Designing dream machines

Richard Seymour and Dick Powell showed the process of making stuffs from ideas to products in the video. It pointed out that relationship between designers and clients was important. Designers should communicate well with the clients and had a good understanding of their ideas. Also, It taught me the ways of solving problems at the designing process, and how to finish the product which meet the clients’ needs. At the first stage of being an industrial designer, I saw the life and designing process in the video, like seeing my future, it was inspirable and exciting.

Peers comment

Julian Chow

Jill Darbey

Jennifer Widjaja

Nicholas Walder

Cori Eom

Project 3: Upcycling unwanteds

Material: buckles, sliver cardboard roll

Rationale: Buckle can be an waste in clothes industry. The traditional way of using it was to use it as the fastener or tool for adjusting belts' length. My design was to make it a bag because there are many ways of connecting buckles, and the pattern of buckle is quite good. My way of connecting the buckle is like kniting, use the cardboard band as the thread. The reason of choosing sliver cardboard is that it can hold up the bag and the color is good. Only stapler was used to connect the band.

Video Reflection: The story of stuff

The video was showing the the process of making stuffs. And the main point I thought was the worry that put to the enviornment. I agreed with this point because production process did do something with the enviornmental pollution. It told me that when we were disigning products, we have to think of the manufacutring process and the materials we used. I think industrial designer is an important role in protecting the enviornment, because what we are doing connects the manufacturers and consumers. As Annie Leonard said, the important thing that lacks in the graph is people. Designer, manufacturer and consumer are people that can change the enviornment. And maybe in the future, we can design the behaviors of people by our products.


Annie Leonard: the story of stuff

Peer Comments

Emily White

Allisa Sanders

Hyo-Ju Cho

Christopher Hui

Jen Jun Zhu

Project 3: Postal Present

Poster





2 D





3 D


Materials: MDF, Japanese washi paper, Wire


Design Rationale:

The flat lamp is easily made by setting the wood frame and placing the flat shade inside. The shade is made up by Japanese Washi paper and wire. For it is a postal present, I was thinking that give some surprise to the receiver. The shade was packed like a present, and it popped up after releasing the ties. The reason of chosing Japanese paper was that light is gentle and soft reflecting through the paper. It gives people a relaxing feeling. Besides, the paper is beautiful even after crumpled.


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Video Reflection: Organic design

Organic is a confusing word for me. I know that it is about nature, but when i design something thinking about nature, the things came out were not organic. After Ross Lovegrove's talk, I began to realize what is organic and how to make organic design.

Ross began with his concept: DNA(design, nature, art). He introduced his way of organic design, which is to get inspiration from nature, and explore the form and shape of natural things. In the first example, Ross was inspired by his instinctive impression of water, which was a form made by few curvy lines. He translated this impression into a water bottle design without knowing that if it was possible. The final product looked beautiful and natural, capturing the essence of water but also performing well. That was design with nature and art, and it was so succussful because it explored the nature in artistic form first and then thought about the design.

After the video, I think feeling the natural world is really important for organic design. We may have some ideas or impression of nature, like water,air,or stones. If we really feel the way they act or exist in this world, we can translate what we feel into articsic forms or by ways we think it will work. What Ross taught me was to make nature design, but not designing with nature. We always begin with the things we want, but a translated natural artistic form can be many designs for us. And the things we want are just some ones inside them. Also, organic design is not only about forms and shapes of nature, but also the ways that nature acts. Just like the "bones chair" that Ross showed, it captured the ways that how bones were connected.

Ross said, Industrial design is the art form of 21th century. What we should to is to improve our artistic sense and work instinctively.

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Peer comments

Jonathan Biet

Julia xiao

Wang Fanru

Vivian Shao

Susanna Li

Project 1: Experience enrichment

MOOD BOARD


POSTER

Target market:
housewifes, middle-class restaurants

Aim:
my design of condiment container is to reduce the many condiments' containers on the restaurants' tables, as well as household kitchen wares. It can also be a dining decoration for restaurants and family party.

Design:
The design was simply a flower shape powder-condiments shaker sitting on a glass bottle containing liquid condiments like vinegar or soy source. It looks like a vase on the table. Moreover, the shaker is big and comfortable to hold and shake. The color of the shaker are variable, and it's indicatable as pepper for black(most pepole's impression), salt for white and spice for red.

Four pleasure analysis:

Physio pleasure:
- large shaker, comfortable to hold
- look elegant for decoration

Phyco plesure:
- Ceramic flower shaker and glass bottle give smooth feelings to users
- interesting shape combining the condiment sets pleases the customers in restaurants
- restaurants enhance customers’ experience and also benefit from this

Socio pleasure:
- talking point with friends
- show high quality life when using it at dinner party or picnic
- restaurants show respect to their customers and have a good reputation

Ideo pleasure:
- table at restaurants look neater for less condiments’ containers
- materials are enviornmental friendly

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Yves Behar: Creating objects that tell stories

Just a eighteen minutes's talk, but do really enlarge my world. What Yves Bhear showed were amazing to me. Considering "value" is how we creat things and design things. Yves said that design is the glue of different values: value for business,users ,functions and beauty etc. I think this is saying that the results, or the objects we design out influence greatly on the subjects of value, so we have to consider and dig up what the value is before we design.

