The beautiful object still needs to work comfortably in an ordinary hand.

Beauty admired at a distance and beauty in use are two different tests. A handle can look right in a photograph and be wrong on a cold morning with wet fingers and no patience. Objects spend most of their lives in ordinary hands rather than careful ones, and that is where the design either holds or quietly fails.

If you make things, put yours in front of someone who was not thinking about it a moment ago. Say nothing and watch where they hesitate. That hesitation is the note.