How do you make people with no interest in design become aware of design in the first place? One approach taken by creative studio Perfect Fools is their Kauko Cafe pop-up installation for Helsinki, part of the World Design Capital 2012 list of events. The two-pronged concept behind the cafe is 1) to add a measure of user agency by enabling them to alter the heights of various surfaces, and 2) to populate the cafe with bad design, like sugar shakers and napkin holders that are intended to work poorly, as you'll see below:
I'm not crazy about the second part of the approach, drawing attention to design by making it annoying; I've never been a fan of, say, those uncomfortably-designed chairs that "force the user to recontextualize the concept of seating," et cetera. But I suppose there's no arguing with the efficacy. What do you think of the approach, and/or how would you have done it differently?
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