Group Porject 2

I was very privileged and satisfied to have such opportunities to work with my group (Charmaine, Fanru and Julia), dealing with a large group of four can be somehow difficult because each one of us are individuals, and we can occasionally have different believes and opinions. We have learnt to communicate with each other during group meetings by giving personal suggestions and feedbacks.
This was my first time in Industrial Design that has to deal with major group project. It was a very remarkable experience for me, and I believe this experience will be very useful for me in the future, because it guides me in learning how to deal with team works. I consider this is very critical to all young designers, because once we step into the real design world; we will surely be facing all kinds of different scenarios in cooperating with team projects and etc.

Our very original concept was designing a baby stroller system, however the three tutors didn’t approve our ideas, therefore during our group meeting we have decided to switch from ‘Mobility’ to ‘Food’. We felt that was a big jump for us, and we had to gather and research brand new information. However our concept got turned down but our motivations didn’t. I was very proud of my group that we have been very enthusiastic for this project and most importantly rather than complain about the pressure; we always give each other a positive attitude. Our workloads was spread out evenly, that each one of us has made significant contributions.

After the group project I have learnt the processes of creating a new system, and in order to achieve our goal, a matter of creativity is not enough, behind a good system relates with intensive research. Also after designing our kid’s recycling bins I have learnt a good design is not necessarily needs to be fancy and complicated. Sometimes simplicity of a design can achieve the maximum benefit for us and has its advantages in reducing cost and level of materials.

Design for life

I have had a very enjoyable time watching the video ‘Design for life’, during his video he has made me laughed a few times. Talking about Philippe Starck those most memorable products from him is his ghost chair and the orange juicer. Not only I have gained many significant design aspects after the video, I have also found Philippe Starck defiantly has a very hilarious and wild personality.

Watching him working with the UK students, I very much envy those students who get to have the opportunity to let Philippe Starck to critique about their work. It is very useful in the way because thought his criticism I tend to digest it in and refer it back to my design.

My interpretation to this video is, He think designer should produce product as less as possible in another words only design if it is necessary, thus less wastage less energy use less using of our limited resources less garbage dumping into our land filed every year. I question myself is designing new product really a route of evil? Or can this dilemma be solved? It is impossible to stop the fast moving technology in twenty first century; thousands of new products have been introduced to us every year. The products are out there to satisfy the consumer’s need and desire states, company ended up making big profit, designers gets high pay salary. Everyone seems happy in the end, but what about our earth? Is there a solution to solve this serious issue? Since it is already impossible to STOP DESIGN, I think as a good designer we should always have a’ green’ philosophy in mind, when we design we should always reconsider about the impact after the product’s life span. To achieve that, we need an intensive knowledge about selecting materials, making sure it is good for the environment and try to increase the product’s utility, so instead of buying three different products consumer only needs to buy one.

As a design student I think it is good to observe those important concepts before I step into the real design world. I have learnt to not just design products that can make consumer attracted to buy it, as Philippe Starck has mentioned it in the video. He has not only stressed role and responsibility of a designer. But also as a consumer I think in the future when making any purchase, it is appropriate to reconsider ‘do I really need it?’ obtusely we can expect every designer around the world to be Eco friendly, say no to unnecessary product is one way to rescue our earth.

11th hour

Human are selfish that we take everything for granted by wasting out nature resources cutting downing trees, and never consider of the serious consequences behind it. The recourses that we have on earth are very limited, if we waste it all then have we ever thought about what going to be left over for our future generations?

Many of us are familiar with the term ‘global warming’ but how many of us really understand the serious impact behind it when increase average temperature of air leads to the melting of ice in North Pole. Can we picture ourselves living under ice water? Many of us choose to avoid this question because they don’t know how close this are is heading towards us. The documentary video suggest many species has extinct in the world due to the inconsiderable human behavior, however if we still continue our way of treating earth humans will be facing distinctions as well. Because we are not the special case, when comes punishment by the nature no one is escapable.

I was very glad to see many designers are very much aware of the global warming issues. Looking around my house I can see solar power has been introduce, eco friendly bag, and natural gas car is another invention. All of those invention help to extend the life of earth but it’s barely enough.

Designers should be under a lot of pressured in protecting the earth. Designer should only design superior products that dose the minimum damage to the environment. When product designing always double question the product come comes, whether is eco friendly? Recyclable? Have I pushed to extend the life span as much as I could? ect, an irresponsible design is when a product waste more materials than it should, short usage and this is another way to increase a level of pollutions.

We are very lucky that we got the concept of ‘sustainability’ nailed in to our brain. I believe every one of us should understand the philosophy indeed and use every knowledge we learnt in university and embraces it to our future product.

