Why do people buy Louis Vuitton? What more do they need from a purse than it being a container for credit cards and lipstick? What makes Louis Vuitton more expensive than a canvas tote? These are the questions I've been asking myself since I first confronted the word "design." After four years of exploring the product design industry, I have started considering a product more than just a carrier of a set of functions, rather as a symbol for users to reinforce their identities. Users who have already satisfied their basic needs seek to satisfy a higher level of need, which is self-actualization, through product consumption. According to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, self-actualization, also known as identity needs, is the highest level of human needs (Maslow, 1943). In the history of humans, identity-oriented products were gradually incorporated into our lives; in other words, individuals tend to label themselves. There are two major types of identity. One is more based on nurture elements, such as biological gender, nationality, age, or job; the other type is much deeper and is usually endowed with social recognition and self-awareness, such as a patriot, a vegetarian, or an environmentalist. Those deeper identities have a significant impact on behaviors. 

In terms of identity, there usually are two types of needs for designers to consider: enhancing an existing self-identity or establishing a new one. To elaborate, I want to explore how to enhance users' self-identities with product design. I will illustrate this with three approaches: empathize with users, visualize users’ contribution, and design for users to perform.

The first approach is to empathize with users to find their inner needs for self-identities. Empathic user research can be achieved with a deep look into a person's journey of certain activities, perceptions, and emotions. During the research phase of the Luna project, I work with left-behind children in China's countryside whose parents work in cities while they stay with grandparents in the faraway countryside. One of the research steps was to interview the kids in Tangan Village, Xinshao County, Hunan Province, China, about their everyday physical and mental activities. The results include their burden from schoolwork and housework, curiosity about cities, and eagerness to share life. Furthermore, lacking communication and time spent with their parents, left-behind children are confused about the role of being a son or a daughter and have incomplete mental models of a mom and a dad. With these insights, a prototype of a communicative digital drawing pad was later designed to connect distant families. As an approach, empathic research observes identity-driven behaviors and reveals the potential needs from users to articulate their self-identities. Above all, understanding users is one of the most significant steps to start a design; that is, finding the right problem designers are about to solve.

The second approach is to design products that can visualize users’ impact, enhancing their social recognition and self-awareness. For users, awareness of certain identities is always immeasurable and intangible since the impact of their roles is usually unclear. For instance, it is difficult to imagine how animals will be saved with money when people are asked to donate to the World Wildlife Fund. The connections between the behaviors and the impact are lost. In other words, designers can bring value to the face of the users, making them bridge themselves to their identities. In the Noah Project, which I led this year, the design problem is to connect the poorly protected endangered species in the Amazon rainforest to the potential urban environmentalists who may help. The aim is to convert user donations into visible and tangible progress: an online gallery of animals in the app and AR desktop animals. As a user donates, new animals are unlocked in the gallery, and AR scannable stickers are delivered to the user. The galley app and the stickers have symbolic meanings, like a medallion, reminding the user of their new ecological identity. Visualizing the contribution also allows users to spread the messages; for example, showing the AR to friends and families conveys their positive attitude to support wildlife and also attracts new users. Since humans are highly visual, creating an image for a new self-identity is efficient and powerful. Every time we “see” our identities, we recall who we are and remain clear about what we can do next. 

Third, instead of inventing something purchasable, better designers create product experiences like setting up a “stage” for users to perform. People are inherently theatrical: we act all the time. Provided with a stage, one can be more motivated to play roles they should be or the role they strive to achieve. Moreover, theater performances are exaggerated, emotionally resonant, and, therefore, extremely engaging. With a product like a stage, users can make more direct connections between the behaviors and the identities. For users who consider themselves healthy, active, and adventurous, an Apple Watch is a device with functions that complement their lifestyle and self-image. With the Apple Watch, you may see your running, riding, or heartbeat in real time. The watch and the apps are the props. The audio input, or the gestures, are the scripts. Eventually, the user, who is also the actor, is performing and becoming the one he/she aspires to be. As a designer, picturing the start-to-end product experience as a show and creating a stage for users to perform on is one of my approaches to being user-centered. With these theatrical eyes, I feel I am holding a magnifying glass to see the needs and wants to make the right design decision. Furthermore, the performance is not a one-man show. Like a microcosm of social groups, people's moves, activities, impressions, and emotions are influenced by others. The “stage” designed to perform is also a place where these interactions happen. Social media, the most prominent virtual stage, is designed for people to perform their roles by selecting content to post and content to consume. The followers are changed by the posts, and the subscriptions and likes also further shape the identities of the influencer. Hence, the product, or the “stage,” can work beyond one player, but the ever-changing need to adjust the roles for everyone in this play. 

Societies form from a collection of deliberate and unintentional individual behaviors and habits that reflect each person's identity and values. Individuals establish groups, and members of those groups then influence one another. As a designer, I always ask myself, “How do I design to help people establish their identity?” More than boosting consumption, design should reflect consumers’ lifestyles, values, and identities. In this statement, I proposed three approaches in detail: empathizing with users, visualizing users’ impacts, and designing experiences for users to perform. These approaches make users, instead of products, the focus of design. In the future, I will continue researching the connection between individual and group identities, consumer behavior, and design. Moreover, I'd like exposure to various media, such as mixed reality, robotics, and consumer electronics, to enhance the art of design with the adoption of technology. It is time for designers to offer their unique insights to work with diverse user groups and explore new forms of social recognition and self-awareness.

Reference 

A.H.Maslow. A Theory of Human Motivation. Psychological Review 50, 370-396, 1943.