Everyday Design 2：Design Organizing

Everybody is his / her own design arranger.
Your work desk, Mum’s kitchen, and garage mechanics’ tool walls implicitly have their own order.

The order is formed by years of accumulation of user needs. So, will there be any difference if designers devise their own arranging systems?

Graphic designer Ray LAU said, “This design itself is originated from an unpleasant experience the user encountered, and that’s why we attach the most importance to whether designers can attain their purposes in a fast and comfortable way.”

What LAU mentioned was his self-invested paper swatch system, which categorises paper materials according to their types, colours and weights from the perspective of designers. With the system’s level of detail comparable to that of reference books, it is beneficial to design students who seldom have the chance to access paper materials.

After all, being familiar with materials is the basic design knowledge which designers of any field should have. For this reason, an architectural firm has even set up its own material library, which occupies one-fifth of its total office area.

Architect Frank LEUNG said, “We hope that the material library can bring new ideas to our colleagues, and inspire them when they see different objects, colours and lustre, and materials being put together.”

The Fashion Archive of the Hong Kong Design Institute carries the same concept. Therefore, after it was relocated to the new location, the ways of categorisation and storage of its collections were re-devised to facilitate teaching.

HO Ho-tak, Fashion Archivist of the Fashion Archive, said, “The Archive is a teaching platform. We hope that by using our current collections, we can design workshops of various types based on students’ interest, and make them keep coming back to learn.”

When designing the ways of arranging, we are also designing the user experience. If the users are primary school students, the arranging system will be different.

The arrangement of the bookshelves in the newly-established library of the Pat Heung Central Primary School is a breakthrough of traditions, and the book classification system is also unprecedented.

The school’s teacher-librarian Miss WONG Pui-mei (transliteration) said, “We classify books according to their themes and put round shape stickers of different colours on the books, so that students can find books to read depending on their interest.”

There are endless ways for arranging. Have you found your own yet?