Nice is never enough

Why nice should be eradicated from the design dictionary.

My favourite teacher at school was my English teacher.

When I was in Year 8, she described ‘nice’ as being a ‘blah’ word. I am totally rewording this – this was not her word of choice, but the principle remains the same. Her point was that ‘nice’ is non-descript and non-committal.

It doesn’t really say anything. It is boring. Vague. Bland. Vanilla. Pedestrian.

That view of the word nice still stuck with me all these years later, and I agree with her. And, for not far off 3 decades, I have found myself using the word ‘nice’ as a bit of a non-committal statement, or even a polite snub.

And yet ‘nice’ seems to be standard by which we measure the design quality of about 90% of the health buildings I have been in.

A single plant pot by the main entrance – that’s nice.

The cream that's been chosen to paint every single wall – that’s nice.

The painting of the vase purple flowers I stared at for 25 mins waiting for an ultrasound – that’s nice.

Nice is the greatest design cop-out that ever existed.

It offends nobody. But it pleases nobody either.

But worse than that, I think nice is the design equivalent of saying nothing. And when we are designing places for people at their most vulnerable, saying nothing is not neutral.

At best, it’s indifference.

At worst, it is much more.