Product Sktches from Exhibitions

 It has an unique locking mechanism that would help the utensil to be locked and unlocked with just one click. It has a bed at the handle which keeps the tips sitting up without touching the surface. The kink makes the utensil distinctive from the others and looks playful.

 

The streamlined design of this bottle features a central handle for easier pouring. The ergonomic shape and the position of the handle makes it easier to lift and improves comfort when pouring.The shape and position of the handle make it distinctive from other competing products on the supermarket shelf. The handle which situated directly above the brand name or sticker label gives that strong and confident personality.

 The fluid organic shape and flowing lines of the chair that only requires a single piece of material gives the chair a playful note.

 A simple looking portable radio that set the standard for other early transistor radios. It is easy to operate both tuning and volume controller that situated at the right side of the body. It has a large speaker grill on the neat layout. Screws are not required to join the metal panel with the body which gives the attractive appearance.

The unusual shape of the lightning resembles the branches of a tree visually. It is suitable for decorative purposes. The lamp is made out of paper and this makes the lamp looks fragile but elegant and simple.

My Design Career

I wanted to become a designer because design empowers me to be the person that I want to be and to become better at what I am doing. Design would help me to always have a positive attitude because I can only be creative if I am a positive thinker. Creative energy is a positive energy and it can only come from people who are happy in what they are doing. I also think that design can help me to become more of a well-rounded person because after all, design is related to almost everything which includes engineering, business, science, psychology, culture, history and the list goes on. Having a designer’s mind is always helpful in whatever we are doing.

 It is because that design is so versatile; design has the power to cause the trend of the society and industry to change. At the same time, the society, environment and the technology that are booming year by year will also affect the design itself in return. That is how universal design, ecological design and digital design have born to help, care, understand, appreciate and improve people’s lives and their surroundings.  I find that industrial design is a noble and humble career that does not seek popularity but instead innovatively improving everyone’s lives in a good and honest way. 

 The future will always be defined by creativity and innovation as many innovative countries such as Japan, US and the Scandinavian countries have highly skilled labour forces that excel in creating and innovating because these countries always favour innovation.

  

  I believe that industrial design has a lot to offer in the coming years. However, many people out there are still not aware what industrial design is all about and it is often misunderstood. There are also some people who have never heard of it before. A lot of people are much more familiar with fashion design, interior design and architecture. In reality, industrial design is everywhere around us but sometimes people don’t even realize it that they are subconsciously interacting with the products that they are using. This really gives me that extra determination to change the perception of the society towards the importance and how influential industrial design could be.

 Through design, I would have the opportunity to rediscover my own identity which covers my personal, cultural and of course, my country’s identity, which is Malaysia. The country’s multicultural diversity distinguishes Malaysia’s brand identity from the rest of the world, and this is something that Malaysians can use this type of strength to express themselves through design.

 I have chosen UNSW to study industrial design because it emphasizes on manufacturing, engineering and business aspect of design.  I heard that industrial design students will get the chance to mix with the business students and the marketing courses are offered by Australian School of Business and UNSW is well known for these courses. Courses that are related to Mathematics and Science are also included for better understanding in scientific and technical challenges as well as manufacturing processes. The design environment in UNSW is socially healthy and promotes good relationships among students and lecturers through discussions, individual and group works.  

 I hope that my design career in the future will be a steady and stable growth. I think it is important to work from scratch and do my best to understand how the design trend and the world would change in the coming years. I will give more effort to travel to other countries to understand their very own unique design, culture and people. I think I would be interested in learning new languages or even learn to cook new cuisines that are relatively alien to me. In this way, I can fully appreciate and understand their living habits and the way how they design things in every day’s life. Other than that, I always wanted to design products that people need and not what they want for their own self-satisfaction. Products that could help under-resourced groups of people and people who are physically challenged, suffering poverty and ecological crisis are things that I would highlight it as a top priority. I also planned to go back to my home country and work for the local companies to further improve their products and help the local designers to be part of the team to form an organization to promote design as a whole.

