I went to see late screening of Objectified in San Francisco last night. Gary Hustwit’s Helvetica was a hugely enjoyable documentary for me, both in style and content, and Objectified felt like a true sequel.

Like Helvetica, Objectified is full of snapshots. Little moments of insight, truth and thought from the people it features. It doesn’t lead you, it doesn’t really offer an agenda of any kind, it just opens the door on some interesting individuals and shines a light on the things they’ve made. It scratches the surface of an industry and subject matter that’s both broad and defined by the ego and eccentricities of its leaders.

It’s not educational in a factual manner, but it’s an experience to watch; and an enjoyable one. Gary Hustwit’s style is quite mesmerising and with Luke Geissbuhler as DP, each scene is shot with the attention to detail of a fine still photographer. Expressions and actions are captured beautifully as people observe and interact with products. Nuances of both human behaviour and product design are emphasised very well. In particular, Jony Ive pulling his iPhone from a pocket and rubbing it against shirt to clear the smudges. Tiny thing. Something we all do. And that little scrap of footage endorses the behaviour as an intentional part of the design, rather than a fault.

The presence of Ive in the film, interviewed in his workshop talking about Apple products inevitably stands out. It was reported in the pre-release promo for the film, this sort of access to Ive is a little unusual in itself, too. Coming out at the time, I wonder if my focus on the Apple segment of the film was just because I’m an Apple fanboy, but in retrospect I don’t think it is. Actually, it’s because they’re just that good. Their dominance of industrial design right now is inevitable when no-one else in the industry is putting the effort in, or is just shallowly cloning Apple’s work, or even dismissing the value of design altogether.

I loved the little insights, and the style of the film made it a pleasure.

Naturally, I came out with a triple-underlined web design point too. During the segment on Smart Design, they discuss the fallacy of targeting demographics, the ‘35 year old woman, two kids’ most common customer type. They counter that you have to cater instead to the extremes: The user who suffers from arthritis, the user with big hands, small hands, shorter or taller. Because if you build something that can be used well by the extremes, the trouble-free middle ground will look after itself. Not only that, they’ll find themselves with an improved, relatively luxurious experience compared to what they’d have if you’d only designed for them.

On the web, where users of assistive technology, and uses of fringe devices are mistaken for secondary or even altogether separate projects, the common user is missing out on a better user experience. A website that is flexible enough to be used in extremes is better for all its users. I believe in that.