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.