PSS feedback

Siting Lin
http://linst90.blogspot.com.au/2012/10/often-we-go-to-shops-tobuy-things-we.html#comment-form

Chieh Min Lee
http://leechiehmin.blogspot.com.au/2012/10/rebat-battery-recycling-pss.html?showComment=1350297064407#c5569866865173124417

Huan Xie
http://z3326626.blogspot.com.au/2012/10/pss-design-trip-planner-rental-system.html

Benjamin Chan
http://bjcyc.blogspot.com.au/2012/10/pss-project-ger-glass-reverse-vending.html?showComment=1350297589273#c7595058973662441563

Yuliang Gu
http://guyuliang1990.blogspot.com.au/2012/10/i-want-as-for-from-in-he-amount.html?showComment=1350298127377#c259484178537893727

GPS Bike System Rationale

The Product Services System I design is a GPS bike station located in all getaway accommodation locations throughout Australia. The intended markets are families with children, young couples, teenage groups, and backpackers.

For the first three targeted market, they usually go on accommodation during the long weekends, any other holidays such as semester break, school term break, or taking days off work. Their methods of travelling to the location are usually by driving or public transports. However, both these methods would produce a lot of pollution and it is best to minimise the use of these products and services. Also due to the cost of public transport and petrol are rapidly increasing, there is a need to have a cheaper way to travel.

Therefore, I introduced the GPS bike station, which it can produce zero carbon dioxide, and it is good exercise. So the GPS bike station would be located outside the visitor centre of all accommodation hot spots, such as Kiama, Blue Mountains, Byron Bay etc. which is very close if not, located to the city centre. These accommodation spots are small, which makes it easy to locate the stations, but there are more places to these area which people can explore. Therefore, having a bike would really help them explore these areas, and most the time, these places are in the mountains or close to cliffs where driving is not permitted. And it would take a very long walk to go to these places, which is very hard for families with children to go. And riding a bike has the benefit of interacting with the environment and gain a much deeper feeling with the surrounding, because if the people are driving in a car, they cannot stop anytime, anywhere to have a look at places. Whereas a bike can stop at any time, and the user can interact with the environment and not miss any part of the fun. There should not be much concern with the weather, as people would go on accommodation on nice weather and would not go out in a rainy day in the first place. The built in GPS is charged using solar power panel at the station, as well as the generator in the bike.

So the user can go online to reserve for a bike by entering their details, as well as go straight to the visitor centre and fill in credit card details, the user is then allocated a bike number and the user needs to unplug the bike to unlock it, and as the user ride the bike, the kinetic energy will be converted into charging power for the GPS, making the GPS last longer. Once the user is done with the bike, they return the bike back to the station and plug the charger back on, and it will notify the visitor centre, and charge the user by how long they used the bike. The GPS helps the user to go where they want, as well as for the visitor centre to locate the bike if the bike is lost or accidents happened.

Recharagable bike trip planner

1) Family goes for a long weekend trip. (eg. Kangaroo Valley, Barossa Valley, Byron Bay, etc.) which they are popular long weekend trip and cycling location.

2) Rechargeable bike station are located in the city center of all trip location. (eg. Kangaroo Valley, Barossa Valley, Byron Bay, etc.) It has solar panel on the roof to cover the bikes.

3) Each bike has a built in GPS, and it is charged by the solar panel when it was parked at the station.

4) User can rent a bike that contains two seats, they can go on their field trip. Which can reduce driving or taxi usage, hence less CO2 emission. The bike contains rechargeable batteries to charge the GPS, it converts the kinetic energy to the battery and can be used for the GPS, meaning it charges up the battery as the user rides the bike, and it can be used if the energy from solar panel runs out.

5) After user has finished using it for the day, they return it the station and it charges using the solar panel as it is returned. (The bike contains a built in GPS, therefore, the station can track on the location of the bike if it is lost or not returned.)

Video Reflection C

Who killed the electric car

The Video “Who Killed the Electric Car?” is a video that gives a lot of information to industrial designers, because as electric car has actually been invented for a long time, but yet it has yet to be used widely by everyone. And this video explains the limitation of electric car, which allows us industrial designers to explore ways to redesign a way to make them more common to the general public. And as an industrial designer, I realize it is very important to us to watch this video, because as a driver myself, I realize the petrol price has risen dramatically over the past few years, and that is due to the reason that there is a lack of resources. And electric car is definitely one of the ways to solve the problem.

