D&T 7 : desire lines
Robert McCaffrey, GSA Product Design alumnus, now a successful footwear designer and guest lecturer at the art school, spoke to us about his inspirations over his career thus far. Throughout, he was humble, honest, charming. None of the icy snobbishness one might expect of someone who has their designs selling exclusively on the highly curated Mr.Porter, which was very endearing.
Another great lecture, I was struck by the credibility in McCaffrey’s tales, from his cycling incident at Charing Cross (that went on to inspire the clever rubber pedal grips on his shoes), to spontaneously posting a pair of his shoes to David Byrne of Talking Heads from Maryhill post office. These stories are part relatable, part awe inspiring, a reminder that anything can spring from the mundane.Â
McCaffrey also spoke of desire lines;Â
“Traces of use or wear that indicate preferred methods of interaction with an object or environment”
and the inevitable disconnect between design and natural behaviour. Instead of lamenting the fact that we can never truly predict human behaviour and use, he’s of the view that we should celebrate it. When a product is passed from maker to user, control is surrendered, they can do with it as they please, as is the intimacy of a product. The intricacies of personal use to customise, adapt or augment, keep things interesting. Humans are creatures of improvisation and resourcefulness, which results in oddities and discrepancies in how people use objects around them. Each person is unique in gesture, mannerisms, motivation and behaviour and this is wondrous. There’s something very charming about this, that even in our world of generic mass-produced items, people can still exert their individual influence on how they use them, which in turn affects how they wear and weather. This can be seen in an extreme sense in the hacking movement, within which individuals entirely repurpose common objects for added utility. This highlights the creativity and ingenuity everywhere, and reminds us in funny way that no matter how many possible user journeys we imagine in the design process, our dreamt up scenarios will never be exhaustive. Illustration by Maria Munn for the New Yorker.
