Counterfunctionality

Rob Walker is on a bit of a mission right now spotting ‘Counterfunctionality’ in product design. He first spotted this in wrist watches with difficult to read faces and now he spots this bookcase. Mr Walker says:

One might fairly wonder what the upside of this approach is, over, say, a perfectly stable bookshelf. To echo Jonah Berger’s point in the column, regarding watches that do a less-than-optimal job of telling you what time it is, this seems like another object whose main value is that it “provides more information” about the owner. And part of that value is that not many others will swarm in to buy the thing and water down its identity value, because most people will want a shelf that doesn’t move.

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