One of the messages I got from watching this video is the importance of renewable energy, and the importance of us giving an act now. It is actually quite a frustrating video to watch, because the way to solve the environment issues has been solved, but yet no one really paid much attention to it. For example, the EV1 should have been a biggest achievement that more people should know about, and I only realize the existence of it after watching this video. And I would wish to live in a world where 0 carbon emissions is possible. Therefore, electric car is one of the solution for me to reach the goal.

“Who killed the electric car?” explores the future of vehicles, and technologies, which I have never thought of before watching the video. Technologies such as hydrogen vehicles, which gets me to rethink the role as an industrial designer. Because my original thinking of being an industrial designer is to make things look better and improve the appearance of everything in the world, hence making it a better and more comfortable place to live in. However, after watching the video, being an industrial designer is not all just about making things look nice, there are a lot more to it. Which is the environmental side, we all live on the same planet, and industrial designers has the responsibility to make things look better and more environmental friendly. And I would like to focus more on the topic electric car, and figure out a way to make this product work, and more commonly used, because as designer, it is a real disappointment to have designed a great product and no one is giving them credit.

Peer Comment

http://linst90.blogspot.com.au/2012/09/cereal-is-healthy-choicefor-breakfast.html?showComment=1347281211065#c8540755175189084694

http://pluwia.blogspot.com.au/2012/09/cormack-submission.html

http://lilynguyen1506.blogspot.com.au/2012/09/project-1-legs11-ecoyum-ready-to-feed.html?showComment=1347282043207#c7178491439856433018

http://stellaanddesign.blogspot.com.au/2012/09/coco-cocoa-powder-final-presentation.html

http://ides3b.blogspot.com.au/2012/09/project-one-cormack-packaging.html?showComment=1347283003192#c8432982258211342512

Project 1: Cormack

Product:

Vitamin tablets container

Name:

Vitaball Mammal Head

Target market:

Aged 3 to 8

 Tablet shapes:

Sphere

Refillable:

Yes

Rationale:

The Vitaball Mammal Head is a vitamin tablet container designed for children between 3 to 8 years old, and the reason for the vitamin tablets containers to be redesigned is because of children’s lack of self control, which leads to 5 main design problem of their current design.

• ·         Spilling
• ·         Lack of attractiveness
• ·         Risk of scratching hands
• ·         Grip hard to open
• ·         Overdose

And the Vitaball Mammal Head container can solve the problems, the main feature of the container is the push head design, and that can solve the problem of spilling and children do not have to put their hands in the container and can avoid the risk of scratching hand, and the mouth will open as the head is pushed down, though the use of bone pieces, the mouth will pull back and shut itself.

Also, the animal figure can attract children to take the tablet, however, it attract the children to take the tablet, and the children lock can allow the parents to lock the container and avoid children from overdose of tablets.

The Internal package has a pattern that allows the sphere tablets to roll to the mouth part, and a tablet will roll out by pressing the eye, also, the change in eye indicate the state the package is at, and interact with the children.

disassemble

Video reflection B

An Inconvenient Truth

The video “An Inconvenient Truth” is a video that not just industrial designer should be watching, everyone living on Earth should be watching it. As we are all part of the world, and Industrial designer in particular, are people that must watch these video, because industrial designer are people who need to think ahead of other people, and design products that suits people’s need. However, after watching “An Inconvenient Truth” I got a few very important messages from it.

One of the messages I get from the video is that Earth is already at a stage of urgency, where human are destroying the world by having all the factory producing Carbon Dioxide and toxic Carbon Monoxide. And the global warming pollution creates an layer that thickens the Earth’s atmosphere, trapping the heat within Earth, hence fasten the melting down of South Pole and North Pole, which can ultimately lead to extinction of all living creature on Earth. Human do not own the Earth, but yet, what we are doing are destroying the Earth and threatening the entire living creatures on Earth.

