As we're all fully well aware by now, aesthetics play an extremely important role in all of society.  I'm not just referring to products here.  I'm referring to everything we see on a daily basis; from our pets to our loved ones to the plants we keep in our homes, everything is aesthetic.  The more pleasant the aesthetic, the more pleasant our surroundings become.  This is often played out in our subconsicence without us even realizing it.  We choose our mates, our cars, the clothing we wear, the people we surround ourselves with, for very specific reasons.  We perceive a lot of these decisions as choices that we needed to make, but in fact they were subconscious choices made because something looked aesthetically pleasing to us.

 

It's amazing the choices we make based upon what appeals to our visual ideals.  This is the reason it's imperative to focus on an extremely well designed product; simply so that your end users will want to have it in their home, or office, or anywhere for that matter.  It's an emotional connection or bond that you're trying to create.  To most people, product development comes off as simply a cycle that has to be executed similarly over and over to achieve the same result.  It is, in fact, a much more emotionally driven process.

 

To this day, there are a lot of product businesses that don't understand the value of design.  I'm not talking the run-of-the-mill design either, I'm talking professionally, articulately executed product design; usually coming from the minds of trained industrial designers.  There is a well-proven link between a well designed product and the inherent success of that product.  In today's market, when you're competing against brands that have a heavy focus on great design, it's going to become an ever increasing struggle to keep up unless you too focus on great design.  And, why wouldn't you?  Who doesn't want to be emotionally connected to the products they buy?  You want to enjoy having them in your life, not complain every time you have to use them.  In my opinion, we need to put more emphasis on products that are pleasant to use as well as visually appealing.  If we don't, we'll be working hard to create a sterile world for ourselves.