating value when it comes to design is making something that actually does what it is supposed to in a comfortable way. When designing consumer products that humans have to use in some way, whether it´s for you to sit in or a tool for you to work with, the designers have to implement ergonomics, and keep it in the back of their heads during the whole design process.
During the 70s and 80s MIT was printing a sort of cheat sheet that designers were using to make sure the products they were designing would be comfortable for the average human being to use. This cheat sheet was called Humanscale and it was a few printed papers for different functions with 9 wheels that could be turned to fit your designing needs. You turned one of the wheels, which could be either age, height, gender etc. and the values on the sheet would change accordingly. It included over 60.000 data points! It was very successful at the time, but was discontinued in the mid 80s. It seems they were still in demand at this point and the value of the already existing ones, rose tremendously.
Why were they discontinued? Perhaps it was the fact that design was not what it is today. Its importance was not yet recognized, and technology was playing a bigger role both culturally and in businesses at the time. MIT being an institute of technology, might just have decided to move on with “more important” matters. It’s worth noting that the book “Keywords: A vocabulary of culture and society” first published in 1975, which was meant to be a guide to concepts that were culturally significant, did not include the word “design”. Not even in 1983, when the word technology was added, did design find its way into the book. (seen in “Hello world: where design meets life” p.118)
With all this new technology, you would think that design flaws would come to be almost non-existent, but this Is not the case. Even Apple, well known for being very successful in technology design, managed to make the iPhone 6 too big for a lot of hands, and received a lot of criticism for it. They messed up one of the basic rules in design, and therefore had to add a double tap function to make the screen go down 5 centimeters. These designs where made with a computer, which should make the design process more effective and therefore add value, but maybe sometimes going back to the basics might not be such a bad idea.
The Humanscale is making a comeback, and many designers will have the choice of designing something the “old school” way. Many designers who are just starting up, might not have the money for expensive equipment anyway, so maybe the return of the Humanscale could add some value to the design industry once again?
Making sense of art and design industries 