50 Examples Of Innovative And Awesome Design Collected By The “Design Therapy” Instagram Account

If there’s one thing we know for certain, no one was born a designer. That's why sometimes people need a bit of help to become better in this field. We're talking about the little reminders and daily inspirations like the ones you see in this list to keep those creative ideas flowing. With 236K followers and counting, the Design Therapy online project collects pictures from all over Instagram to show off the charming side of design. From aesthetic buildings and clever packaging to mesmerizing furniture and unique sculptures, it has something for every taste.

Design Therapy is a new startup based in Istambul, Turkey. The founders of this project aim to explore "the innovative designs across the cosmos in the fields of product, interior, architecture, and technology." Many things make the world go round, but new creations drive it forward, and that’s why so many people keep on looking for solutions to both simple and complicated issues to improve our quality of life.

But this begs the question, what does innovation in design really mean? Phil McKinney, author of Beyond the Obvious, a book on innovation and creativity, explained that it "is the utilization of a designer’s methods and sensibility to address the needs of the consumer. … Basically, the goal is to solve more complex problems with the methodology of a designer."

The tricky part is that many people miss what design actually is. "The biggest misconception is that design is simply what a product or service looks like. In actuality, design is how (and why) the product or service functions. It is the process of taking an idea and making it tangible and useful," McKinney wrote.

You see, one of the fundamental steps of thinking of and creating new ideas in design is engagement with consumers. According to McKinney, "prototypes are created, and then tested, and then refined. It is essential to do this because it minimizes the risk of product or service failure." We, the end-users, experience a product only after it's produced and often don't realize how much effort designers put into making it. But even when they believe they have it all figured out, the outcome could still be rather unfortunate. We humans are susceptible to biases that affect our ability to solve problems accurately, so we are prone to error whether we like it or not.

Bored Panda earlier had a chat with Jonathan Shariat, a designer and co-author of Tragic Design: The Impact of Bad Product Design and How to Fix It, about how certain solutions can affect peoples’ lives. "Design is the decisions made about how someone will use and experience the things we make, sometimes we fail to think through the implications of those decisions and it ends up causing harm to others," he said.

Making something that has a purpose and is delightful to interact with takes a lot of learning and experience. Shariat argued that creating good design isn’t that easy. It "requires us to think about and understand others. That doesn't come naturally for most of us but always makes things better."

"We rely on design every day for critical things, and sometimes they fail us and people get hurt, or it causes major financial damage," he added. These slip-ups often happen because creators have a hard time seeing things from other people's perspectives. "Different people can experience the same thing much differently. It's the job of a designer to understand their users and find what works best for all of them."

When it comes to design, we usually want it to make us feel safe and at ease. Looking at these aesthetic pictures alone makes us feel calm, but imagine how therapeutic it would be to see them as real-life examples. It turns out that there are instances where the design of a space can actually impact our behavior. Kijeong Jeon, a professor of interior architecture at California State University, Chico, is one of the pioneers of using the built environment as therapy.

He creates multi-sensory settings to help people with autism by using design as therapy. It all began when he was asked to help pick out a carpet for a program for people with autism and other mental disabilities. The professor requested some time to learn about autism to know more about the people he was choosing the carpet for.

"During the study of autism, I noticed that some of the symptoms are related to tactility, lighting, sound, smell. I realized that all of them deal with the environment. So I thought if those are environmental issues, I can do something for them — I can design certain interior spaces to make them feel at ease. Certain types of colors, certain types of lighting," he told Healthy Building Science.

Hopefully, accounts like Design Therapy will only help to spread the word about linking buildings with design and emotional well-being even further. And if you have any examples to share, don't be shy and post them with #DesignTherapy to get featured!