The most informative and beneficial aspect of this project as a whole was the group debate in which we each had to present our proposed design processes to our peers and then answer a series of questions that critique it. I thought the session was engaging and successful in bringing the group together and having a taster of what is to come in the industry. Nobody held back, and criticisms were dished out just as much as they were received, and ultimately I believe each group came out of this all the better.
On reflection of the process itself, I think our group designed and presented a beautiful idea, using the chaos of traffic and calming cartoon-like graphics combined to form a strong proposal of what it is to capture what we do as designers. At first glance, it’s overwhelming and perhaps chaotic. However, upon further reading, you begin to understand where it is you need to go, what tasks each gate requires and the ease of knowing “Ok, if I do veer off the given path it’s ok, it happens… but I can see in this process that it is simply a case of moving back through the roads towards where I need to be.”
When executing the design process we created there were some things I enjoyed, knowing that it was ok for us to now and then split off in our ‘cars’ to pick up slack in a certain area, or perhaps go far ahead like I did in terms of finalising the workload while the others focus on prototyping and CAD, because that is a system which plays to our strengths and weaknesses. I am content with producing powerpoints, while Ania had experienced in the past with app development, and Sean being competent in prototyping and CAD. So rather than all sticking to one stage, the process allowed us that freedom to break off and flow comfortably to where we needed to be.
When thinking of the outcome of the project, I believe we did really well in some areas than others. The research and ideation/testing went well, and all were involved in contributing. However, I have noticed towards the end of this process things began to drag and fall apart slightly, we weren’t hitting the stage gates as quickly as we should have, and were lingering in parts. This could be a result of the deadline creeping closer or simply too big of a commitment to one stage over another. What could be a possible solution in the future is to apply time blocks to each roundabout, planting a sense of time in each particular area. I think if we had earlier on had that sense of urgency, we would have completed the research far quicker.
The completion of the research techniques and principles module is met with exhaustion! I greatly underestimated how rigorous and methodical the documentation process of this was going to be, and in hindsight, I would have liked to spend more time in preparation for this. That being said, I do believe regardless of the unexpected workload, that our group performed fabulously in terms of getting the research methods done and learning new ideas and developments due to the story the entire methodology was created for us.
The more we began to complete the methods, the more we began to understand our user and what troubles they were facing in the kitchen; and as a bi-product were able to begin to collect pieces of a puzzle that was not yet defined but had clear indications on where each piece needed to go. I would say this project’s ideation process was among the quickest and more sure-fire attempts I have ever done. There was no messing around, we knew exactly what the user was struggling with and had a pretty good idea what initial ideas were going to work, and those that were blatantly not.
But our journey was far from perfect. We had problems which we should have realised sooner rather than later into the process. This particular problem that comes to mind is the documentation of our research by digital means. We knew that our final outcome was going to be presented digitally and that we would need this data digitally for our reports. During the process, we had pieces of paper all over the place, and in different locations. In reflection, this resulted in a massive amount of time wasted due to the need to gather everything and set it out in front of us to try and make sense of it, a timeline of sorts, that we could easily present as a story in our final outcome and report. If this project was to partake again in the future, the filing system could be improved among the group. Work towards a dictated format in the cloud. This would greatly improve the nomadic-friendly nature of our work which, surprisingly, our group was very much akin to; nomadic working: getting out there and getting stuck in. It also would have saved time towards the end of the project.
With the positives and negatives of this project, I will take forward some valuable lessons here. Organising and planning a plan of attack in terms of research, and executing it neatly, digitally and concisely. In doing this process I have a real clear indication of how I want to apply it to my final major project which is upcoming. The allure of the process was like I said, the speed at which the ideation took off. This was simply a result of tactful and educated research in a particular area.
The project was simple, well, supposed to be. Create a thing that promotes collaborative working whilst catering to a circular economy for the furniture company OrangeBox. I started off in the way I was conditioned to tackle a project. Research, see what is out there, what could be done differently, ideate, conceptualise, review. But as I was going through this process I was reminded to think differently about this whole thing. It doesn’t need an outcome that is a product.
