Take what you want, God said to man, and pay for it.
- Spanish proverb
It is telling that the titles of so many patents, those official documents in which designers known as inventors reveal new ideas and things to the world, begin with the words "Improvement in." So much of invention and design is, in fact, but improvement on an earlier improvement, a refinement of the "prior art," as the unimproved technology is referred to in patent literature. This is so because, nothing being perfect, there is always room for improvement. The concept of comparative improvement is embedded in the paradigm for invention, the better mousetrap. No inventor or designer is likely ever to lay claim to a "best mousetrap," for that would preclude the inventor herself from coming up with a still better mousetrap without suffering the embarrassment of having previously declared the search complete. There can never be an end to the quest for the perfect design.
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Designing anything, from a fence to a factory, involves satisfying constraints, making choices, containing costs, and accepting compromises. These givens necessarily introduce individual characteristics and anomalies into the resulting artifact. Constraints are typically a major part of the defining features of a design problem, and so they become dissolved and absorbed into the solution. Choices must be made among the conditions that satisfy the constraints. The necessity of compromises may be less evident at the outset, but they are an adjunct to choice and tend to characterize the solution. It is the rare case in which no compromise at all has to be made in form or function, and it is the nature of compromise arising from the choices among the constraints that make a design less than perfect. Does this mean that design is always a downer, its products failing to satisfy fully or perhaps even to suffice?
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Even though no design can be perfect, that does not mean every design is a failure. We evaluate designs not against absolutes but against one another. The better mousetrap is just that - better - and this may be reason enough to admire it. Frequently, a design is praised merely for its aesthetics, with other constraints shadowed by the glow of the beautiful object. No matter that a strikingly handsome chair is uncomfortable to sit in or impossibly expensive to own. Though architects may prefer form over function, engineers may sacrifice aesthetics in meeting function, and so a sturdy bridge might blight a highway's natural beauty. Neither form not function should overwhelm the others in design, but in the real world, one is often achieved at the expense of the other.
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We think, therefore we design. Indeed, there is barely anything that we do, much less use, that does not have a design component to it. How do we watch television? We arrange chairs before the television set, not behind it, and we orient them so that they face the screen. We select which program we want to watch, often in consultation with the others in the room. If there is not unanimity over what to watch, we compromise, at least in the ideal house. If we have rented a movie, we decide together when to stop the tap to take a bathroom break or to make popcorn. We design an evening before the television set.
Because so much of what we do involves design of one kind or another, we know instinctively what design entails. We understand that we cannot watch a television show at 8:00 p.m. that does not air until 9:00. We understand that one cannot watch two programs at once unless we have more than one set or our set has a picture-in-picture feature. We understand that, even if we have the technical capability, we cannot really watch two mystery movies simultaneously and expect to keep both plots straight. We understand the necessity of choice and the cost of trying to circumvent it. We understand that we cannot have the sound low enough that the sleeping baby will not hear it and loud enough that we can hear the show without straining our ears or missing some of the crucial dialogue. Because we understand the nature of so common an activity as watching television, we understand the nature of design, and we understand the elusiveness of perfection. That nothing is perfect is not an indictment of design, but an acknowledgment of its human origins.
Since we are all designers ourselves, even if only in arranging a television-watching evening, we do have some experience to render us creditable critics of design. Yet easy as it is to criticize a designed thing, improving it can be difficult, which is why inventors are rewarded with patents and the privileges that they carry. Since most of us do not wish to or have the inclination to go beyond the criticism to formal invention, we accept things as they are, or we modify out use of them. We adapt and conquer, or at least make do.
Though there may be no perfect design, we can still speak of good design. We can admire the brilliant solution, appreciate the ingenious device, and enjoy the clever gadget. Imperfect as they may be, they represent the triumph of the human mind over the world of things, and the achievements of accomplished designers uplift the spirit of us all. The pole-valuter who sets a new record is no less a champion because he does not clear the next bar height. He had conceived and executed his run, the planting of his pole, and the arc of his body in the best way that he could for that meet, and for the time being, at least his best is the best. We applaud what he did achieve, with the exception that someday he or some other athlete may design a better pole or vaulting techniques and so set a new record. That is the nature of design.
- Henry Petroski, Small Things Considered: Why There Is No Perfect Design
