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.

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.