Therefore, as industrial designers, we are also responsible for the Earth, industrial designers are not just people that make things beautiful anymore, and we also got to consider the Earth environment. While we are designing products, we should not be just considering the ecstatic part of design as major part, but we might take in consideration of the material choice, and the amount of material we use. Is the material suitable? Is there a better material? How much material is needed? Can we minimise the material needed? These are one of the first things we need to consider while designing products.

Also, since materials are limited on Earth, we should consider recycled material, using recycled material to reduce the amount of extracting needed. However, sometimes recycled material quality might be very poor, and industrial designer’s new challenge is to use the recycled material at its best performance. And the best solution would be able to make the product designed to be recyclable, or reusable.

We all live on Earth, and according to “An Inconvenient Truth” the pollution of the trend in the next 50 years appears to be very scary, and we would need to stop that from happening. And to do that, we need to stop the pollution, and one big problem with the pollution is designing, if we can figure out a way to solve this issue, it would only benefit the world.

Video reflection A

How it is made

There are six episodes of packaging, showing different types of packaging processes. It is very important for industrial designers, because packaging is a very important part of design process. It is when the customers will actually decide if they are going to purchase the product. Therefore, packaging design is as important as the product itself, and there is no point in designing something on computer, and do not know how the packaging are made, we can design an amazing look package with computer software, but we would not be able to control the real product production, which is why it is important to view these videos and understand how the packaging are made, and that is how we design.

There are many things that I discovered and learnt in these videos, which can help me in my future design, as these are videos of how the real world works, and it is more convincing then listening to just theory, because personally, I can gain more from viewing than listening without an image showing me what it is like. As mentioned in the video of how cardboard boxes were made, it was designed purely by accident. Nothing is formed by accidents, but ideas can be formed by anything. And these videos showed me a few very important points. Even as simple as a cardboard box, and a juice pack, there are many process involves, for example, a juice box includes many layers, and each layers contain their own use, and it is not just for designing purposes, and there are many things needed to be considered, such as food safety for food container, and strength for cardboard boxes.

Another important point I get from the videos are that packaging are made in mass production, not many process are made by man. Most of the processes are made by machines, and the speed of the process is simply what amazed me. Especially the process of making tubes, the video showed the actual speed of how they were made, and the speed is just too fast for my eyes to even catch up.

Also, when designing packaging, we need to consider the recycling part, because looking at the recycling part of the video, many waste just goes into land field. And some of them will produce toxic gas. As the world is really having trouble with global warming issues, I realize it is very important to design things green, and look after our Earth more. The production of the containers such as plastic bottles involves recycled PET, and it is one of the ways of how we can help.

In conclusion, due to the amount of word limits, I am not able to express everything I want, but there are many things I learnt from the videos, and messages to take home. The packaging is mass produced, and they are extremely fast. It is also important to think about the recycling part of packaging while we are designing.

Giving packaging a new life

There are seven episodes on giving packaging a new life, these videos show the importance of recycling and how recycling can extend the lifespan of a material, and it is important for industrial designers to understand and put these videos in mind when designing packages. Because as the world is short on resources, it is important that we make packaging as recyclable as we can.

I was amazed by the recycling process of tetrapak, because parts of the process are used to recycled for use of cements. And it is hard to imagine that a soft paper packaging juice box, can turn into a powder form that will eventually become such a hard surface material. And it is a very smart and handy machine they have to separate the material due to the material properties, and weight.

In the last few years, recycling has been very successful in Germany, but I personally still reckon that there are a lot of things we can still do to make things work better. Because I still see that there are a lot of process and energy being consumed during the process of recycling, and it is not a very good sign, because more energy used in the process means there are going to be money involved. And if it costs too much to recycle materials, not many people are going to be willing to do it.

Therefore, I realise it is needed for the industrial designers to design packages in a way where the package is designed green, and in a form where recycling does not take a long process, or possibly be reused, which does not require any machines and energy. What I mean is for example, a container to be used after the initial purpose of the packaging, and then used for other things, such as containing other things, or be used for other purposes.

From the videos, I understand the importance of recycling, and how not all material are at the end of its lifecycle even if the consumer is done with it. There is a lot more we need to consider other than just the look of the packaging.