Annie Leonard: The Story of Stuff

It's really nice to know all the behind the scenes of 'making' a product. I call it a hidden world of product design; how ugly it can be, the bad and embarrassing story that even designers themselves and consumers do not know about it.  It has reminded designers again that it hard to find a product that is designed with the environment in mind and it is always important to think about the environment when designing a product. Enough said about all the causes and effects of the pollution, bad-for health-chemicals produced, deforestation and so on. I think many people have heard enough of these. Let's think and find some solutions on how to solve this problem.

Using renewable energy source is one of the best ways to manufacture sustainable products. I think it's a good way to truly appreciate our god given natural resources by using them and unleash the potential of renewable energy. We can use solar energy cells for producing products such as calculators, watches, mobile phones, vehicles, etc to save energy. Bio fuel is also useful for 'recharging' vehicles and wave power can save electricity but so far, we humans haven't realised their true potential yet. I think it might not be easy to use alternative energy to fully replaced what we are using right now, but i'm sure it will worth every penny.

Besides using renewable energy sources, we should always try to use less materials because it can save cost and uses less energy. Use less materials to design or manufacture a product in a smart way, and at the same time, it will still retain its effective function, beauty and pleasurable to use. It is also important to know whether the user will benefit or not by using the product with the material that we've selected. Products that can multifunction could be very helpful too, in this way we don't have to buy two products instead of one.

After watching the video, I know that it can be impossible to stop everyone in the world to stop throwing their unwanted products away and always have a habit to buy the products that they truly need, not products that they want for self-satisfaction. Therefore, it is wise to use materials that are safe to be disposed and will not release toxic. We need to work hard and do research to find chemicals that are almost toxic free to replace the existing ones and still producing the same kind of performance or function. However, to find a material or chemicals that has the same capability to produce the same functions as the existing one will be a huge mountain to climb. I don't think we have a proper record to list down all the safe chemicals that we could find at the moment. This education is till relatively new to us. We need to make an effort to learn  how materials are being harvested, what kind of manufacturing techniques are involved and how resources can be sustainable managed in a complete cycle.

This is definitely easy to say but difficult to practice it. Like what Annie Leonard said, let's not design something that could harm people and the environment.We need to recognize good and bad materials, what's good and what's not, and how it could affect the product itself and the surroundings.

Design Confusion

This is one of the doors that I can find in my apartment in UNSW Village. The key card device system is confusing because the colour applied onto the product is just plain black all over it and the overall shape is pretty simple so it doesn't really attracts the user to look or observe the device system first. I find that the LED lamp is quite small and transparent, so it's difficult for the user to recognize it as a signal. I got really confused at first on how am I gonna unlock the the door by using my student ID card, so as my room mates. Ive made some modifications and made the shape looks more attractive. It has a shape of a card and the colour of it is gold, which resembles the student ID card. This will cause the user to think that he or she needs to use the swipe card and place it directly onto the device system. 

Project 1: Mortar and Pestle drawings

This is a mortar and pestle that I'm going to design for project 1. I try to gather all the negatives or hardships of using a mortar and a pestle that most people would be unsatisfied about it.

1.) The spices/herbs would fly out and stick on the walls of the mortar and the spices/herbs would move away from the pestle while hitting on it. As a result, the user need to 'chase' after the spices/herbs. Due to the bulbous shape of the pestle head, it can be quite tricky to push all the herbs/spices down onto the grinding surface of the mortar so that it can be bashed all together at once.
 I've made some modifications and changed the shape/structure of the pestle. In my opinion, the three most important ways of grinding the spices/herbs are scraping, rubbing/muddling and bashing.
The 'sharp' edges around the pestle head is made to scrape and organize the herbs/spices so that they can be place at a particular area in the mortar to make the bashing job easier. The surface area of the pestle head is the same as the inner surface area of the mortar, so that it could make a good contact with the herbs/spices and can be rubbed in a circular motion.The handle is much bigger and wider at the rear of the pestle and it slims down from the rear to the body, which acts as a thumb cushion and better grip/comfort respectively.

