David over at 37signals touches on how aesthetics are not just icing on the cake—they’re features.
It’s actually not so much that this position is ridiculous, it’s more that I feel sorry for someone holding it. I get so much enjoyment out of surrounding myself with beautiful things that I feel sad for anyone missing out on that. Aesthetics is a feature in itself. One that I — and most the rest of the human race — is perfectly willing to let trump other functionality.
I think you’ve fundamentally misunderstood why people buy beautiful products, if you think it’s all about projection. While there’s certainly something to that (and I see absolutely no shame in that either!), it’s at the core about people feeling good about that which is pretty. That doesn’t make us shallow, that just makes us human.
Too often, the geeks among us enjoy comparing spec sheet to spec sheet, judging a product’s value solely on the number of things it does. That philosophy is seriously flawed. After all, we’re not just rhetoric robots mindlessly completing day-to-day tasks.
We’re humans.