I struggled to wrap my head around a new approach as I had used the same formula for years, but looking back at it as a whole, I think my solution was a strong one in its own right. Making new things costs resources and new manufacturing methods. We are designing for a space that is slowly becoming redundant, the company we were working for already had exhausted ideas on office furniture, but obviously needs to keep business running. So my chosen concept was to provide a system using an existing company’s building floorplan. Out with the old personal desk layout, and use OrangeBox’s existing products to try and communicate a new layout idea that would breathe new life into a space that was complained about. Something that took research into perception, cognition, emotions and came together in this modular context that is no longer an office, but a collaborative hub that caters to any situation you might need.
If I were to change something looking back, I would probably add a few more slides in linking this to my previous work on smartphones and the concept of designing or rather ‘maintaining’ until the next big thing takes over by storm. It can be done in a way that keeps profits stable!
This weeks discussion involved a good amount of topic around interaction with objects. We looked at our everyday devices and accessories, deducting why we own them, what makes them special to us, and how do they affect our behavior. Reading list:
The Cyborg Manifesto
Prosthetic Gods
The most important thing in regards to the brief. I had decided that I won’t continue to try and design a ‘thing’ for an office. The project specifically states “looking sideways at the OrangeBox design competition” and as previously mentioned I think there’s something there in the whole circular economy providing systems instead of products causing a healthier relationship with clients. OrangeBox has the ammunition (Furniture that is modular) why not provide consultancies exclusively. We do not need another popular product that loses interest, rather, use the great things you already have, but think of new ways to use them.
The most noteworthy outcome of this week’s discussion was the topic of designing for the future. By itself, it is a difficult thing to do and tough to gauge, but when using the year rule a load is lifted. If the intention is to design something that will release in 5 years, then we should look back 5 years to see what happened then and what is happening now. Using that study you can hazard a fair guess as to what the next 5 years will bring, and make an educated guess and prediction as to where your designs should be aiming for.
When looking for support in this I found a particularly useful source in MD Business Interiors. We are designing for an office environment, and MD has made their own study of where they think offices are going using the same method.
This whole concept of virtual space augmented reality. It’s no longer a rumor, companies are actively making moves towards making the office a jack-in ordeal, effectively murdering the contemporary office space as we know it. I do agree with this prediction, and cannot help but question the initial ideas I had. Why bother making something new, adding manufacturing processes, carbon emissions etc. When the existing products work perfectly fine. How many times can we redesign a booth before it becomes what the smartphone industry has adopted – sameyness? More importantly, why make the new thing when we can look differently at this, and use what is already there. Perhaps a system?
A large emphasis of this project was based around the circular economy. Circular economy design is about system design. Make, reuse, remake.
It takes concepts such as designing to take things apart, bought and then sent back rather than a destiny of landfill. Value laying in the use of the product, what can we do to keep the user using the product? Perhaps using materials that are beneficial to the environment. A bad example would be using food grade plastics in furniture. If in ten years we have used food grade plastics in our furniture, where are the foods supposed to get their plastics from?
The narrative was a point suggested strongly when thinking of circular economy. A children’s chair by itself is not a noteworthy thing. But a company taking in used toys, a market that experiences mass amounts of waste, and using those products designed to take a beating to make a chair, now that is a narrative people can get behind. Another example is a coffee shop using furniture that was made out of coffee waste materials.
I also learned that providing a service is key, going forward for businesses, as opposed to simple products. Phillips’ pay per lux service was a noteworthy example of how you can keep a customer close and provide the best, cost-effective method for both parties. Considering that the average office will refresh every 7 years. So having a built-in service that will incentivise circular economy.
Conclusion:
The most innovative circular economy solutions require designers to embrace new ways of thinking:
In comparison to my first year at Cardiff Met, I decided to take different routes into the exploration of different subjects during my second year of study. In an attempt to broaden my horizons I chose two subjects in which I knew going in, that would be slightly out of my comfort zone in terms of both capability and understanding.
