Peer Comments

Dennis Lee- http://dennisdolee.blogspot.com/2011/10/project-2-upcycling-utility-zen-light.html#comments

Eugenie Barnet- http://studio1-bee.blogspot.com/2011/10/project-2.html#comments

Ting Ting- http://ttinging.blogspot.com/2011/10/project-two-ceiling-lamp.html#comments

Silas McIntyre- http://3377850assesment.blogspot.com/2011/10/project-two.html#comments

Vivian Ngo- http://vindustriald.blogspot.com/2011/10/lighting-project.html#comments


Mar, if you can't find my comments on these blogs just yet, it's because i'm currently doing them now on my phone because it doesnt work on my laptop. I should be finish soon. thanks

Ekisho tabletop lamp - Design Process

Firstly, sorry about all this mix up Mar, the reason why you hadn't seen much process work from me during this project was because i got a bit too caught up with the little nit picky concepts such as the 'joining by heating' concept, and each week i had no solid idea that i felt was worth showing in class.

By about the last week before submission week, i had finally given up on the 'joining by heating' concept and was working on 'snap locking', which didnt go very far for me.

The next idea was trapezoidal prisms stacked up on top of each other to form some kind of upside down section pyramid lamp.

This idea didn't work too well either because of the difficulty i had joining up the sides of the prism.

by this point, i had only one week left and no solid idea, so i was getting a bit freaked out,

Then as i was throwing around some of the offcuts from the trapezoidal prism trying to think of a new idea, i noticed the shape of the offcuts from the prism corners, it was an interesting shape and i was playing around with it, seeing how it worked with the other corner offcuts.

I saw this particular offcut of an icey top mountain and thought about how well the concept of a blue ice crystal pattern lamp would work because of it's simple yet versatile diamond/crystal shape combined with my final JCDecaux poster's primary colour - blue. 

The JCDecaux poster that i had initially recieved as my finals poster was the wrigley's extra professional poster, which the predominant colour was blue. This worked well with the idea of the ice crystal shape as it would be a 'cool/calm' colour.

I laid out the offcut corners seeing how they'd work with each other.

i then modified the shape to be more equal and simplified in a basic diamond/kite shape.

I established that they joined up pretty well to make a column but needed to figure out how i'd make it into a lamp design.

After exploring the shapes a bit more, i started to like the idea of diagonally stacking the shapes up and forming a spiraling tube of diamond/crystals, but it was very difficult to keep supported.

  

After doing a bit of exploration in different ways of supporting the diamond design, i came to a conclusion that i should just make strips made up of 3 diamond shapes connected to each other cut straight from the Poster material. Connecting several of these shapes together in a cylindrical form, it was successful because it looped around and could support itself.

And that was pretty much all the relevant process work behind my design of the 'Ekisho tabletop lamp'.

~Peace out!

Ekisho Tabletop Mood Lamp



Product Poster 1

Product poster 2

Product Poster 3

Assembly Instruction Manual

Cutting Diagram

Packaging Cover

Ekisho table lamp
Ekisho means ‘liquid crystal’, which is where the design of the Ekisho lamp was inspired from. The shape and colour typically associated with water icicles are different shades of blue and white, and a sharp pointed yet elegant shape.
The design of the Ekisho lamp was intended for it to be used as a table top mood lamp, and through the use of its blue colour shades, it provides a calming ambience to the room in which it is placed in.
The Ekisho table lamp shade is made entirely from discarded JCDecaux street posters and designed to support itself when assembled.
In the production of the Ekisho table lamp shade, for every two sheets of JCDecaux street poster, 15 Ekisho lamps can be cut out and leaving behind a cut-offs wastage of 18%.
The Ekisho table lamp is also able to be easily assembled, disassembled, re-assembled and flat packaged to minimise transporting costs and help the environment.

Bill Moggridge - What is Design?

