Intentional Design: First Encounters of the Design Kind

This one took a bit of time for me. I really had to search for a time, early on, when I was conscious of design in something that I was using. And then it hit me, and as silly as it may sound, when I was younger I was all about video games and I can clearly remember the design that went into the games I was playing.

When I was younger my biggest hobby (if you could call it that) was video games. I loved them. Everything Nintendo put out, to me, was gold. I can still remember my first video games system: the Super Nintendo. A big, bulky piece of plastic that didn't look too appealing, but played all my favorite games. I loved it. Years passed and the Nintendo 64 was released. That is when I remember being consciously aware of the design of the new system. It was sleeker, "cooler" looking and the controller was like nothing I'd seen before. I looking back I think I was subconsciously aware of the fact that it looked cooler and that I had to have one, not only because of the new games it would play, but because of that look. The design achieved exactly what it set out to do. This continued into the design of Nintendo's next system: the Gamecube. A completely different design that set out, again, to make me want to buy it because of its new look. I had no idea what "design" meant at the time, but I knew I wanted the next "cool" thing, now I am beginning to understand why.