Mark Braun, a designer based in Berlin, collaborated with J&L Lobmeyras part of the Vienna Design Week's Passionswege - an initiative to bring emerging designers to work directly with local Viennese manufactures or retailers and create on-the-spot experimental projects and interventions.

Braun spent a few months working with the glassmakers and engravers of Lobmeyr to explore the possibilities of creating a functional product that would also comment on its value. As he explains in the video he worked with the copper wheel engraving technique - a long traditional technique used to personalise glass object at Lobmeyr - to realise a series of water carafes that each have been decorated with the outlines of 21 Austrian lakes, rivers, and glaciers. The sum total of these substances together represent the ultimate symbol of the essential wealth of everyday life.

I will always remember my first introduction to the power of good product design. I was newly arrived at Apple, still learning the ways of business, when I was visited by a member of Apple's Industrial Design team. He showed me a foam mockup of a proposed product. "Wow," I said, "I want one! What is it?"

That experience brought home the power of design: I was excited and enthusiastic even before I knew what it was. This type of visceral "wow" response requires creative designers. It is subjective, personal. Uh oh, this is not what engineers like to hear. If you can't put a number to it, it's not important. As a result, there is a trend to eliminate designers. Who needs them when we can simply test our way to success? The excitement of powerful, captivating design is defined as irrelevant. Worse, the nature of design is in danger.

Don't believe me? Consider Google. In a well-publicized move, a senior designer at Google recently quit, stating that Google had no interest in or understanding of design. Google, it seems, relies primarily upon test results, not human skill or judgment. Want to know whether a design is effective? Try it out. Google can quickly submit samples to millions of people in well-controlled trials, pitting one design against another, selecting the winner based upon number of clicks, or sales, or whatever objective measure they wish. Which color of blue is best? Test. Item placement? Test. Web page layout? Test.

This procedure is hardly unique to Google. Amazon.com has long followed this practice. Years ago I was proudly informed that they no longer have debates about which design is best: they simply test them and use the data to decide. And this, of course, is the approach used by the human-centered iterative design approach: prototype, test, revise.

Is this the future of design? Certainly there are many who believe so. This is a hot topic on the talk and seminar circuit. After all, the proponents ask reasonably, who could object to making decisions based upon data?

DANT DANT. I just experienced the design blogger's version of the opening scene from Law & Order: I was looking for something else and I stumbled upon a corpse. Matroshka is a design project from 2007 that looked promising and was generating interest and potential customers, then sadly died before seeing production. (Cause of death unknown.)

The concept is for a system of space-saving furniture that nests together--hence its name, Matroshka, a/k/a the Russian nesting dolls. At its most compressed the system takes up just four square meters but breaks out into permutations including a bed, desk, bookshelf, couch, coffee table, dinner table, wardrobe, clothing drawers, and seating for twelve!

I'm going to spend the next 30 minutes investigating, so I can find someone to prosecute for another 30 minutes.

Hit the jump for tons-o'-shots.

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