Video Reflections : Who Killed The Electric Car?

The film released in 2006 "Who killed the electric car?" talks about the story of electric car and its unsuccessful journey in society despite its good solution it offers. It also talks about the conspiracy behind the story, featuring how the company played the role behind the unsuccessful launch.

At the beginning the video talks about sustainability in fuel usage and possibilities to replace petrol cars to save the environment. Electric-powered car was considered by some car manufacturers as the solution to this problem. However some concerns were aroused such as consumer skeptics, competition, and limitations of the product. High cost are also one of the reason why electric cars remained unpopular in society.

It is an interesting video as it gives me insight of what is it like in the real-live workforce. Sometimes we as the designer we could propose a great design but at the end it would go through a lot of process before it can be launched and great design does not ensure it will remain successful in the market. A lot of things are affecting the successfulness of a design. Not only its economical consideration, but also the manufacturing process, environmental concern, consumer perception,etc.

Packaging Video Reflection

I found the video ‘How It’s Made’ and ‘Giving Packaging a New Life’ very useful as they cover different kinds of materials and manufacturing process as well as recycling process of the materials being used.

The video introduces me to some of the existing materials out there, from corrugated cardboard, paper, aluminium, tetrapak, glass as well as plastic. They also explain the innovation of recycling each of those materials in details, describing each process step by step.

Corrugated Cardboard is featured first, the video explains how is it made and how they use water and starch as the adhesive to keep them safe as well as the manufacturing process of paper.

Packaging tubes and aluminium is covered next. They talk about the making process of packaging tube; which is very interesting to me, and the characteristic of aluminium and how aluminium is recycled.

The following videos talk about tetrapak, glass bottles and plastic. Tetrapak is one of the most sustainable packaging as they are recyclable as a whole and it offers good quality in storing various types of products. Glass is sustainable as well as they are easy to recycle and abundant.

As a designer it is important to watch these videos as they give deep insight to the existing manufacturing and recycling process and they remind us that selecting the most suitable materials could help keeping the environment safe.

The 11th Hour

Watch the video here.

The “11th hour” is a great reminder for us of what has happened to the world for the past few centuries and how bad nature has become because of what human do. The video provides a lot of scientific facts, opinions, and thoughts from experts of diverse areas; which all agree at one point: that there’s a huge link between nature and human being. 

Despite the fact that human is relatively a young species, as human we tend to think that we are superior, we think we own the nature so we can take whatever we want from the nature. We forget that we are actually part of the nature. Simply look at our body; there are millions of other living creatures and organisms that live in our body, supporting our body mechanism. We can’t live without them, we live because they live in us. So in other words, we are indeed part of our nature. Human and nature cannot be separated and one does not simply superior to the other. 

However in this consumerism, money-oriented world, everything is business. Everything is measured from how much money it could gain and everything is seen through economist’s point of view. We see nature as properties that can be exploited, most of the time they destroy nature in order to gain profits without being responsible to the nature. 

Deforestation and over-exploitation of living resources is not a new phenomenon. In fact almost all existed forests in America, Europe and Asia are now gone due to deforestation. 99.99% of all species has become extinct and over fifty thousand species become extinct each year, which I believe over-exploitation plays a big role in this phenomenon. What’s ironic is that people over exploit nature in amount that is bigger than what human need, only to throw away the exceeded resources back to nature, but of course in a condition that’s already broken and destructed. 

It is sad that we unconsciously live in the black circle, we forget that what we do to nature will eventually coming back to us. For instance, deforestation will lead to droughts and droughts will destroy food sources and consequently it will cause hunger and finally deaths to animals and human themselves. 

This video also gives a good insight for designers. As designers, we have obligations to consider what consequences of each design we produce and be responsible to nature. After all, design is a search of ways to create a better world, not to destroy it. So it is important to consider “cradle to cradle” concept instead of stop at “cradle to grave” concept. 

As designers we also have to explore what can we learn from nature because if we pay attention, the nature is really a great teacher. Human spend a lot of money in searching and developing strong material or structure while if we look at nature, spider’s silk is up to 5 times stronger than steel of the same diameter, not to mention minus the pollution and the hazardous waste resulted from the making process of steel. 

Well of course it’s not easy to solve this global problem, but rather than do nothing and keep doing what we do, as a consumer we can contribute to make this world a better place by voting. Vote for sustainable products and pay more attention of the products we buy, think before we purchase something; is it sustainable, how they are produced and in what material that product is made. 

Bill Moggridge - What is Design?

As the title, Bill Moggridge in his lecture addresses the question of ‘what is design?' and he also mentioned many examples of good design and bad design as well as process and changes that happened around design. One of the main point that he presented is that design is not just about making a beautiful or fancy products but almost everything is designed, almost everything that is used and man made is design. Therefore, it can be said that other professions that we previously think are far different from a designer; like chefs, business people, etc; they are also designers. 

He then points out some examples of good designs in various areas ranging from design for disability, fashion design to architecture. Contrarily, he also points out some bad design as he stated that someone couldn’t recognize good design unless he take a look at the bad one as well. The remote control he used as the bad example simply expresses the fact that sometime simple is better than adding complicated details that might bring confusion to the user and thus become an unpleasurable product.

Human-centered design is again highlighted but this time it is not only interpreted as a design that focuses on the user experience but it is also about the sustainability of it. These days people has become more and more care about environment and thus, we as designers are reminded to think carefully what is the effect of our design on earth.

