Tuesday, 27 September 2011

Bill Moggride!


Bill Moggride, who is the director of the Cooper-Hewitt design museum, gives a wonderful insight, on what is design, Ranging from architecture to industrial design and then goes on to explore the ideas of good design and bad design.  He explains that we wouldn’t recognise a good design, unless we are able to recognise bad designs.  He refers to “smart design” as designs that are suitable for everyone he uses kitchen utensils as an example, where it would be comfortable for a youngster, but also comfortable for the elderly who may even have arthritis. 
He then provides a video of the first lady of the united states, who talks about the education of students in design.  The first lady expresses that  the some a portion of children are “cut off” from America’s rich cultural life. She wants to open up new incentives for younger people to embrace the culture of design that surrounds them in their everyday life. She talks about achieving this through workshops and mentoring sessions like the one she gave her speech at to give direction to those interested and shape dreams.
  He refers to the intel tab as a supposably good design, as it integrates many functions together, and then goes on to bad design where he refers to the i-mode in Japan.  He shows a video where it demonstrates how the i-mode is able to allow you to purchase a drink through your cell phone, in the video it takes approximately thirty five minutes for the lady to finally purchase the drink.  Bill explains this bad design can come from the lack of communication between different aspects of design, in respects to the video he refers to the people who designed the phone and the people who design the web service for the i-mode.  He stresses the importance of prototyping to understand people better in order to achieve success.  There are 3 stages to prototyping; inspire, evolve and to validate
He refers to the  4 factors of design as being :
-physical design
-human and subjective
-Digital design
-Technical and objective
Bill explains to us that there are three expanding contexts that relate to design. Personal, Social and Environmental; all of which play a pivotal role in the design process. On a personal scale, we strive to design to achieve health and wellbeing. Socially, we design for impact, to change something, to improve it. And with environmental we look at how the materials that it’s made up of affect our world. 
This is a great video, which I found to be very insightful in expressing design processes and the flaws of design that we are faced with, and coming up with an approach to combat these flaws.  Bill also emphasises to us that it is important to design for others and not to be selfish and just design for ourselves.

Sunday, 11 September 2011

Project One: Experience Enrichment - Rationale

Through extensive research on ice cream scoops, I’ve discovered that the majority of designs are primarily focused on functionality, neglecting aspects of comfort and satisfaction.  In this project I set out upon to redesign a scoop that would not only be function able, but to redesign it into a more pleasurable one that enriches and enhances the experiences of the user while engaging with it.  One of my main priorities of this task was to promote a “living relationship” between the tool and the user.  One of the approaches I took to achieve this was redesigning the scoop ergonomically, to increase the comfort in use.   Using ice cream scoops require a firm grip, the harder the ice cream the more effort and strength that is required to scoop it, a firm grip if required for any other hand tool.  Tissue compression (compression of soft tissue, in this case of the palm and fingers) may lead to obstructing blood circulation, leading to numbness and tingling, it may also lead to the forming of blisters due to the friction of the hand and tool.  The grip of the scoop was redesigned so that it spaces the fingers of the users slightly apart, ultimately to reduce tissue compression, when scooping ice cream, to increase comfort and satisfaction during long term use.  The scoop is primarily made out of stainless steel, for strength.  This allows the rim of the scoop head to maintain, it shape without bending, breaking or distorting its shape, as many other thinner scoop heads can do.  the handle is encased in a thick rubber layer to add grip, and prevent slipping.  The rubber will also create a cushion effect of the handle to reduce tissue compression to increase pleasure.  A bright blue colour was used for the grip, to evoke a feeling of calmness and coolness, which goes hand in hand with the thought of ice cream. 




Peer Comments:

Daniel Foo: http://fooides.blogspot.com/2011/09/blog-post.html?showComment=1315800729815#c7080060621137825260
Toi Shan Chung: http://toishanchung.blogspot.com/2011/09/project-1-experience-enrichment.html?showComment=1315800805552#c582591914360362517
Christina Le: http://christinaale.wordpress.com/2011/09/12/concept-poster-easi-open/#comment-11
Dennis Lee : http://dennisdolee.blogspot.com/2011/09/experience-enrichment-vigo-cheese.html?showComment=1316071583919#c5144654332373875372
Ricky Chu : http://starocean01.blogspot.com/2011/09/project-1-product-poster.html?showComment=1316071910372#c3283362607989515814

CAD Drawing!