Universal Design

Australian Design Awards 2011

Description and Principal Function

The design for the new Inspiron laptops began with consumer insight based on research through which consumer needs, desires, and pain-points were explored and understood by the development team and resulted in a thoughtful, new design language implemented across the new laptop series. The Inspiron 15R in particular was designed for family needs and features thoughtful, innovative design elements such as the Switch lid covers, cable/connector layout, hinge design, speaker placement, and buttons/controls layout. The Inspiron 15R features a 15.6-inch widescreen HD display, 2nd generation Intel Core processors, and up to 13 hours of life with the optional 19-cell battery.

Optional, switchable display lids
Inspiron R Laptops feature the ability to personalize your Laptop with contemporary, original artwork replacement lids exclusively designed to reflect your personality. Customers choose from among 20+ optional lids through the interactive Design Studio website. To change a lid, just press the single button on the lid, slide and lift and you are ready to remove and replace the lid. With this design, the development team was able to move the ability to personalize the laptop from the initial manufacturing to aftermarket which helped reduce manufacturing and logistics complexity while providing customers with even more flexibility to personalize their laptop.

Cable/Connector layout
The design composition of the Inspiron 15R form factor is a result of many elements coming together, all beginning with customer input. The ability to personalize the lids—repeatedly, sound output quality, controls design, and how the laptop connects, all contributed to the overall design composition. In particular, the cable and connector layout was based on investigation and understanding of how families would use the laptop so the less moveable, and heavy cable connections and the security lock feature were place on the rear, USB ports on all sides, and media inputs on the thinner, forward sides for better accessibility.

Hinge-forward industrial design
The Inspiron R Laptops feature a hinge-forward design with the elegant barrel hinge details on the top of the base and behind the keyboard which keeps the hinges protected from damage and cleaner looking visually. Because the overall laptop design composition considered the cable layout concurrently, the hinge-forward design allowed for all of the larger cables to be placed on the rear without any interference from the opening hinges and lid. The hinge-forward design creates a smaller footprint for the laptop which makes it more stable and much easier to open in constrained spaces like small café tables or airplanes.

Speaker design and placement
The Inspiron 15R form factor is a complete composition, top and bottom. The bottom surface and speakers of the laptop received the same degree of design attention as the rest of the laptop. In particular, the bottom surface towards the front of the laptop gently sweeps upward, in an “uplift” creating a thinner side profile and an ideal location for the two speakers. Customer input revealed how important good a sound experience was for a family laptop so the speakers were positioned to reflect and distribute the sound off of the user’s surface to create a more enhanced sound experience.

Buttons and controls layout
The Inspiron 15R button design and controls layout benefited from considerable customer research and feedback. From the simple, one-button control for easy lid removal to the re-conceived 3 button control center, the buttons and controls were essentially designed by the customers to meet their needs and give them more control of the PC functions. The new 3-button control center features, Windows Mobility Center, Dell Support Center, and Display on/off buttons. These are high-level function buttons that provide quick access to many sub-level functions such as the brightness, volume, battery status, wireless network, etc. controls via the Windows Mobility Center button.

Pros
It allows the user to customize their own laptop, and make it only the user's, so everyone can have their own customized laptop and make them stand out and express what kind of person they are from the way they customized their laptop

Cons
I am concern that the customized piece might be easy to break and how to install can be a new thing to learn, and it required pressure to install and if the user apply too much pressure, it can break the piece. Also, how to store the pieces might not be space efficient.

Improvements
I would improve the design by making the cover an LED screen, so that the user can customize their laptop without having to take the cover off.

Project 2: Six Can Beverage Pack

Brief: C – Six Can Beverage Pack
Product Name: IMPACT
Product: 250mL 6 can energy drink pack
Theme: Strong, tough, prison break
Special Feature: Opens from front by breaking open the bars

Brief C challenge is to design a six can beverage pack, in which I choose to design a beverage pack for 250mL 6 can energy drink. Researches were done on currently existing packages, including energy drinks and alcoholic drinks. The researches have shown the current 6 pack packages focus on the graphics design instead of the package and the way they are putted together. The current design of energy drinks are mostly in box shapes with all sides covered to maximize the graphics that can be placed on the package, or a sheet of cardboard folded to form a top, front, bottom, and back cover, which can minimize the amount of material required for the package.

