Beautiful Users: Designing for People

Beautiful Users: Designing for People, organized by the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, features nearly 100 objects that illustrate the evolution of “user-centered design”—from the mid–20th-century work of Henry Dreyfuss (who coined the phrase “designing for people”) to the complex systems and services that today’s designers are developing.

Some exhibition objects include:

• Examples of the Human-scale measurement system, which aids in design for children, the elderly, the differently abled, and people of diverse height
• Objects designed for comfort and function, ranging from Dreyfuss’s Princess telephone to Amos Winter’s Leveraged Freedom wheelchair
• Diller Scofidio + Renfro’s Roomba Cam, which repurposes the household gadget for surveillance purposes

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.