Design for Disaster peers comments

1. Alfred Boyadgis http://alfredboyadgis.blogspot.com/2011/04/designing-for-disasters.html?showComment=1302938297427#c7500580823271298574 2. Julian Chow http://julianides.blogspot.com/2011/04/blog-post.html?showComment=1302937123314#c3090063688206972876 3. Wang FanRu http://fanruwang.blogspot.com/2011/04/project-one-lifebuoy.html?showComment=1302937667415#c6435994241378460674 4. Gleb Labazine http://gleblabazine.blogspot.com/2011/04/blog-post.html?showComment=1302939651116#c928242410860428738 5. Marco Tallarida http://marcotallarida.blogspot.com/2011/04/windheat-turbine.html?showComment=1302938927770#c8011685056680152041

Design for Blizzard China

Stuff: Bottled Water + Cosmetics

After watching two short videos of ‘story of cosmetics’ and ‘story of bottled water’ has educated me in acknowledging a different aspect in the product industries such as consumer’s behavior, manufacturing demand, the power of advertising, the broken legal system and so on. Every Single year by releasing hundreds tons of plastic bottles into underground, and Daily cosmetic products contains toxic chemicals, all of our human behavior are constantly damaging and affecting our earth and trashing our own body health system.

As a 3rd year industrial design student I think it’s particularly important to cover the awareness of what is happening around the world and around us. Good designers should take the responsibility in inserting green and healthy philosophy into products. By doing this the fundamental key is to understand the situation and then turn problems into sustainable solutions. I was very angered against the bottle company, not only because of their actions of false and misleading advertising to increase their manufacturing demand, but what causes it has lead to a disaster of environment life cycle. I believe designer have the power in improving and reducing the level of pollutions that has been done. By mass producing bottled water is certainly not the most efficient way in satisfying the consumer’s need. Instead of relying on manufacturing plastic bottles, we can avoid these by introducing product for example clean water filter for each households or eco-fountain for the outdoors.

Story of cosmetics highlights the broken system of the cosmetic industries. Talking about selfish and irresponsible products, down on the marketing side they do make profit but question, do we really want to put toxic chemicals onto our skin and into our body? Video shows an average America women uses 12 bottle of chemical products per day, as my daily cosmetic products excides over 17. As Annie Leonard have motioned those ingredients because many harmful symptom even cancer and most importantly our new born baby can even get pre-polluted. All of the above facts encourage designers to gain more considerations in human health impact in selecting their materials. Therefore we need to understand the true meaning behind the words ‘natural’ and ‘organic’, By research and experiment on materials and ingredients that brings minimum side effects to consumers, because not only saving them we are also saving our planet and our next generation.

Video Reflection: Recycling

Everyone would like to make a sustainable earth, but how many of us took the action of recycling seriously? Although many companies are starting to gain more awareness of the ecological impact of the environment but is it enough to save our planet against great amount of wastage of 750kg per human every year? This is a very considerable question that we should input in our mind before designing products, to make a sustainable design.

The video ‘Giving Packaging a New Life’ has gained me great insight in the demonstration of recycling. The basic definition of ‘Recycling’ is reducing the level of pollution, energy usage and human resource by turning already used material into something new. I think it’s a brilliant concept of giving a product life a second chance and also lowering the demand of dumping more rubbish into our landfills.

We are very lucky as we are all highly influenced by the education system in Australia about ‘Recycling’. Studying Industrial Design at university we already have the ‘recycling issue’ in our mind, every one of us are desire to come up with the most eco-porduct, but how can we achieve this? The key term to its concept is firstly fully understand about the product lifecycle, even though recycling makes a huge contribution, but can we extend the product lifespan as long as it can?

A solution to a purely ‘green’ product is not only the definitions of using ecological material, what makes it green is process of a product’s life after death. Moving with the fast paste moving society, nowadays we can witness the improvement of the reclining progress. Designers tend to reducing recycling effort by using less different materials for one product, for example instead of have three different types of plastics, now we only uses one. Many packaging has replaced using paper sticker with a simple print on, this achieves the purity of material and also reduced energy usage by separating the sticky paper away from its material.

However I believe keeping a sustainable earth is not only a designer’s job. The media should also conduct propaganda about cycling knowledge as much as it can to the public, because many people are not aware of the significance of the issue. Everyone should play an important role in protecting our planet. So why not start recycling today?

My Ecological Footprint

After taking the 'My Ecological Footprint' quizzes. I was fairly shocked at the results i received, and didn't realize how much negative impact that was caused by me to our only earth. I personally think the website uses a very clever idea by using numbers of earth to gain people's responsiveness. Ecological Footprint has made me gain the awareness of the importance of training our daliy habits of saving resoutces. For example i can start with cutting down my shower time or reduces using private transport. I honestly hope not everyone's result is as bad as mine. :(