The design of “IMPACT” energy drinks focus on the package as well as the graphics, the target audiences of “IMPACT” are teenagers to mature male who admire strong and toughness, having a behind bars feeling to it. Which is the reason the design of the package are based according to prisons.

The design “IMPACT” package is a locked up cell with only one side reveling what is inside, which is the same principle of prison, having 3 sides of walls, and one side with bars locking up the prisoners. Therefore the only way user can gain access to the energy drink is to break open the bars, which is what the design purposely done for. The users are required to rip open the bars to get the drinks.

As for the graphics of the design, it uses the very basic color of black and white, and it does not consist of many unnecessary graphics, which fits the environment of a prison where there isn’t much color and entertainment to it. However, the graphics used are very explosive, almost giving the users a big bang strong feeling.

The cost of manufacturing this package will be the same as any other 6 pack packaging, because the surface area required for the package is the box design of other energy drinks, and since they are rectangular shape, they can be stacked together, which can be easily transported.

Project 1: Sheet Material

Sheet Material: Clear acrylic sheets
Target Market: Modern family
Object: Fruit Bowl
Name of product: Skyfruit Bowl
Cost of manufacturing: $ 28.95

The concept of the fruit bowl came from an ordinary “Powerade” bottle where it got handgrip for its user to handle the bottle, it was a very comfortable design, which I looked at more bottles with these kind of design. And I was looking at the design of the bottles and start converting it as the basic idea of the design, which I realize the shape of the handgrip is similar to a skeleton shape, and skeleton shape has become my direction of the design.

After knowing that is the direction of my design, I did further research on skeleton styles and cultures, and by researching, most of the skeleton style culture came from Ancient Egypt, and the first inspiration came from mummy, it gave me the idea of using strips to go around an objects. One of the Egyptian objects I researched is the fireplace bowl, it used strips of metal to hold the fire together, the negative spaces it created allows the lights from fire go through, increasing the brightness of it, which I would like the idea of using negative spaces to my design, as it can visually look lighter.

As I research more on Egyptian container styles, the torch designs really caught my attention, and I shifted my focus of research from Egyptian to different cultures of torch, and came up with the ancient Roman time, which I also found the torches are designed to have negative spaces to create greater brightness. So I design concept sketches based on the ideas from the researches, and designed a series of rings as the container base.

Now coming to joining the rings together, I did further researches on ancient containers, which I particularly focused on the Chinese cultures, because I got attracted by the design and the strong feeling the Chinese design has given me. Most of the designs have the elements of Chinese dragon, and I would like to add it to my design. And I realize the dragon might be too aggressive for a family, so I have smoothen my design and came out with the final product.

Task 2 & Task 4 comments

task 2

http://lilynguyen1506.blogspot.com/2010/08/my-design-career.html

http://baejin.blogspot.com/2010/08/task-2-my-design-career.html

http://elbobbino.blogspot.com/2010/08/my-design-career.html

http://bjcyc.blogspot.com/2010/08/my-design-career.html

http://guyuliang1990.blogspot.com/2010/08/my-career.html

task 4

http://viviensides1013.blogspot.com/2010/08/task-4-design-excellent.html#comments

http://baejin.blogspot.com/2010/08/task-4-design-excellence.html

http://elbobbino.blogspot.com/2010/08/design-excellence.html

http://bjcyc.blogspot.com/2010/08/design-excellence.html

http://guyuliang1990.blogspot.com/2010/08/studio.html

Project 2 comments

http://linst90.blogspot.com/2010/10/font-face-font-family-arialfont-face.html#comments

http://khor-ba.blogspot.com/2010/10/project-2-upcycled.html#comments

http://z3332715.blogspot.com/2010/10/hero-shot.html

http://snailmina.blogspot.com/2010/10/ides1031-project-2-upcycling-2010-10-26.html

http://lizgrayburnsblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/project-two-rationale.html