In Bill Moggridge’s talk at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, he talks about ‘what is design?’
At first he talked about the National design awards won throughout the different disciplines of design, and then showed us a clip of Michelle Obama congratulating all the recipients of those awards, but as well as congratulating the award winners, she also spent a bit of time talking about the education of design for young people, and how the U.S government plans to contribute to bridging the gap between a design education and young people who feel unable to have such an education.
Bill Moggridge then goes on to talk about the different design disciplines and how they have changed through the influences of Computer Aided Design, now architects for example are able to design buildings with so many different shapes and curves that were previously only confined to the imagination of the designer.
Thirdly, Bill Moggridge discusses the use of collaboration between different fields of design and how better communication between all fields involved in a project lead towards better designs. He then says that in order for him to explain to us what design is, he must show us not only what good design is, but also what bad design is. In the example of good design there is a good connection between the visual design aspects, the technical aspects and the idea communication aspects of the product. Whereas, in the example of bad design, there were gaps between the different aspects, sometimes the technical aspects of the design didn’t blend well with the people aspects of the product, for example, not knowing exactly how the intended user would actually interact with the product, thus leading towards a bad design.
Fourthly, Bill Moggridge says that for a successful design process, designers must keep in mind both, people and prototypes. Designers should aim to meet the needs and desires of people, provide a good innovation from a successful marriage of the people aspect, business aspect and technical aspects of design, design for different people, and Learn-Look- Ask- Try. Learn by analysing information that has been collected, Look by observing what people really do (because some people do different things from what they say they do), Ask by gaining information from others and Try by creating prototypes and experiencing what things are like for the intended user.

Peer Comments - Experience Enrichment

Lubar Han:
http://lubar-han.blogspot.com/2011/09/experience-enrichment.html#comments

Christine Liang:
http://mad-attic.blogspot.com/2011/09/experience-enrichment-project-motar-and.html#comments

Ren Zi han:
http://renzihan.blogspot.com/2011/09/project-1-hand-tool.html#comments

Dennis Lee:
http://dennisdolee.blogspot.com/2011/09/experience-enrichment-vigo-cheese.html#comments

Siu Chan Cheung: (needs to be approved by him first before it appears)
http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=137637989546594445&postID=6724151289474775524

Habu – Kitchen knife

 Habu is a kitchen knife mainly intended for the cutting of herbs and leafy vegetables.
When I decided to design a kitchen knife, I was inspired to change how we conventionally hold kitchen knives, I conducted some research observing how different people hold and use a range of different knives of various shapes and sizes. In my observations I noticed that some of the people using a knife that didn’t have much distance between the bottom of the blade and the handle, their hand holding the knife tended to make contact with the table if they had used the entire length of the blade. Also, when using smaller knives for finer cutting, I noticed that some people were more comfortable holding the knife with their thumb or index finger on the top of the blade.
By changing the way we conventionally hold kitchen knives, Habu is able to evoke a number of pleasurable emotions within the user such as a sense of curiosity at first and then a sense of sharp sleekness when picked up, through the use of its sharp angled edges. Yet Habu is still ergonomically pleasing as well when held, with a number of cues that indicate how Habu should be held, and with a symmetrical design, Habu is comfortable both for right handed and left handed users.
The colours and material I have chosen for Habu however have been kept typical to the stainless steel metallic blade and a matt black polyoxymethylene plastic handle, which are intended to allow the knife to blend well into any kitchen environment while maintaining its functionality and waterproof feature, this way, Habu is not an eye sore in some environments as opposed to if Habu was coloured bright orange for example.
Habu is also beneficial in the sense that it is more comfortable to use in a larger range of different heights, the surface that the user is cutting on may vary in height whether it be a kitchen bench at home, a commercial kitchen bench top, or even a chopping board placed on top of two milk crates in the backyard.

Habu - Hero shots

Habu - Technical drawing

Habu - Usage Storyboard

Habu - Product Poster

Sydney Design Festival Sketches.

