Fiction or Nonfiction

As product designers, are we creators of fiction or nonfiction? I would say both. Having the proper balance can take a lifetime to acheive. This is what can separate one design school from another in the way they tip one way or another to pay respect to pushing fiction farther into the fantasy future, or nonfiction into an effcient and speedy present.

Product Fiction is the creation of an imaginitive invention that does not actualy represent reality. It can be a sketch, a CAD model, a rendering, a mockup, an appearance model, a rapid prototype or a slick powerpoint show with all of the above represented. Product Nonfiction makes factual claims about reality. It can be a production prototype, a first article or a mid-run assembly. All of these models are intended to shipped to the market and sold to the customer that beleives the product will solve his/her problem or fulfull a need they may have with varying degrees of quality applied to the finished product. Nonfiction tends to the more expensive type of design work as there are more risks involved as well as more professionals and disciplines.

As a designer of tangible things, one must strive to master both worlds and understand how each is impacted by the other. Some designers begin their career making claims about reality from the start. They may work directly for a manufacturer making sure that the limitations of current reality are resepcted in the process of bringing a fictional design into production. Others might begin their career dreaming of a reality that does not exist yet, and will seemingly bypass much of what is real in life in order to get to a fictionalised reality that will some how inhance our lives. This approach is more on the propaganda side of the business and if one dwells in this rehlm for too long with out making real the claims they do, they are in danger of becoming another charlatan or PT Barnum. These fitional designs never make it past the magazine, internet article or television promotion and into production.

Recently, much of the nonfiction design work has been moved over to Asia. There products are designed for manufacturing in high volumes using cheap assembly labour that will allow a lower purchase price after it is exported out of the nation that is making the object. The fiction work continues in the west as computer aided models help the fictional designer mimic reality with just the right amount of accuracy and beleivability to allow progress to occur and the project to move forward with management approval. Marketing models can be planned, finacial models can be created and distribution and point of purchase retail decisions can be made based on the fiction created in the western mind of the designer.

On a recent trip to Korea and China, this reality was reinforced with the modern factories I saw making automive engines for GM, notebook computers for Dell and HP, elevator pullies for Otis, monitors for Samsung and cars for Hyundai and Cherry Motors. So much of the fiction that drives the market in the west, is made into nonfiction in Asia. From there the nonfiction is put onto a ship and then exported to the market where the behavior matches the fictional design specification that was approved to hopefully catch the interest of the consumer and thus drive sales and eventually profits.

Once the new product reaches the shores of the intended market, the fictional propaganda machine kicks in and begins to spread the word of the new products arrival in the marketplace. Television, print, radio, internet, point of purchase as well as other channels are alerted and the volume is cranked up to promote the new nonfiction products that are real. Competitive strategies are put into place and the race is on to sell the most inventory as fast as possible to impress the analysts on Wall Street who inturn will reinvest further in th work of fictional designers only to start the process all over again.

So if you are a young designer, get some real nonfiction work into your portfolio as soon as possible so you can exercise your ficitonal skills later on in your career. Attend a school that prepares you to work with other professionals that also work in the abstract as you do. Otherwise the only designs you produce will only make it as far as the book, magazine, website or newspaper and thus never make it past the fictional stage of design.