Designer highlights gradual innovation for usability

By Yoon Sung-won

Making a product or an application, many designers seek something unprecedented as an innovation through new functionality, though it is difficult to achieve.

Caleb Park, head of Local Design Part at Kakao, stressed that usability should be prioritized in design and changes should be applied gradually to help users accept them.

“I think the most important thing in designing a new application service or in rebranding one is to take no more than half a step at a time because normally users are accustomed to the patterns they used to use,” Park said. “Innovations for the sake of innovation do not help users. A design that boosts usability is made out of a combination of 98 percent commonsense and 2 percent aesthetic touch.”

Park also said a usable-friendly design is in between the two concepts _ Good Design and Bel Design. Compared to Good Design’s pragmatic approach that defines a good design as a high-selling one, Bel Design underlines the values of emotional and aesthetic factors.

He said designers should continue to concentrate on eternal values of usability in industrial design no matter how industries change under the influence of new technologies.

“The advent of wearable devices and smart technologies are rapidly changing approaches to design in the IT industry,” Park said. “But at all times, it has always been important that a good design should keep up with market logic.”

The 40-year-old designer joined Kakao’s local design part 19 months ago and has worked to rebrand the company’s existing mobile location-based services including Kakao Bus, Kakao Map and Kakao Subway.

In particular, the bus information application Kakao Bus won an award at the Red Dot Design Award 2016 in August for its creativity and immediacy.

When he was a collegian in the mid-90s, his major was artistic crafts design. But he often sneaked into visual and industrial design classes, which further ignited his enthusiasm about web design.

After studying diverse computer design skills from three-dimensional imaging to video and typography, he worked as a part time computer design tutor in his junior year. Since then, he has focused on the computer and web design sector for 20 years.

“Working in a certain area for years, you will be able to gain insight about it,” he said. “And once you gain that insight, you will understand the value that you have to push for. In my case, it was usability.”