They're not late, i just forgot to post them up, but Rina's marked them off.

Annie Leonard > Story of Cosmetics, story of bottled water, story of electronics.

In Annie Leonard’s video, Story of Cosmetics, she talks about how consumers use a range of different cosmetics each day without knowing what the ingredients of the cosmetics actually are and what effects they have on the human body. Annie Leonard also brings up the fact that it is not only the consumers who are affected by these chemicals, but also the people working in the factories in which the cosmetics are manufactured, the communities around the factories and the environment at both the extraction of these ingredients and the disposal stages of these cosmetics.
Annie Leonard has identified that the system has been corrupted by big companies that are only interested in profit and not the damage they are causing to everything around the world, and the governments are allowing big companies to slip pass only because they help keep the economy going.

In Annie Leonard’s video, Story of Bottled Water, she talks about why consumers are paying so much for bottled water, especially when water from tap is just as safe and tastier to drink and on top of that, there is a great amount of non-renewable resources being used up in the production of bottled water, also many communities affected by the production and disposal of bottled water.
Annie Leonard has also identified that the big companies supplying and manufacturing these products have ‘Manufactured Demand’ by scaring consumers out of drinking tap water, then these big companies mislead and seduce consumers by creating a fantasy that bottled water comes of pristine mountain streams.

In Annie Leonard’s video, Story of electronics, she talks about the term ‘Designed for the dump’ which refers to products that companies have designed specifically to be purchased, used and thrown away within a short period of time. This is common within electronics these days, they are hard to upgrade, easy to break and pointless to repair because a new product with the same function is much cheaper than the repair cost. Big companies are doing this on purpose because they want consumers to keep buying more and more products, while the companies are collecting sales and profits, they are destroying the environment by being irresponsible and turning a blind eye to the disposal stage of their old products.

As designers, we should take the initiative to design in a better way and for a healthier environment and also take control of what happens to the products we design.

Task 4: My Design Career (So many " I's ")

Whenever I am asked the question, “Why do you want to become a designer?” I am never able to answer that question so simply, because I have never really consciously thought about it and it’s not like I woke up one day and said to myself, “I’m going to be a designer”, it was more that I was just living life a little bit at a time and before I knew it, I’m on my way studying to become an industrial designer.
I suppose it’s everything that I’ve ever learnt and experienced in life so far that’s taken me down this path, I remember that as a child I always had a love for drawing and painting, then as I got older it was a love for creating things, then a satisfaction of solving problems and puzzles, then I believe it was a craving for praise of things I had achieved or created. As a child in my family, I also noticed that out of all the kids, I had the wildest imagination when it came to colours, drawings or writing stories. Then as I entered into the high school part of my life, that’s when life became less sheltered, and more knowledge about ‘the real world’ started to be absorbed, how things worked, why they were that particular way, the ability to think ‘outside of the box’ and realising that life isn’t easy. High school was also where I grew an understanding and greater appreciation of the arts.
By now, it was the final years of high school, a handful of friends had already figured out what they wanted to do with their lives, so they left to pursue those plans, while the rest of us stayed around to think about what we wanted to do with our lives. For some, the decision was never really made, only following the culture of family and what they chose, while others chose a path that ensured that they just get through daily obstacles and others choosing to do what they loved.
As for me, I followed what my friends and family were doing, which was going on to university because I felt a cultural need to go to university, but I couldn’t find any courses that were right for me, until one day, when I was having a conversation with my uncle, and he asked me if I had chosen a course yet. I told him that I couldn’t find anything that I really felt interested in, and then I described to him what kind of course I was looking for, and then he suggested that I researched industrial design. Industrial design ended up sounding like it was just the course for me, so that was my choice. After the HSC, I was only able to get into UWS for industrial design, but that didn’t stop me, I soon realized though that the UWS atmosphere made me feel depressed and that I needed an environment change, so I used my feelings as motivation and after a year of working hard, I applied to transfer to UNSW for industrial design, and that’s where I am now.
As for the future, there’s no telling what that’ll be like, I could be a freelancing designer working also as a mechanic or chef, a full time designer working with a big design firm, a teacher of design, a stay at home dad or even still be studying. Only time will tell, all I can hope for is that I make it there.