The first choice being FabCr8, an individual outcome which made use of varying practices within the Fabrication Laboratory. During early lectures, I was excited to learn about new technologies and machines. What ensued, however, was perhaps an overestimation on my part. I had expected to be working with a slew of machinery and fabrication techniques both new and traditional. Early on I had a glimpse of this, we learned about various interesting subjects such as learning how potential exists in terms of extracting energy from bacteria found in ocean/lake dirt. With placements such as robots which were self-sustaining and could map ocean floors. We also looked into 3D scanning and its practicality in which the scanned items could be used. My favorite tutorial on this was how we individually used a camera to scan our bust portraits. We even learned how these scanned images could be taken into Cura for printing on our 3D printers, which I did!
There was also another application which I thought of for this technology: what if a business card contained QR code in which potential employers could scan and view in real time, a 3D image of the person they are considering employing. I may even use this in my third year as part of my professional practices.
Lastly, we received a tutorial on electroplating: the potential to coat small objects with metals to either give a finishing touch on a non-metal object or add metallic properties to something. While interesting this was not something I considered using in my final piece.
From this point (Roughly one week into the course) is where I felt the option went downhill rather quickly for me. What ensued was tutorial after tutorial on Arduino’s and coding, something I am definitely not interested in from bad experiences in the past. The problem I had with this was one: when considering the options for Field, the FabCr8 module did not preference that Arduino was going to be such a huge focus. And two: with such dedicated hours to the device I felt and also my fellow students felt that we were being funneled into having our final outcome needing to have Arduino integrated into the project in some way. Some feedback in regards to this and my advice would be to lay out small tutorials for each aspect we learned early on and then have student break off into what they are interested in. Feeling pushed into using Arduino and learning about code left me with a sour feeling and negative memories looking back on the course which had such a potential to offer more, perhaps.
Fast forward, my second choice was the Sustainable Artisan, a look into traditional woodworking and sustainable timber. In comparison to my other field module, I have nothing but strong points to make regarding this course. Right off the bat, a few of us Product Designers were put into this choice with almost nobody but Designer: Makers. The class so close to our studio but perhaps unheard of from us Product Designers immediately bonded and were felt welcome by all, a genuine heartwarming experience now that I look back on it.
During the early weeks of the project, the focus was on learning about wood, the biology, and structure. For this, we visited a sustainable woodworking shop which produced bespoke pieces. While perhaps the small details of how a tree lives were not the most interesting of lectures! we did get to witness and even try ourselves some traditional tools and machinery:
What followed was an in-depth look at how we, as designers, can bend and shape wood without the need for complex joints or big machines. Methods such as using steam to dampen the wood and then apply it to a mold while it was still malleable. This can also be done by making a template and putting inside a vacuum which would bend the object over.
An example of how dampened wood can be put into a mold and set just as hard as the original material kept. This specific example was a mold intended for making a Welsh wooden spoon.
Now that we had the knowledge of the means and how to achieve them. We were given the brief, simplistic and reflective of the course choice as a whole: Take wood, and create something which attaches to the wall. I knew shortly after what I wished to create: something in which I could put my keys and my wallet on, to stop me losing them so often. The process I used was laminating inside a vacuum with traditional sheets of veneer. Individual sheets were stuck together and vacuumed around a mold to provide the best platform in which the wallet would sit on. You can see here the process which was involved:
In conclusion, I look back at this year with both appreciation and regret. I went outside of my comfort zone purposefully and while perhaps I was let down greatly in some areas, I found a new love and appreciation of wood and woodworking which I just would not have found if I had stuck to the choices which were obvious to Product Designers. My advice for next years field modules would be to make perfectly clear in the Field Fairs what exactly students are signing up for early on, so they may establish an understanding to weigh out the pro’s and cons to judge whether the option is for them or not.
During the early stages of considering a topic in which I could write about I struggled greatly in finding something which would be interesting enough to talk about. Ideas which ranged from topics which discussed oppression to the criticising of existing designs of commonly used products. It was only up until recently that a podcast which I happened to listen to, planted an idea in my mind of the direction I would move towards. The podcast in question featured Michael from the popular web series Vsauce, which discusses sciences and psychological matters usually. In this podcast, however, he talked about something slightly different. It was an observation that human beings have evolved for millions of years to deal with a certain kind of society and life. But in the past, few hundred years or less society has needed to adjust to a completely new way of living that our biological bodies and minds were not evolved for.