Returning to the products that Yves showed in the talk, we can learn more about what is "value" and how it affects design.

Firstly, the watch for Mini cooper company that the time displays both horizontally and vertically gave users a fresh new feelings when seeing time. The transformable furniture also created new experience for users. The value of the above two products are the new experience achieved by functionality.

Taking other examples, the leaf lamp and the Jawbone headphone, I can see passion in the design. There are humanities in the designs, there are values that users and companies can see, there are beauty and new conversations, and I think these are the stories that the objects tell.

The next three products, the Why water, the OL laotop, and the NYC condom involved the process of designing with original ideas. They all begin with "why". Why they were created and why they are loved by users. Begining with these points, Yves explored the circumstances and created things that not only solved the problems but also brought soul to the products and the companies. He kept the value of the work in hands.

"Designing objects that tell stories", I think this is a new way of thinking design and exploing the possibility of what we can design. Considering the value of various subjects, the relationship of the work and the world will really asist us in solving a design problem. Moreover, we may discover some more ideas and creat new stories for our products.

Yves Behar: Creating objects that tell stories

7sketches of Exhibition products

Good design : Grael

The Grael is a helpful medical device that can diagnose users' sleep disorder. It is good for the patient, nurse and also physician. In terms of its design, It is neat and instructive. The control map that in grey on the top can provide guidence to the patients. The wide and flat face also give sufficient space for the sensors. With the four round corners and curved tail, the body looks soft and delightful. Its cradle offers a perfect angle, making it robust and easy to hold.

What I see from this task is that different products have different focus when designed. For medical device, It is important to make it informative and pleasant. Moreover, functionality not only can improved by technology, but also can be enhanced by design of appearance.

Don Norman: Emotional design

Don Norman's talk was really interesting. The main idea in the talk was emotional design, which I can also see from the way he conducted the talk. Don's humour delighted the audiences and made the talk work better. That was same in design, pleasant things work better.

Design is not only about beauty and functions. Taking the example that Don used in the talk, the Mini cooper，which was loved by many people for its funny shape and experiencei inside. People felt happy when using it, and some technical drawbacks were minimized because people were enjoying more fun. I think it's a really good design combining beauty with emotions.

Don also indicated that there were three levels of design. Firstly, the visceral level. This was designing with the common feeling when most people saw things. For example, most of the people in this world disliked enviormental disaters, so people designed things to avoid disaters. The second level was the behavioral level. As its name, it was about people's acting. Don had an insight of behaviors. He said behaviors were about feeling in control. As for me, many behaviors were came without notice, and sometimes we even did not know what we were acting. However, design at this level was to figure out what these small unnoticed behaviors were and designed considering them. The last level was reflective level, as Don stated, it was the voice in our head. And I thought it was a really emotional level. And it was to make people happy and enjoyable about design. At this level, there were stories behind the design. And the stories were people's special feelings and desires, which became to the reasons of purchasing the products.

Don's three levels of design is really helpful for industrial designers. It is good for products' development because we think more about human's feelings and adapt products to satisfy people's minds.

Don Norman: Emotional design

Vedio reflection: Human centered design

In the talk Human centered design,David Kelly pointed out that the approach of product design today is designing the behavior and personality in the product.What I see about this approach is to place the product in certain circumstances and find out the relationship between the product and human.In the process of finding out the relationship,designers may fancy some ideas and try them instantly. The video showed really expressed the concept.

In the Prada shop,the staff devices,see-through dressing room and special mirrors enhance cumstomers' shopping experience,and that's why these three products are made and improved. How customers use them and feel about them are the key points of how they are designed.

Other examples David Kelly showed were products that designed in different environment.Like the cubical case, designers experienced the office themselves and tried different methods to satisfy the client.There are emotional factor inside the final design.The flowers,fish tank and other relax devices made the cubical office alive, presenting a fresh experience to the user.

As an industrial designer, I think the most important things is to creat ideas. Where our ideas come from are the experiences in different environment. What we act and feel are resources of design.

Shape of a Scent

The perfume our group got was a really strong kind of masculine. It smelled like an old successful man would use. Some other words that we described it were sexy, powerful, and dirty. As for me, the scent became a little bit attractive after many times smelling. And the shape appeared in my mind was men's arms and muscles.

After the brainstorming, we got down to the sculpturing section. The first sculpture I made was a men's fist with a small twisted round support. The reason was that a fist made me think of really strong power. And the small support can be a contrast to the fist, making it look stronger. However, Mar said it was too natural, and I also thought that it was too naive. And I ruined it before I took the photo.

The second one is :


The body was a square having been bited and about to broke. What I wanted to express was the strong force of the perfume.And I wanted to expressed it in the way that the body was treated . The shape of the whole bottle was like a man's shape.

The third one is:

There are two squares in this design. One was twisted and sequeezed,which was the body. The other one was placed on the body and supported by its one corner. The reason I chose squares was that they made me think of successful men. However, the scent also felt sexy. So I sequeezed the body square to make curves and also added some textures on both the cap and body.Just want to smooth the feeling of the bottle and make it sexy.
The ideal one I chose was the third one.