Poggenphol reading

The reading begins with the author meeting with a child psychologist, they go through Natural History museum in Chicago. While in the museum they critique the exhibits by the way that the visitors examine and react to each exhibit. The author makes a valid point by saying that many designers do not focus on emotion or feeling when it comes to what they design, they are so focused on client budgets and deadlines that design becomes a dead end job rather than something enjoyable. She calls it being trapped in a "aesthetic and technological vacuum."
She says that designers are meant to invoke a message through their designs along with meeting the desires of their clientele. While at the museum she realizes that she never really stopped and wondered what kind of message her designs were sending to her viewers and clients. She goes on to explain that design is actually the discipline of more than one profession, that not only do you need skill but you also need the ability to adapt to any situation that you find yourself in.
Design is interactive and communicative, it requires both the designer and the viewer to be able to understand how to use the design in a way that it is meant or targeted to be used as. She says that successful designs are ones that are able to adapt to the needs of its user while also providing a way for the user to depend on their own skills rather than having the designed product do all the work. She says that designers need to be able to see and understand patterns in order to make something that fits into whatever is needed or popular at the moment. The interactive part also means that the client of the product must be able to use the design from its first prototype in order to give real live feedback that the designer needs in order to fit it into what is required.
A major emphasis on the design process besides interacting with the clients and making something that anybody can use, she also talks a great deal amount about prototypes. Each successful design went through many phase changes, the designer needs to be able to adapt their prototypes to reach a final product. She says its unusual for a designer not to use prototypes because without changing and adapting the designer cant grow in skill and socialization. If a designer is not willing to change or invoke a message that reaches out to others they will become part of the vacuum that is plaguing much of the art and design world.