you can tell
you can tell when something was designed by someone who uses it versus someone who imagined someone using it. the difference is in the details that don't show up in the brief. the angle of the handle. the weight distribution. the way the lid fits — not just whether it fits, but how it feels when it seats.
most products are designed by the second kind of person. not because designers are bad at their jobs. because the process separates the designer from the use. you design it, someone else tests it, someone else manufactures it, someone else sells it. by the time it reaches the person who's going to use it every day, the person who designed it has moved on to the next thing.
what changes when the maker is the user
the details get weird. in a good way. the thing has opinions. it's been optimized for a specific kind of use that the designer knows intimately because they've been doing it for years. sometimes that makes it less universal — it's not for everyone, it's for the person who uses it the way the designer uses it. but for that person, it's exactly right.
i've been thinking about this in the context of what calitoywares is trying to do — make things that are designed from the inside out. not from a market research report. from actual use.
the objects i keep longest are the ones that feel like they were made by someone who was annoyed by the existing options. that annoyance is a design brief. it's more specific than any focus group could produce.
the thing about longevity
objects designed by users tend to last longer. not just physically — though that's often true too — but in terms of relevance. they don't go out of style because they were never in style. they were just right for the thing they were made to do.
there's a whole conversation about this in the maker community and in writing about craft and design. the short version: things made with use in mind age better than things made with aesthetics in mind. aesthetics change. use doesn't.
the object i'm thinking about right now — i'm not going to name it because it's not ready — was designed by someone who's been frustrated by the existing version for a decade. that frustration is in every decision. you can feel it when you use it. it's the feeling of a problem finally solved by someone who actually had the problem.
more on this at the broader conversation about made objects.