Bill Moggridge - What is Design?

I think this video would be a good introduction to everyone what is design is all about and how the future of design would be like globally. Design will definitely go far as design is related to almost everything. As industrial designers, other than designing products and being innovative to think of new concepts, we also need to know more or less about marketing, engineering, manufacturing, photography, interior design, graphic design, psychology, science, and many more. On the other hand, engineers, businessmen/women, chefs etc are also designers themselves because in whatever profession that we are doing, we would most likely undergo design processes to make something into reality.

I do find that the Intel VMPC is pretty interesting as different kind of applications can be used at once and the visual design elements are incorporated quite well. What made it stand out is because of the application and the software provided to make the product more engaging and fun to use.

 The remote control which is shown in the video is a very common example of bad design and it is always better to make the product simpler without adding unnecessary functions. This has also reminded me that it is important to design products that are understandable and would encourage users to express themselves subconsciously in the way how they want to interact with the product but at the same time, the product itself is unobtrusive. I also thought that sometimes people are

After listening to Moggridge's explanation of design process, design process is something that everyone will go through which I've said it earlier. We learn by analysing information, researching and discovering new ideas. We try by asking people's opinions and observing people's daily activities. Other than thinking of new ideas, we also tend take inspiration from something that we admire. Then, we would experiment it to turn a vision into a reality. Thus, we can say that design process is a like a big cycle and we have the flexibility to reverse a step back to correct our mistakes.

Besides that, designers today are becoming more human-centered as human focus is always the number one criteria that we have to meet. In my opinion, human-centered design is not just about comfort of using a particular product and engaging the user, it also about the surrounding environment that humans are working hard to protect and also how the product would help people to socially interact with each other in a healthy way. Example, Sustainability is a very important topic because sustainable products are not just helping to take a good care of the environment, they are also encouraging us to be aware of the importance of living in a sustainability environment.     

The tangible earth is the highlight of this video and all credit to Shinichi Takemura. I like his approach and effort to truly understand the connections and relationships of people with the natural environment, living and non-living things. His earth globe design helped him to deliver his message effectively to everyone to learn and appreciate our earth. I noticed that the earth globe comes with a standing ipad-like device and it will definitely engage the user to understand how day and night works, ocean currents, pollutants, latitude, longitude, etc.  

Overall, design is always a global topic and how design can greatly affect us individually and our surroundings. Design process is helpful to understand ourselves better and the natural environment. It is always evolving as new ideas or discoveries will be achieved to solve newer challenges.

Peer comments on Project one

Peer comments on my talented fellow friends:

1.) http://janraymondgerardino.blogspot.com/2011/09/experience-enrichment-pen-with.html?showComment=1315913690389#c1186304813029209721

2.) http://musaides1031.blogspot.com/2011/09/project-one-experience-enrichment.html?showComment=1315914237966#c6747643728130007028

3.) http://sunprit.blogspot.com/2011/09/e-xperience-e-nrichment-rationale-i.html?showComment=1315913080935#c5465582097764032281

4.) http://mfredrick.blogspot.com/2011/09/experience-enrichment-kitchen-tongs.html?showComment=1315912147275#c8651220320119147969

5.) http://ocarabezides1031.blogspot.com/2011/09/project-1.html?showComment=1315911564740#c8733314684491735268

6.) http://toishanchung.blogspot.com/2011/09/project-1-experience-enrichment.html?showComment=1316001301142#c7630118922237697933

7.) http://lovedbyee.blogspot.com/2011/09
/rationale.html?showComment=1316000460366#c1306052618288127913

8.) http://studio1-bee.blogspot.com/2011/09/emotional-design-hand-tool.html?showComment=1315999820890#c1809095732843973641

Project one: Experience Enrichment - Mortar and Pestle

Rationale

The streamlined shape and the organic, free-flowing lines that make up the structure of the mortar and pestle have their own purposes in terms of beauty and function. The design of the mortar and pestle is unique and distinctive because it encourages the user to use the pestle to pound the spices sideways onto a pounding area that is also facing diagonally towards the direction of the pestle head. This pounding technique is more controlled, faster and requires less strength to pound the spices. By holding the pestle sideways, the handle of the pestle weight is resting on the user’s palm which would make it feel easier and lighter to hold.

The pestle has a bulbous shape with a flat surface at the top and a rounded edge at the side which acts as a thumb cushion and for better comfort. Besides that, the structure indicates the handle of the product to differentiate with the round head at the other end of the pestle.

The outer shape design of the mortar also helps the user to hold the head of the mortar comfortably and more stable without the mortar moving around while pounding.  As a result, both application of forces of pounding and holding the mortar are balanced and can be controlled easily as two forces are acting directly against each other. The mortar comes with a pouring spout which fits the pestle nicely for resting. The inner area of the pounding surface is slanted downwards and curved at the end indicates the direction and welcomes the pestle to pound the spices.

The space provided by the inner walls and the slanted surface would help to keep the spices to stay at one place so that it can be pounded at one go without worrying of the fact that the spices would ‘run’ away from the pounding motion of the pestle head. The both top edges of the walls of the mortar are sloped down so that it will not obstruct the movement of the hand holding the pestle while pounding. Both edges of the walls are also structured to rest the pestle after pounding.

Both mortar and pestle are made up of bamboo because the material used is environmentally-friendly, cheaper and has higher hardness rating than most hardwoods such as maple and red oak. Bamboo is moisture-resistant and stain-resistant. The colour of bamboo is kept light to show its natural colour and not carbonised to a darker colour as carbonisation process would soften the material. 

                                               

The reason why I named it D.Mortle is because the 'D' stands for 'diagonal' (the ingredients in the mortar are being pounded sideways or diagonally). The alphabet D also resembles the structure and the inner shape of the mortar from the side view. Whereas, Mortle = Mortar + Pestle.

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.