My writing surface was a picture book about Scotland. Indeed, the entire inn was decorated in a Scottish theme. This reminded me of the time I stayed in a hotel in Stirling, Scotland, in what was called the Robert Burns Suite. Legend had it that one window pane was all scratched up because Burns had used something like a diamond stickpin to compose a poem on the glass. The room may have had a desk, but maybe it had no paper or pencil. Good design is complete.
Back at the college-town inn, I found the public spaces -- as I did my room -- goodly in dimensions but crowded with furnishings. In the morning, I went to breakfast in the dining room and sat down at a table facing the window and began to read the newspaper -- until the waitress asked me to move because that table was set for dinner! I said it looked like every other table setting, but she pointed out that only the breakfast tables had coffee cups. She showed me to a table that was too small, too close to the wall, and too dimly lit for me to continue reading the paper. Breakfast was delicious, but set on plates that were too small for their burden. Good design knows bounds.
On the second evening of my stay, my host brought me back to the inn for dinner, which he promised would be a delight. We met the rest of our party in a dark-wood paneled lounge and sat down for cocktails. Shortly after we had toasted a successful day, the hostess brought the chef's amuse-bouche, which was served in small plastic plates with small plastic seafood forks. Everything was so light in weight that when lifted off the tray with a hand that expected more it threatened to fly across the room. Good design feels like it looks.
After a while, the hostess brought us leather-bound menus, which proved to be the design highlight of my stay. Opening this menu tripped a switch concealed in the binding, which caused the facing tablet screens to turn on, backlighting the paper menu pages inserted over them. The menu was thus perfectly readable in the dimly lit lounge. The locals in our party had become accustomed to this convenience, but I thought it to be as good a design idea as I had seen in a long time. Good design lights up a smile.
At dinner, I was reminded of something I had noticed at breakfast. The silverware was of a decidedly unconventional design, in that the flat of the knife handle was set at right angles to that of the blade. This enabled the knife to be set on the table blade edge down, but when rested across the side of a plate in the conventional manner with the blade edge facing in, the knife was not stable and flopped over easily. Good design is stable.
Perhaps our stays in hotels and restaurants are too fleeting for us to get used to the idiosyncrasies of their designs the way we do to the quirks of design in our own bedrooms and dining rooms. Design is a funny thing, and it is always relatively easy to find fault with something that we ourselves have not designed, arranged, or prepared. But, at the same time, the surprises of design that we can find in the most unexpected places are part of the joy of living.
Thanks for your perfectly-worded descriptions. At first I thought you were setting up the story to reach a conclusion that good design should include empty space - but now I get the sense that good design should be integrated. I'm not sure how the Scottish decoration theme was integrated throughout the inn, but at least in the Star Trek universe, the Scots make the best engineers. Perhaps the inn was trying too hard to innovate. Good design appears effortless.
Thanks for putting good design in the context of everyday principles and everyday routines. Some times I think we get too caught up in the technical aspects and lose sight of the everyday nuances, which in the end, serve to make or break a product or experience.
Nice observations, Doc. I know exactly what you mean about hotel rooms. Sometimes they're great and sometimes you bump around in the room wondering why the room feels so uncomfortable. It can be very unnerving to spend a few days in a poorly designed room.
About a year ago, while travelling for work, I stayed in a hotel in a small town in North Carolina in which the dresser was missing about half of its drawers. It looked like something the owner had picked up from the side of the road. The rest of the room didn't look much better. The free breakfast consisted of Walmart cornflakes and milk from the owner's cupboard.
The owner was actually a very nice guy, and we had some interesting conversations, over Walmart cornflakes. But I got a strong sense from these conversations that running a hotel was not what God created him for.
Also, after checking out, I found that he had charged my credit card twice. It took over a month of phone calls from me and from the credit card company for him to reverse the charge.
For what it's worth, I've also stayed in $5 a night hotels in El Salvador and Guatemala, and had a much more enjoyable experience.
Thank you very much for a well written and entertaining artcile. I laughed the whole way through. It is always fun to try to understand the motivation for a design. As with yourexperience of the hotel, this is an area where people from all walks experience the design. Sometimes you have to wonder what they were thinking.
Being a machine design engineer, I never fully realized that someone actually designed my space (I mean put some serious thought into it) - I assumed it just happened via the current occupants. Anything that didn't work, change it, if it was easy to do it.
I remember a larger group of us went into a restaurant and wanted to be together so we pushed some tables together. The proprietor became so irate that he kicked us out.
Thus, my experience in ambience design. Great article.
I agree, well written and entertaining to read. I can certainly relate since I've stayed at many motels and hotels over the years. Now-a-days, I read many customer reviews on the Internet about hotels before making a choice. I've tended to have good luck choosing an acceptable hotel with a decent room. While I never stay at motels anymore (yuk!), I am willing to pay a bit more for a better hotel and room.
When I remodeled my kitchen at home two years ago, the longest time period was my extensive design review. (The second longest time was to pick the finishes with my wife...the cabinets, countertops and flooring. I chose all the appliances myself after considerable review.) I analyzed everything about my existing old kitchen, studied several different options for a new kitchen layout. I even had five different design reviews with my kitchen guy (he was using a 3D kitchen design software), until I was satisfied that the finished design was perfect. While I ended up with what looks like the same basic kitchen layout, I have countless refinements that made a huge difference. All the time spent on the design (and finishes and appliances) was well worth the time and effort! I enjoy my new kitchen every day when I'm at home, my wife and kids also.
This is a very entertaining article. I did a great deal of international travel for two employers over my 40 + years of engineering. During that time, I always marveled at differing design approaches to products and those manufacturing methods used to fabricate and assemble the designs. Schools of thought between western and eastern designs can be quite striking when examined. I was also "blown away" by the engineering capabilities of our Brazilian friends "down south". I found them to be very well trained and extremely resourceful in their approach to basic engineering. As engineers, we are trained to notice seemingly trivial things such as "room layout" but the best engineers need this discipline to make any and all necessary improvements. The powers of observation definitely factor into an individual's overall ability to find the root-cause relative problems found with equipment, components and assemblies.
It does appear that some motel rooms are designed by folks who NEVER had to do any work in them, or even spend any time in them. I am quite familiar with the small gap between the foot of the bed and the television cabinet. Actually, it would be interesting to find out if there are even rooms available without the television. My guess is "not."
It must be that there is some other anticipated type of activity that engineers like us never participate in, but that the rooms were designed for.
It would be very interesting to hear from one of those designers as to what they were thinking about. Do we have any takers?
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