Project 2: Upcycling

The Upcycling product I have designed is a fruit plate, and the materials used are carpet and keyboard keys. First attempt was to drill holes and wire it together, but it fails to hold together tightly. Therefore I used another method of melting the keyboard keys and cool it down while placing keys together, but it appears the keys start to deform and change shapes, which is not allowed in this project according to the brief. So I used PVA glue to stick the keys together, which worked well.
The fruit plate I designed is from the idea of 2 hands placed together holding a fruit, at first the idea was to make a circle bottom, but if I do that, there will be a hole in the middle of the plate, and when the plate rolls up, it will not look like a hand shape, so I used a carpet to give a firm base.
The fruit plate is made from 133 square keyboard keys, which requires two keyboards to produce one fruit plate, the base is 7 x 7, and the extended arms are 3 keys high, the overall dimensions of the plate is 175 x 175 x 50 mm, which is a small plate designed to hold medium size fruits such as oranges, apples etc.
I have experimented the plate with actual fruits, the extended parts are strong enough to hold fruits, however, they are not designed for hard impacts, therefore it will crack if it is fallen or hit with hard force. However, the plate is a nice piece of design that can be placed on a dinning table.

Task 6e: Design for Life

The video “Design for Life” by Philippe Starck is a series divide into episodes, and as we can see from the video, working in the real design world is just a as much pressure, if not, more pressure than university students, the students working for Philippe Startck must be feeling the pressure they receive from all the complains, but on the other hand, I can also see the passionate filled in each and everyone of them, all of them loves the job of design, and is willing to receive the pressures from design.
As I have expected, the video shows the toughness n hardness a designer needs to go through, compare to other university subjects, design seems to be easier, but the pressure and future for them are not to be known, designers might seems to be not working all the time, but in fact, their brain are working 24/7, always thinking about new things, new designs. If they do not keep up to date or even think ahead of others, they cannot survive within the field of design.
Design can be easy, because everyone can design, even a children can design, for what people understand, design is just drawing, but there are lots and lots of deep thinking inside every design, all designers have to work with pressures and stress, they have to come up with good designs, and not designs that the designer thinks it is good, but a design that everyone can accept and like. If it is just a design the designer knows and like, the design is a fail, no matter how good the design might be.
After watching the video, I have seriously questioned myself… “Am I going to reach their level?” even now, I still don’t have a clear answer, but what I know is that I need to work hard, and experience more, because from what I believe, is that all designs come from experience, and the more you experience, more things a person knows, and understand about other people, so that more people will accept the designs.
I wish I would work for a design company that allows me to do everything and look at how other peole do things, so I can gain experience and learn what it is like to be in a real design world, because from what we learn in university, it is still base on books, without really experiencing what the real field is like.

Project 1 comments

http://lilynguyen1506.blogspot.com/2010/09/experience-enrichment.html

http://bjcyc.blogspot.com/2010/09/project-1-experience-enrichment.html

http://pluwia.blogspot.com/2010/09/project-one-experience-enrichment.html

http://leechiehmin.blogspot.com/2010/09/experience-enrichment.html

http://snailmina.blogspot.com/2010/09/ides1031-project-1-experience.html

http://linst90.blogspot.com/2010/09/my-target-market-i-choose-for-this.html#comments

Experience Enrichment

A gardening trowel is a hand tool used for breaking soils, digging holes for planting seeds and removing weeding, and moving plants, or smoothing the ground.
But I have done researches about the hand position in using a gardening trowel, it appears that if a person is to consistently doing the same motion with the trowel, it gives the user a muscle plain due to the overuse energy of the wrist, because the way to use a gardening trowel is to lean hand position down to point the gardening trowel towards the ground, and use the energy from the wrist to dig into the soil, then it requires energy from the wrist to lift the hand up to get the soil, the amount of energy depends on the hardness of the soil. Therefore if a person is to dig in a hard soil, it can cause serious damage to the wrist.
So, to overcome the problem, we simply need to apply some basic physics motion rule, using the first class lever, placing a pivot point (Fulcrum) at the middle, then apply the load on one side, and the effort (force) on the other.

Therefore, the new design of the trowel has an effort arm of 175mm, and resistance arm of 118mm. So according to the general formula, the trowel can reduce 36% of energy used when digging.
The material used is eco-friendly, it uses recycled plastics Polypropylene (PP), it has a recycling number 5. These kind of plastics are usually used for food containers and dish washers, it had the property of hardness, which is suitable for a trowel.
This is the new design for a garden trowel.