When people talk about product design, many of them have a first impression of aesthetic pieces, useful products, resolutions to problems. While like Dunne and Raby said in Design Noir, if the current situation of product design is analogous to the Hollywood blockbuster, then an interesting place to explore more detail might be its opposite: Design Noir.

In my opinion, people all have a dark side and imperfections, that’s human, even though it’s hard for me to tell why some complex psychological behaviors happens. Then as a designer, we don’t have to fulfill the mainstream taste or follow the social norm to design. There are so many different needs of people, for me, it’s more thrill to design for unusual needs and  create disturbance or dilemma to stimulate some interesting psychological behaviors than follow mainstream. I like to see people break or hesitate around the boundary between their real needs and social norms. Then why don’t use technology as a media or interface to meet these “dark” needs? Won’t that be more interesting?

I like the Alibi CD and Japan love hotel examples pretty much. Like the author said, it uses technology to satisfy unacknowledged rather than genuine needs. People all lies. That makes me think about an by-product of Wechat in China. Since Wechat is so pervasive in Chinese daily life as a communication tool, the content of dialogue can be used as an evidence to gain trust. Then there is an application that can make a fake dialogue between two people. At first, some Wechat online retailers use that generate good feedbacks of their product and post it in social media to solicit customers. But before long, I heard that a female home wrecker use that app to scheme between my friend and his girlfriends. Then I asked some friends wether they will use that application, the truth is they already used that in some situations, lie to their co-workers, their partners or friends. Have to say, maybe someday I’ll use that too. I also believe that we should give some space to our real but insincere needs.