In contemporary design academia, there seems to be a visible tension between “critical depth” and “aesthetic pleasure.” In many academic contexts, including MFADT, I sense a pressure to pathologize aesthetic choices; choices such as light, color, material, layout are often treated as superficial elements compared to the rigorous research, social utility, or ideological commentary. For my paper, I want to explore whether this anti-aesthetic bias has led to a disenchantment of the field, where the sensory power of a project is sacrificed for purely systemic or functional value – and furthermore, how this hurts the efficacy and power/influence of design overall in the field.
This goes beyond academic contexts; in design discourse over the past century, aesthetics has been accused of being “commodity fetishism” that masks social inequities (Hal Foster), and ‘Critical Design’ (Dunne/Raby) took a front seat, often minimizing concepts like ‘beauty’ in distancing itself from commercialism. Simultaneously, the rise of UX and “design thinking” (IDEO?) has prioritized frictionless functionality – in these frameworks, design is measured by factors like user’s task completion and conversion rates, avoiding anything that could be categorized as noise.
With my paper, I want to analyze how these two forces - the critical fear of the ‘pretty’ and the functionalist obsession with the ‘useful’ - have created a sensory void in the design discourse. Moreover, I want to argue that the aesthetic, sensory experience is not mutually exclusive with critical thought, but rather it is a necessary element. Some sources I still need to research further and would like to include in my paper are: Dave Hickey’s argument that beauty is a form of ‘seductive’ agency & suggestion that that visual pleasure is a necessary political tool for engagement, Elaine Scarry’s work on how the experience of beauty leads to a state of radical attention and ethical decentering, and Semir Zeki’s research into the cognitive effects of beauty as a biological constant rather than a subjective luxury, contending that the field’s current bias ignores fundamental aspects of human cognition.
💡 If design discourse continues to prioritize the critical over the affective, are we simply creating a world that is intellectually ‘right’ but existentially unlivable? Should we cede the sensory landscape to the ‘smooth’ optimization of technocratic capitalism?
How can aesthetic pleasure be a form of cognitive resistance? When we suggest that for design to be “serious,” it must be purely functional, political, or systemic – when designers refuse to engage with beauty and aesthetics – they leave the sensory marketplace entirely to Big Tech, profit, optimization. By reclaiming the “surface,” designers can create sites of re-enchantment that challenge the “smooth,” optimized, and ultimately boring visual landscapes of late-capitalist technology.
Some other things to think about…
- All the vibe coded websites look the same
- Shiny polish is easy to achieve these days
- How does aesthetics and sensory pleasure tie in with friction
- good friction vs bad friction
- dark ux — sign in friction, inescapable, unpleasant
- we sacrifice frictionlessness for profit anyway
- What is the designer’s responsibility?
- how do we even define aesthetic intrigue?
- low tech aesthetics vs glossy polish, vs novelty
- My own background – design feels less democratic and more elitist sometimes under these lenses
- Everything being ‘user-centric’ in UX design – but the ‘user’ is reduced to a data point
- What does it take to break out of the trance of the doomscroll? Can we manufacture moments of awe?
- Dave Hickey: if an image is beautiful, it has the power to “seduce” the viewer into looking at something they might otherwise ignore
- Elaine Scarry: when we see something beautiful, we stop being the center of the world for a moment
- Byung Chul-han: modern “digital beauty” is actually too perfect, so it’s boring
- How can this connect to my thesis project/ blender art?
- Relevance in NYC / physical world
- Open spaces, parks, how does this affect our collective mental state