DESIGNER'S TOOLS IN TRANSLATION:
FROM STATISTICS TO DESIRE

Traditionally in product semantics, design practice is considered responsible for the product-user interfaces of products. Also the role of designers is considered as cultural intermediaries. We hereby propose that the activity of design, furthermore, constitutes an interface which is responsible of the relation between the consumer-subject and the commodity-object in every aspect.

Thus, designer could be considered as a translator which translates the languages of the two parties to one another. Throughout design process, the subject as a political, economical and cultural medium of a discourse is the reference for the object, and the object feeds back to the subject. A reciprocal signification process is pursued by the help of reductionist tools such as ergonomics, cognitive psychology and statistics.

However, in an advanced version of the same story, the very same process of signification transforms into another one in which the definition of the subject is made with reference to the object. The subject gets into the equation with the political economy of its body – aesthetics, endless desires, seduction, etc. becoming the new individualistic tools for the new signification process - ; and the object becomes the constant in this social action of exchange.

The aim of the paper proposed is to trace the marks of designerly interventions in the above mentioned signification processes, analyzing the discourse produced on body by designed objects, and their introduction to the social realm, i.e. the translation of the language of the object to the language of the subject.