I really enjoy listening to the director’s commentary track on a movie DVD.  How else could I confirm my suspicion that the closing credits of The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou are an homage to the way the credits were presented in Buckaroo Banzai?  What excites me about the director’s commentary is the idea of future filmakers learning their craft not just at film school or via personal experimentation, but with the digital equivalent of an oral storytelling tradition.

Wouldn’t it be great if, in a similar fashion, we could hear and see great designers talking about their craft?  When I was a practicing engineer designing tangible things, there were tens, even hundreds of details embedded in my designs which I knew about, maybe the rest of my team knew about, but which were essentially invisible to the world at large.  Which is fine; it isn’t the job of end users to be thinking about the kinds of details and decisions that interest a professional design thinker.  But for students in training, and for other professionals, what better way to truly appreciate the enormity of the task of design than to take a walkthrough around a real design with another real, living designer?

Before we move on, let me explain my irrational — perhaps even unhealthy — interest in the Honda Ridgeline.  Unique among pickups in that it was designed using a human-centric design process, the Ridgeline is an incredible piece of design and engineering.  Sure, the aesthetics are a bit jolie-laide, but they’re the result of Honda designers thinking and acting much like designers from the Citroen of old, always pushing limits technical and aesthetic — to the limit.   For 90% of pickup buyers, this design just works better.  It’s really, really cool, and that coolness is the sum total of thousands of clever, human-centric design decisions, most of them invisible.

How do I know?  Thanks to a director’s commentary.  Here are some "director’s commentary" videos with Gary Flint, the leader of the Ridgeline design team, walking us around the final offering.  Even if you don’t find cars exciting, take a listen to the first, upper left video — you’ll be amazed by the attention to detail and deep thinking that went into the design of the cargo area.  Amazing.

photo via Flickr

A few posts back I mentioned a flashmob created by students at the Stanford d.school.  Here’s another article about the class behind that event.  Some of my favorite soundbites:

"Design thinking is a different way of thinking," said Alex Kazaks, a member of the course’s teaching team. "There are all different kinds of intelligences, and one of these is creative intelligence. Design thinking is an analog for that. This is not something usually taught in a university setting, and we’re trying to make it available to students."

"In the GSB, we look at case studies and analyze and talk," said Management Science and Engineering Prof. Bob Sutton, a founding member of the d.school. "The whole d.school is based on doing stuff in interdisciplinary teams."

"This is a class for students interested in leading teams and leading innovation within teams," said teaching team member Perry Klebahn.

"We had to spend eight hours making changes that are meant to increase bike safety on campus, and we had to actually do something, not just plan it," said second-year GSB student Max Pulido London – one of the group that staged the White Plaza bike accident.

Thermodynamics 101, brought to you by the warmup sequence of a Formula 1 motor.

If you "get" why I find this compelling, then… well, you’re probably a gearhead!

If you don’t understand the attraction of a V-10 motor spinning up to 18,000 RPM while shrieking loud enough to make ears bleed, then consider this a good example of our irrational fascination with technological aesthetics (where "our" means the human species).  We just love this stuff.  It just manifests itself in different ways.  If you’re proud of your Prius, you’re expressing something irrational, because the Prius is certainly not about an economically justifiable technology choice, no more than a Formula 1 car is. 

In the end, it’s worth going back to Norman’s Visceral-Behavioral-Reflective model of cognition.  This video is all about the power of the visceral.  It’s absolutely, postively worth designing for, no matter if you’re working on a financial website or a F1 car.

this video footage via Google Video