Design Confusion

It's not late, it's not late... just forgot to post it up. but handed it in to rina on time.

David Kelley > Human Centred Design video reflection

In the video of David Kelley giving his talk on Human Centred Design at the TED conference 2002, he talks about how the way that designers are designing things now are changing, designers are starting to focus more on humans and human behavior, incorporating that thinking into their designs. David Kelley mentions that previously, designers would usually communicate their ideas to clients via 3D models or renderings, but now his firm and others alike are beginning to form internal video production groups within the firms that are primarily utilized to produce videos for demonstrating to clients how a new product works and how humans are intended interact with the product.
One of the videos that David Kelley presents is the video of Prada and their new store in New York which features many new devices that enhance the shopping experience that consumers have. The devices have features that fit a lot more accordingly with how consumers shop, thus a more human centred design has been accomplished, an example of this would be the liquid-crystal displays used on the doors of the change rooms which go from transparent to translucent at the push of a button on the floor using the foot, with this device the designers have realized that consumers very often shop accompanied by at least another person and when trying on clothes in particular, often consumers use the other person’s opinion to help in their decision of purchase, the device thus takes away the need to open and close the change room doors repeatedly and improving the convenience.
In the closing of the video, David Kelley sums up the rest the rest of his video, mentioning how great it is now that designers have taken on a more human centred design approach in their work, incorporating human behavior and personality into their products, this has allowed designers to be more trusted and integrated into the business strategy of companies.
From this video I have learnt that for whatever designs I may have, it is not only about how good the design or idea is but also how well I communicate my idea to others, thinking of the most efficient and effective method possible. Also, that having a more human centred state of mind when designing for humans improves the chances of the design being better conceived by consumers.

Don Norman Video > Emotional Design

In Don Norman’s video, ‘Emotional Design’, he talks about how designs can affect how consumers feel emotionally, a product with a visually pleasing design but minimal functionality could sometimes bring a consumer more satisfaction and pleasure than an ugly product that does the same job but with maximum functionality. An example of this that Don Norman talked about was the juicer by Philippe Starck; the design is visually pleasing and brings consumers satisfaction functioning more as an artwork rather than a juicer, Don Norman also mentioned that he doesn’t use his Philippe Starck juicer because the citric acid of the fruits will corrode the gold plating of the juicer. However, having said that, it is not necessarily true that designs that have great functionality are ugly, Don Norman shows us an example of this using the Global Cutting Knife made in Japan, he says that it is well balanced, beautiful and visually pleasing, the grip brings pleasure to the consumer when held, and also that the blade is so sharp that it is a delight to use.

Don Norman also talked about how our emotions and feelings affect the way our brain functions and how we perceive different things, for example, fear and anxiety he says causes our minds to focus and not get distracted in what we’re doing. Whilst happiness allows the mind to ‘think outside of the box’, being more susceptible to distractions and a broader range of ideas.

Another topic that Don Norman talks about is the three levels of processing that he believes consumers have when encountering designs. The first level is the visceral level, which is a sub-conscious thinking obtained more through personal intuition rather than from reasoning or observation. The second level is the behavioral level which is about feeling in control of what is happening and how easy something is to use. The third level is the reflective level, which Don Norman says metaphorically, is like the little voice in your head that has no control over any part of the body or any connection to the body’s senses, but in a way is able to manipulate what the body does, for example, if the body and senses are anxious to do something, the ‘little voice’ tells the mind that “it’s alright, it’s safe”.

I recommend this video to other designers because it gives us, as designers more ways of thinking and things to think about.

Don't know how to use this blog thing...