DESIGNING MOVEMENT: An Aesthetic Investigation of Motion in Product Design
What Elements Allow Design to Inform Motion?
1. A vocabulary for motion.
Designers must be able to clearly explain and discuss their ideas about movement. To this end, we should steal openly and freely from every discipline, however remotely related. If choreographers can talk about “transition,” “climax,” and “balance,” so can designers. All of these principles apply to movement in products. If puppeteers can describe a movement as “lumbering” or “stiff,” so can we. In turn, Design will create its own words and conventions as it develops kinetic sophistication.
2. Methods for sketching motion.
In order to attack a kinetic problem aesthetically, words alone simply will not do. Designers must be able to model moving concepts. Most practicing designers already have the training and experience to create simple sketches and models of static objects. From there, it’s not that huge a leap to sketch a kinetic model. As long as one doesn’t get too uptight about the engineering/mechanical specifics, a sketch model can contain ample information to communicate an idea. There is always time later to develop the technical workings of a concept.
Fancy hardware or mechanical elements are not necessary for such models and, in fact, can become a hindrance. As long as a sketch moves as it should, it doesn’t matter how it’s made or from what. Dirty, fast, and cheap sketches are usually sufficient to demonstrate a motion concept.
3. Recording motion.
A kinetic concept is only as useful as the record of that idea. In order to effectively analyze, develop, and refine a movement, it must be repeatable. I’ve tried a variety of techniques to capture movements and find that the recording method inherently varies with the nature of the sketch. Sometimes, a series of drawings is the only way to capture a gesture. In other cases, the model can be “spring-loaded,” allowing the user to execute and then reset a movement event indefinitely. Ultimately, video is the most natural and effective method to record motion concepts. It might take several shots from various angles to accurately capture what’s going on, but nothing can compare to video for precisely documenting a kinetic model’s movements through space, over time.