We love beautiful things.

Even if we have never seen a beautifully designed product, the first time we do, we know it. We know we’ve seen something different.

The problem with the mainstreaming of good design, we’ve allowed some things to become mediocre without question – but with sincere and apologetic acceptance.

Yesterday, I received an email from someone I admire and who has amazing design sense. At the bottom of the email after the signature was: Sent from my IPhone. Please excuse typos.

This is what we’ve become. We’ve coveted a device that allows us to make typing and typos “acceptable”, because we’ve typed them on a supercool beautifully designed piece of hardware.

I was in a heated debate about an approach on a project via email, which was likely a bad idea in the first place, but in any case, there I was.

I responded quickly to an email and was so confident in myself that I hit send without re-reading. Fail.

My email which was supposed to say something to the effect of: I get what you are saying, the strategy we are proposing is one that will move us forward for the next few months, even years, instead of the next few weeks.

INSTEAD: my email read:

I get what you are saying, KoBe Beef we are proposing is one that will movement to forward….blah blah blah, other typos and missed words.

iPhone didn’t create typos for me, it helped me not take the time to read my own email, it allowed me to sound – ridiculous, not engaged, not paying attention to details.  No one thought I meant to put Kobe beef in the middle of the sentence, however they couldn’t even decipher what I meant. It was a failure.

If I had taken the extra moment to read the email again, I would have never hit send.

iPhone has made us lazy, lazy about communication, hiTECH, with low brain activity. iPhone and email in general have taken us away from true communications with other people. It allows us to not be clear, not explain ourselves and assume the other person will figure it out.

Good design shouldn’t create new problems that we accept and add notes “sent from my iPhone, please excuse typos.” Good design should inspire us to create something new for ourselves. To think.

Pause – think – relate – pause – reread. SEND. design.

“Posted from my iPhone and I took the time to read it twice before hitting send. Because I care.”