The issue of sustainability also aroused in this lecture but he didn’t talk only about the disassembly or the process of choosing material but he also highlighted the expanded concept of sustainability as a global aspect. He introduced the profile of Professor Shinichi Takemura who has been learning how the world is connected in an very intimate way, either the connections between people or the connections with the surroundings. The tangible earth demonstration by Professor Shinichi Takemura really caught my attention, not only it is the first interactive globe but it also strongly captures the interconnectedness of our world, how one aspect could affect many other aspects as they connect with each other in so many different ways.

Annie Leonard - Storyofstuff Project

After watching the video I realized that I usually do not give much attention to the product I use. I never really check the material or ingredients of a product and I believe most of us never really think about it either. I found this whole series of videos very interesting because Annie Leonard presented some facts that never been out there before and pointed some ideas that probably never come across our mind.

These videos are good reminder for us both as a customer and a designer. As a customer we have to pay much more attention to the product we use, whether it’s a good or bad, honest or dishonest product. What’s the point of buying a cosmetic product when at the same time it harms our body or buying a more expensive bottled water when actually there’s no difference with the cheap one. We have to be smart in choosing what we would to wear or use because at the first place, we spend our money to buy products that will bring us a better life, not to endanger us.

It is really hard indeed to find a honest, good product because for the purpose of marketing, any producer or manufacturer certainly will try to ‘hide’ the ugly sides of their product or even deceive us customers by stating false facts like material, etc. Therefore we have to put more effort to find out the truth ourselves if we want to guarantee that the product we are using is totally safe. But then, in this era when technology is much more advance, we can get the facts online easier or we can share our knowledge to others as well, just like what Annie Leonard did.

As a designer we are also reminded to not design something that could harm people and the environment. It’s really good that nowadays more and more designers start to put environment to consideration when designing something. 3R; reduce, reuse, and recycle is now often practiced by designers and it doesn’t mean that they sacrifice their design because in fact, so many eco-friendly products out there are pretty amazing. In short, less material and eco-friendly doesn’t mean ugly.

Human-Centered Design

David Kelley on human-centered design | Video on TED.com

In this video David Kelley mainly talks about how product design has become much less about the hardware and more about the user experience. In the last 18 years people started to focus more and more on human approach to design. Back then designer used to make 3d models or 3d renderings to communicate their ideas but nowadays they got those objects that they're designing and get them emotion showing how it will be used by making interactive prototypes that show man-machine relationship.

To demonstrate the idea of human centred design David give some examples and i think the most interesting one is the interactive system and data infrastructure designed by him for Prada New York store. So how it works is that every products displayed has a RF tags and if we see something we interested in , the staff can scan their tags and they can be displayed altogether at any screen at the store. In the dressing room there are also scanner and touch screen where we can get access to detailed information about the merchandise we are trying on. Another feature is the liquid crystal glass in the changing room that becomes opaque if we step on the button and it switches easily to transparent glass on another button so other people outside able to review the products while we try them on without we leaving the dressing room. Lastly there are also magic mirror which operates in 3 seconds delay so when we are trying cloths we can turn around and see how it looks like on the back when we turn around on the magic mirror. The design includes data infrastructure that allows all staff to develop better understanding of future costumer needs. This whole design use technological advances in order to make an interactive atmosphere between buyer and the store so the customers are having an enjoyable shopping experience.

This video reminds me that we often put too much focus on the product and pay less attention to the user itself. The idea of design is to make human life become more enjoyable and better. When we focus too much on the products, certainly technological objects, it can be say that we forget the idea of designing. It's really good nowadays human behaviour and personality has been considered more in the process of designing products. It's important for designers being reminded not to carried away with technology and make products so high tech just to make it more fancy instead of really consider human behaviour and personality as the users.

Emotional Design

Don Norman on 3 ways good design makes you happy | Video on TED.com

Don Norman mainly talks about how emotions affects the success of a design and he also points out the idea that a good design is not just about its function and its beauty but also it has to make people feel the story about it.

To convey this idea, one of the products that Don Norman uses as an example is Philippe Starck’s lemon juicer. What’s really interesting is that Starck’s lemon juicer actually can’t be used to make a juice. In fact Don recalled that on his Starck’s gold pleated special edition lemon juicer, there’s a tag saying ‘Don’t use this juicer to make juice as the acid would ruin the gold pleating’. This product is clearly not functional but aesthetically, it’s really beautiful and it has a story that makes it still attractive. Same goes with the Mini Cooper car that Don uses as example, even though this car has lots of faults, people keep buy buying them because they are so much fun to drive.

One idea that Don tried to convey through those examples is that pleasant things work better. It reminds me that as a designer we often put too much focus on function or how a product looks like, we often forget to put some ‘emotions’ to our product, which actually is important as well. It is really challenging to design something that is creative, innovative and at the same time gives users a fun filled experience.

Lastly, from this video I also learned that when we are as consumers considering whether to buy a product or not, we go through 3 level of subconscious processing; visceral, behavioural, and reflective level. On visceral level, we tend to pay more attention to the appearance of a product; whether it has bright or dark colour, if it’s decorative enough for us to collect, et cetera. When on the middle level of processing; behavioural level; it is all about feeling in control which include usability and understanding. It’s like when we are using a neat, sharp knife; we feel the control of the cutting and it gives a satisfying feeling to the user. Finally, the last level of processing is reflective level. At this level we are more concerned about our image, less about the product. There’s ‘a little voice in our head’ watching and saying ‘it’s good, it’s bad’. For example, when we buy something expensive not because that product is better but because it will gives us a luxurious image.

Overall I found this video quite helpful as it gives me a valuable knowledge about human emotions and their correlation with the success of a design.

Feel Like Spinning?

Spun chair by Thomas Heatherwick. Manufactured by Magis, Italy.

 

 

 

 

ciao!

The Extendable

Yatch Ilona Table, a truly innovative design by DB Fletcher. Enjoy :D

ciao!