Want Magazine debuts with Release 001: “The Engineering of Desire”

There has always been a suspicion among consumers that somehow, the makers of experiences, the designers of products and services… had a secret weapon to lure us into wanting and needing products we didn’t even know existed before.

Marketers have been known for selling us the problem first, then the solution. But are designers part of the conspiracy? Is, indeed, the excitement many of us feel for new gadgets a deliberate “engineering of desire” by designers? How do the architects of experiences instill “want” in their targeted audiences? Is “product lust” a measurable ingredient in the making of this “stuff” we come to covet?

This Want Magazine release will explore the use of emotion by designers across the world.

We queried a range of professionals, from design agency founders/presidents such as Peter Merholz and Dan Saffer, to in-house design leadership for enterprise, such as Cisco’s Cordell Ratzlaff, Yahoo’s Luke Wroblewski, and Netflix’s (now Meebo’s) Bill Scott. We also talked to the pioneers of user experience, Don Norman and Jakob Nielsen. We crossed the ocean to tap the point of view of Method’s Lionel Ochs in France, and across the planet to hear from product designer Carl Liu in China. For good measure, we explored the true architecture of desire, literally, by dissecting the MUSAC building in Spain by Emilio Tuñón and Luis Moreno Mansilla.

The stories we unearthed are as diverse as the varied disciplines behind experience-making. Many of the experts interviewed favored the notion that although a strategy of creating want may indeed be a tempting tool for inciting an initial reaction out of consumers, it would not be valid for insuring lasting value to keep them loyal. Usefulness trumped desire every time. An overarching consensus developed around the ultimate goal of meeting needs, rather than creating wants. Infatuation was not a lofty goal. Loyalty was.

We at Want Magazine still remain suspicious: How come they call movies “blockbusters” before they even are? How come we love “anything Apple” before it is even unveiled? … Just as we infatuate when the right courtship, the right timing, an the right pheromones are released (watch TV’s “The Bachelor” to witness such manufactured feelings), just as powerfully can designers engineer emotion in their experiences we want so much. They’ve gotta.

David Gómez-Rosado
Editor-In-Chief, Want Magazine