2.) A lot of mortars nowadays are uncomfortable to hold while grinding or pouring the herbs/spices. Therefore, the diameter of the top half of the outer mortar is wider than the lower half of the outer mortar so that it is comfortable to make a good grip around the mortar.
I am planning to increase the thickness of the 'mouth' of the mortar and make surface of the mouth slightly wider; so I am going to modify my drawing of the mortar, where the picture below shows that the mouth of the mortar appears to be not thick.
A pestle is provided to rest the pestle with all the herbs/spices sticking on its head and this is to prevent messiness while carrying the mortar to pour out the spices/herbs onto another plate/bowl. The mouth of the mortar is dented for easier pouring.

 

3.) The picture above shows that a bamboo board is provided to avoid any damages of the kitchen table and to prevent the mortar to 'move' by itself on the counter while bashing up the herbs/spices. The board can also be use to slice/chop herbs by turning the board over. The chopping surface is dented. A slot at the side of the board is made to keep the herb chopper. The handle of the herb chopper is also made up of bamboo and the blade is stainless steel.
Moreover, three white silicone rubbers are made on each side of the board to make the board non-slip. It also raises the board so that it leaves the benches clean and keeping the surfaces hygienic.

 That's all for now. Still, the design is not perfect and not the best yet. I'll keep working on it definitely.

My reflections on my task 2 (Design Excellence): Dyson Digital Slim

To be honest, I am not really fascinated with vacuum cleaners because it's considered a boring and troublesome cleaning machine that everybody hates to use it: it's heavy, needs a big space to store it, most of the time it loses suction power while vacuuming, extending the cables, clearing up the dusts and so on. But there's one vacuum cleaner that has definitely changed my perception towards these cleaning machines, which is none other than the Dyson Digital Slim.

It is a type of a vacuum cleaner that it is suitable for those people who lives in small apartments or cleaning up small messes within a short period of time. The vacuum cleaner could last about 15minutes on regular mode and 6 minutes on MAX or full power. A lot of people might think that "only 15 minutes? Is that enough?" The answers is YES because the main feature of this machine is that it will never losses its suction power as we vacuum because it uses patented Radix Cyclone™ technology. It also spins up to 3 times faster than other normal motors on the market, and creates the most power-efficient cordless vacuum cleaner. With it's lightweight detachable long-reach wand, there is no need to bend your body down to clean narrow gaps and it sucks dust and dirt like there is no tomorrow (according to many customers and reviews from websites). I also like the fact that we can recharge it's battery and clicks into the docking station for storage at the same time. I have also watched a few videos on how to use Dyson Digital Slim and many people are satisfied that it is very easy to attach and detach it's parts. However, at the same time, quite a lot of people have complained that they need to keep on pressing the trigger to vacuum so it could strain their hand and would be quite tiring while operating the machine. Although this method could save some battery life, they do wished that the machine is equipped with a toggle so that they don't have to keep pressing it. Another thing is that this vacuum cleaner is pretty expensive but still, i think all of the customers has recommended friends and families to get one because it's really worth it. 


I have learned so much why is it important to look at the product in terms of visual design elements and principles. Not only the operational-technical functions that would bring the product to 'life', but it is also vital to know how elements like line, shape, colour, texture, rhythm, harmony and etc could make the product even more useful and pleasurable to use. In my opinion, not many people would think that they do appreciate these kind of elements consciously, in fact, they do appreciate it subconsciously. These elements may sound simple and easy to describe, but in reality, we should not underestimate these principles. There is so much more to learn to fully understand these elements so that we can make use of it to create products that could give a good and lasting impression.