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
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
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.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Task 6d: Objectified
The featured film “Objectified” explains to us what we do everyday. We make assumption of everything by the first impression we see things without us even realizing we are, such as how heavy it is, how strong it is, it is what we expect the object to be. The video shows us the reason of designs by designers considering how the product is made from its raw materials, and how it connects with the user.
The word mass production gives people an impression of poor quality designs, or even no design at all, mass production might just be for the profit of a company. But in fact everything is being designed, without design, products would not even have its original shape, there are no objects that are not being designed, there is only good design and bad design. In fact, good designs should look as simple as it should be, keeping a design simple doesn’t mean there is no design to it, it takes a lot of work to keep product design as simple as it can be, products should be designed as simple as possible without unnecessary parts to confuse the user, therefore it can be mass produced. For example, the Apple Company emphasises the importance of simple, the design of apple products are simple which gives a clean feeling and it’s a pleasure for users to use.
Consumers do not realize there are always connections between products and themselves, which is what the designers are intended to do, to design products that people use it all the time but without realizing it, this is the interaction between human and products.
Hella Jongerius made a point that products should be unique. Instead of repeating the products over and over again, consumers will buy the products without really needing the product, which I agree in a commercial point of view, but if consumers are purchasing new things that are not necessary to them, it just means more pollution to the environment.
However, the main message I get from this video is the same as my belief, which is to keep things simple, sometimes people try hard to design some fancy cool stuffs, and try to be smart and design something ridicules. Someone taught me about the “KISS rule” before, which I still follow even now, which is “Keep it simple, stupid!” because the simpler things are, the less mistake people gets.
The word mass production gives people an impression of poor quality designs, or even no design at all, mass production might just be for the profit of a company. But in fact everything is being designed, without design, products would not even have its original shape, there are no objects that are not being designed, there is only good design and bad design. In fact, good designs should look as simple as it should be, keeping a design simple doesn’t mean there is no design to it, it takes a lot of work to keep product design as simple as it can be, products should be designed as simple as possible without unnecessary parts to confuse the user, therefore it can be mass produced. For example, the Apple Company emphasises the importance of simple, the design of apple products are simple which gives a clean feeling and it’s a pleasure for users to use.
Consumers do not realize there are always connections between products and themselves, which is what the designers are intended to do, to design products that people use it all the time but without realizing it, this is the interaction between human and products.
Hella Jongerius made a point that products should be unique. Instead of repeating the products over and over again, consumers will buy the products without really needing the product, which I agree in a commercial point of view, but if consumers are purchasing new things that are not necessary to them, it just means more pollution to the environment.
However, the main message I get from this video is the same as my belief, which is to keep things simple, sometimes people try hard to design some fancy cool stuffs, and try to be smart and design something ridicules. Someone taught me about the “KISS rule” before, which I still follow even now, which is “Keep it simple, stupid!” because the simpler things are, the less mistake people gets.
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Monday, August 30, 2010
Task 5: Design Confusion
The product I have choosen is a LG TV remote control, there are too many buttons that my mother can never get it right.
Monday, August 23, 2010
Task 6c: Video Reflections - The Story of Stuff
24th July, 2010
The video “The Story of Stuff” by Annie Leonard is a great video that reminds everyone about the origin of the products we have been using, as designers, our job is not just design and product nice looking products, without a care of any other things happening around us, but the products we design have not just impacted the consumers, but also the environment, in Leonard’s video, she has broken up the process into five parts, Extraction, Production, Distribution, Consumption and Disposal.
As Leonard suggested, Extraction is just a name used to cover the word “trashing the Earth”, nowadays, one-third of the Earth’s natural resources has been “extracted”, in the US, there are only 4% of forest left and 40% of water became undrinkable. By watching how the people are “trashing the Earth” it is scary to just even think about how the future will be like.
And during the production, there are toxics putted to production of products, which means there are toxics during product productions, and the products itself, and people who work in the toxic factories are people that must work in there just to live, which I find it very disturbing and disgusting, people are not being treated like they should as human, and sometimes they are children who produce the product, they are risking their life in producing the product, instead of having a fun childhood, they are using their life to produce products we use. Thinking about it, makes me feel guilty in using products.
