As a designer, everything I see around me was designed by someone, and studying design has made me so much more aware of this. I notice a lot more designs that annoy me, and it inspires me to think, how could this be better? how could I redesign this to make my experience of it much more pleasant.
An example I shared during one of the workshops was of my car Rosie, with the rear windscreen wiper that I cant lift out of the way while i'm washing her, because someone has designed a spoiler that sits around the wiper. This makes the process of washing my car quite frustrating, and an example of how bad design has such an impact on our lives.
Now how could I make this better? Maybe I could design a system to have the wiper protrude out of the way, or maybe just get rid of the wiper all together.
I also come across things and services that were very well designed, like the other day when I was signing into Discord, and was prompted to sign in by scanning a QR code, to log into desktop with the same account as my phone, without having to remember a log in and password.
My first thought was "damn I wish I could have thought of that", I think that it is such a clever solution.
Moments like these are definitely what inspire me as a designer
Another one of my favourite designs is simple but effective, stackable chairs. I think it is such a genius solution that solves so many problems. What did people do before stackable chairs? Imagine how much space that would have taken up. This is another example of one of those things that I just wish I was the one who had of thought of that.
One day I would love to be able to design one of those things that make others go, "I wish I thought of that"
References
Discord (2020)