Video Refection - Objectified

Design can be intangible, like softwares, websites, systems.. but for us industrial designers, tangible designs still play the most parts. Colour, texture, feels, and most importantly, the shape, its form, because the products you choose reflects who you are. In products, the form speaks. It can be arguably said that designers spend most of the design process designing the form, going back and forth making prototypes, testing it out, reiterating. It is a long and tiring process. When I am designing for the lsat project for instance, I find it very hard to find a form that fits that particular design, there are disagreement between group members. This shows that people have different thoughts on what form/shape suits what purpose/design/style, and I believe that there's no one perfect answer to that. Furthermore, it is becoming more and more evident that the concept of 'form follows function' does not apply anymore. Due to the technological era, everything is hidden under a chip. Phones and TVs now flat, there's no special shape to them. However, an argument to this would be the fact that every design detail has to have a reason to be there. If it's not there, would it still be functional? Would it make any difference? If it doesn't make any difference, then it could be omitted. But I have to say, Apple is quite brave putting forward a block of aluminium in the market; the iPhone - it couldn't be simpler. It's flat, there's nothing except for a few buttons for locking/unlocking, volume and SIM card. I wonder what they were thinking when they introduced that into the market, did they think it would work out great or were they just testing their luck? But they're probably not selling the form, rather the technology? It was a breakthrough for the company, and for the century, either way.

One part of the video that really is very inspirational i think, is the 'good design' list by Dieter Rams:

good design should be innovative

good design should make a product useful

good design is aesthetic design

good design should make a product understandable

good design is honest

good design is unobtrusive

good design is long lived

good design is consistent in every detail

good design is environmentally friendly

good design is as little as possible

(... all of which Apple has achieved. The last part there relates back to what I have said in the previous paragraph)

A good design should fit in everyday lives, so subtly that people don't even realized it has been designed, something that just had to be there, as if it was born with the world.

Another thing that I liked from the video is when Jonathan Ive mentioned how important it is to keep asking 'WHY', and by doing so we are constantly designing. I totally agree, and rewind back to when we were kids, we like to ask 'why', and this is how we learn things, it's how we learn at the fastest rate.

A very interesting aspect raised by the video was the price of good design. As we know, good design by famous designers costs a lot. They should be accessible, but it is 'designed', therefore it's more expensive. This contradicts the whole concept of mass-production by industrial designers. If there's no one who can afford it, it can't be mass produced. But people has been so accustomed to the belief that when something costs more, it is of better quality.. and in most cases, it's true. We have been taught to minimize cost for the products we're designing, but it's just to maximize profits, not to make the product cheaper so that it's available to everyone. Even though in both cases it's minimizing cost, the end result is different. I think it's quite important that we move from profit-driven to focusing simply on improving the society's lives. It is going to be hard, and possibly impossible..

Reflection on Assignment 2 : PSS

I’ve never heard of the term Product Service System before taking on this project, and I didn’t realize there are so many PSS out there already. The main idea is to share things together to reduce the environmental impact. The concept of PSS is good – emphasizing on the service rather than the product, because you don’t actually want the product, rather the service. In my opinion, every community should have at least a PSS (more like community PSS – sharing clothes, grocery shopping). Especially in Sydney, where there are lots of suburbs, people are friendly, open and economical. It would work out great if the city council was to find some kind of PSS for each suburb. However in places where people do not communicate with their neighbours, a PSS would be hard to implement. But thinking of it, Sydney is becoming more and more like that, where people are too busy with their own things and they become less and less friendly. Or is it because of the difference in culture? In the environment where I live now, neighbours don’t talk to each other, even when they meet in front of apartment doors, or in lifts. If there is some kind of PSS to reduce the gap and bring these ‘anti-socials’ together, I think the PSS would contribute to the overall friendliness and happiness of a person and image of the country even.

From the whole process of designing a PSS, I think the hardest part from this project was to find a problem significant enough to design for. Many problems can just be solved by making either the system or the product. Once you got the problem though, it becomes quite interesting as to what products you need to design and how the system should work. What I like most about this project is that I know after designing this particular PSS, it is possible to implement it straight away, because it’s a real life widespread problem we’re tackling, and most of the time the system includes actors which are already in the cycle (so part of the system is available already).

I think PSS is a very interesting area to work in, so this particular product doesn’t work without the whole system, and vice versa. Everything is interconnected and interdependent. This makes the community closer and makes people realize that they can’t live alone, that you need others to live and you feel thankful that they are around. Even in PSS like sharing clothes, you know that you are benefiting someone else and it raises your pride and happiness level. I realize there are significant human morals and values underlying in every PSS, and I think it is very favourable if design can trigger emotions.

I learned that design is about finding problems, finding gaps where lives could be improved, not just designing another clock, or another phone. May be should design a PSS where people list down all their problems, so there’s a list for designers to work for.. This way it would improve the world at a faster rate.