So after we used the products, the disposal of the product gets burnt to the air and produce toxics which pollutes the air environment, and some disposal get dumped in the ground which also pollutes the ground and the climate, leading the world to a climate change. There is why we need to recycle, of course, recycle can help, but it does not fully solve the core problem we are facing, because we can never fully separate a product and recycle them.
After watching the video, I realize how much waste we produce everyday, just looking at this video already get my concern about the future of this world we are living in today, so I suppose as a future designer, one of my concern will be the environment, because before I watch this video, my main concern is the design of the product, but this emotional video have deeply changed the way of my thinking.
The video “The Story of Stuff” by Annie Leonard is a great video that reminds everyone about the origin of the products we have been using, as designers, our job is not just design and product nice looking products, without a care of any other things happening around us, but the products we design have not just impacted the consumers, but also the environment, in Leonard’s video, she has broken up the process into five parts, Extraction, Production, Distribution, Consumption and Disposal.
As Leonard suggested, Extraction is just a name used to cover the word “trashing the Earth”, nowadays, one-third of the Earth’s natural resources has been “extracted”, in the US, there are only 4% of forest left and 40% of water became undrinkable. By watching how the people are “trashing the Earth” it is scary to just even think about how the future will be like.
And during the production, there are toxics putted to production of products, which means there are toxics during product productions, and the products itself, and people who work in the toxic factories are people that must work in there just to live, which I find it very disturbing and disgusting, people are not being treated like they should as human, and sometimes they are children who produce the product, they are risking their life in producing the product, instead of having a fun childhood, they are using their life to produce products we use. Thinking about it, makes me feel guilty in using products.
So after we used the products, the disposal of the product gets burnt to the air and produce toxics which pollutes the air environment, and some disposal get dumped in the ground which also pollutes the ground and the climate, leading the world to a climate change. There is why we need to recycle, of course, recycle can help, but it does not fully solve the core problem we are facing, because we can never fully separate a product and recycle them.
After watching the video, I realize how much waste we produce everyday, just looking at this video already get my concern about the future of this world we are living in today, so I suppose as a future designer, one of my concern will be the environment, because before I watch this video, my main concern is the design of the product, but this emotional video have deeply changed the way of my thinking.
Monday, August 16, 2010
Task 6b: Video Reflections - Emotional Design
17th August, 2010
Don Norman’s video on emotional design focus on the design of a product and the emotion gained by the user, good design doesn’t only focus on the overall look of an object, but how useable the object can be, there is no point for a design to look good, but hard to use or the user cannot figure out how to use it.
The first example Don Norman brought up was a lemon juicer designed by Philippe Starck. Which is designed to be a lemon juicer that is not to be used to make juice, because of the acid in a lemon and orange will ruin the plating of the product. But if the lemon juicer cannot be used to for its purpose, the product became useless. The user had to personalise the product and make it something else such as a decoration, and the ability of personalise something is what makes something yours.
As the world moves toward automation, computers become smarter and more human like. And it makes decisions for the user which is sometimes not what the user wanted, and limited the choice of the user, making a restriction. Which in terms is making it harder for the user, so automation does not necessary means better, if automation is overused, the user have less control of what can be done, examples Don Norman used includes cars, if the road condition appears to require extra attention, the car adjust the position of the driver, which may not be what the user want. Don Norman also suggested the Lexus camera system, if the driver appears to be not paying attention to the road, the car breaks itself, which might be able to save life, but it can also be more dangerous for the driver.
Also, sometimes the design itself can be useless, Norman used the idrive example, the car have the ability to do a lot of things include “a driver can adjust air conditioning and locate the nearest Dairy Queen on the same screen”, which is not a very useful design.
And the BMW has a lot of buttons and it makes the design of the car messy, and as Mercedes-Benz designed a completely opposite style to BMW, it also created problems, the design of Mercedes-Benz does look very clean, but the buttons are too close together and its making it harder for user to use.
It is the user and customers that wants more features from designs, the designers will have to throw in more buttons or computer screen, but as there are more of these things the level of complexity also increases, so that is the challenge designers have to face in future, to minimise the complexity but increase the features of products.
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