REFLECTIONS OF PROJECT TWO

The start of Project Two kicked off with grouping up with Fanru,Jen and Julia. Having never worked with Fanru and Julia, I was keen to see how our group would interact and what the dynamics of working together would be like.

We initially struggled with grasping the true concept of a PSS, and found it hard to define what a product was, within a new service system, while not just riding on and branching out from an existing product or system.

We toyed around with the idea of shared baby strollers, much like the concept of bike-sharing, but soon scrapped that due to numerous issues that arose, such as safety and hygiene. Having already done significant research on products for children, we then decided to stick to children as our target market.

We explored various existing PSS and finally decided upon drawing up concepts for children's recycling bins.

The journey that followed was not as easy one, as we started to run short of time. With each week and Studio that passed, we progressed, but the flaws in our designs became more apparent. Each week saw us moving forward, but backwards at the same time.

The biggest issue that arose with designing children's recycling bins was the struggle between making it fun and interactive, while letting it fit seamlessly into the current garbage disposal system in schools.

We started to realise how much research we had ahead of us and how much we needed to know and clearly define our problem, in order to strategically move forward and clear all the barriers involved.

Industrial designers should in fact consider PSS as they offer us useful and promising concepts to move in the direction of sustainability, which the entire world is moving towards. This was another reason why we chose to centre our concept around educating the masses on recycling, starting with children.

What I liked most about designing a PSS was that they could very easily be placed into different environments, depending on their purposes. Every PSS has a very specific job and it either works or does not, making the design process clear and concise. This however, was also what I did not like about designing a PSS as, it does not leave much room for error. Given a constraint amount of time, designing a PSS would not be my first choice.

It has been said that despite the advantages that a PSS yield, some PSS changes can generate unwanted side effects: Rebound effects, where potentially environmentally-friendly solutions can increase global consumption of environmental resources.

As a whole however, I thoroughly enjoyed working on Project Two, especially with my group mates, as we managed to work off each others ideas and expand on them as a group. I personally have never experienced working with a group on a Studio project so intensely as this one.

This project has highlighted to me the need and ability to see whether a product can realistically work, and the steps that should be taken to counter the factors preventing a product from working the way that it should.

PROJECT TWO: PRODUCT SERVICE SYSTEMS

Children's Recycling Hub


Product Poster


Assembly Poster


Interaction Storyboard


Orthographic Drawing

Other group members:

Fanru Wang, Ruyu Xiao, Jen Jun Zhu

TASK 2D: ETHICAL DESIGN ISSUES

Objectified

Objectified explores our relationship with things, which gets tugged between sometimes conflicted gratification, by going directly to the source: Industrial designers.

It dives into the crux of what is beneath the desire to obtain objects, that programs consumers to momentarily cling to them dearly, and then inevitably discard.

Director Gary Hustwit highlights the thoughts and processes involved in design, considers the inception of products and their corresponding attributes: Form, function, context, inspiration, and evolution.

He briefly touches on the facts that in spite of the existence of machines and rapid prototyping, the original prototypes for most products, are still modeled out by hand. The film opens with a montage of one’s morning routine. Just from getting ready to head out the door, we interact with a myriad of devices and products, many of which are designed to seamlessly fit in with our environment, while remaining exceptionally intuitive.

Hustwit calls upon an elite global posse of talking heads to preach their design beliefs, presenting compressed portraits of the brainstorming, manufacturing, sales, and the use of various products.

Design heroes such as Karim Rashid, Marc Newson, Apple’s Jonathan Ive, and Braun’s Dieter Rams, share their philosophies and products, bringing the driving forces of the field into perfectly composed focus: ‘Good’ industrial design makes the product supreme, but the design invisible.

Dieter Rams, the former design director of Braun, outlines the principles of 'good' industrial design: It should make a product useful and be innovative, aesthetically pleasing, easy to understand, honest, unobtrusive, long-lived, consistent in every detail and environmentally friendly. He also adds that, good design is as little design as possible.

Hustwit asks put these designers in front of the firing squad, asking straightforward questions that elicit thoughtful, sometimes complicated, answers. The film adopts an honest approach; in the way it deals with our constant want and desire to obtain a products, coupled with more than well-informed designers and companies always creating new ways to reel us in, only speeding up the cycle of consumption.

There is however, a sore fact about the practice of industrial design that cannot be overlooked: Designers want to make objects that you will want to pass down through generations, yet ironically, the field of design field thrives due to the sheer disposability of products.

Towards the end of the film, the topic of sustainability surfaces, but it merely skims the top of this issue laden with detrimental effects. The film effectively exemplifies the appreciation of well-designed objects, but it responsibly warns us and pricks our consciences, with the fact that the production and disposal of these objects require numerous resources.

A fusion of thinkers and doers complements and drives home the film’s greater purpose: Getting us to rethink and draw a line between our needs and wants.