He asks the question that if one had to spend every day fighting for their survival, finding food, building, hunting and you had to complete all these creatively challenging things all to simply not die, would you still want to check twitter? Would we still want to study the motions of the moon? Are these things really giving humans happiness? Or is it a thing that we have invented to fill the time we now have in our daily lives. We do not have to worry about food and survival because now we have stores, so we can instead study the physics of ceramic for example.
He then references that a certain book, the infamous ‘Industrial Society and Its Future’ which embodies all these concepts and questions of the increasing effect technology has on our lives. We see in the contemporary world that we are becoming much more limited in what we can do, due to its influence. The book itself involves many ideas, some quite obviously radical, but he shares a few different ideas that Futurists do. I had my interest set.
My next step was to combine it with something relevant to my practice of product design. After a few meetings with a constellation tutor, we had discussed how the smartphone is in most ways, a throwaway object after a year or so. I began to question smartphones, they are quite limited in what you can physically do with them. Consumers buy them as a packaged thing that they have no say or control over, and this practice is not really opposed by the people who buy them. We accept it at face value. A branch off of this topic was that of sustainability. Could a smartphone which you assemble, much in the same vane as desktop computers, be what society needs to open some form of fulfillment in their relationship with the most used product in their lives?
My ideas and arguments towards that of an ideal smartphone would also pave the way for a much more sustainable device. If the boundaries are set by a case which houses the main component, additional features such as cameras, battery sizes and screen graphics could be manufactured separately, sold on once they require upgrading and NOT thrown to landfill sites.
What have I learned?
During my time researching and studying concepts I had learned quite quickly that I struggle with research through books. Growing up my family were never ones to keep bookshelves or books themselves. Up until now my life has been very much exposed to teachings through doing, the internet, and talking to individuals and groups. It is something I acknowledge as a skill I am very much lacking in, in my practice, and is something I need to address soon for the better of my Dissertation. Negative points aside, I have also learned a great deal about how passionate I can really be about certain topics. During my first year of University sustainability is something I would roll my eyes at, it is also a key focus in contemporary product design. That, coupled with my dissertation research, has enkindled a certain passion and appreciation for what sustainability is, and how it helps us. It is not just a case of material choice any longer, sustainability helps in our relationships with the products we use. It also sometimes leaves opportunity to change a system entirely for the better and creates a pleasant opportunity for the morally good in manufacture and jobs. It is thanks to Constellation over the past two years that I have finally recognised its purpose as part of the course, as I previously spoke down to the subject in my first year of study.
In conclusion, I have very much appreciated my time looking back at Constellation, coming from someone who despised it not so long ago. I am very much pleased I had decided to continue my path on the course, and not switch to the sciences. The road to my proposal has been one which has had ups and downs, but now my foundations are set, and I can look towards improving both myself and my skills to ensure I make the most of my time here. My final dissertation is something in which I want to carry with pride, and I will learn as much as I need to to see this goal achieved.
After completing some sketch ideas I quite like the concept of binding lighting with paper, something so easily obtainable. I have looked at origami and combining Neopixels into the folded crevices to create a calming and simplistic piece, the Neopixels are able to be programmed to shine quite brightly, brightly enough to provide a nice aura of different coloured lights which can penetrate the paper. As the lights are not directly touching the paper overheating is not an issue here. Below is an example of existing designs, I would like to create something new so I have shifted slightly from the idea of origami, but will explore more ideas regarding paper usage.
Upon more thought, I have decided that my concept will take the form of a ‘kit’, a small box of components which the user can assemble themselves, and create their own ideas and designs with the paper provided; with the outcome of a personalised and unique lighting piece for a desk or display. My next task will be to create an example of the light I had in mind, something physical to communicate the desired outcome.
Our next couple of sessions include exploring the small circuit/program Arduino. We began by looking at some examples of basic commands and coding. Understanding how certain keywords speak to the device and give it specific functions to obey.
Our next step was to understand how the device ‘Neopixels’ work. We began by soldering and creating a series of Neopixels so that we had multiple lights to work with and give different commands to it. It is possible to control the colour, the brightness, whether it flashes or fades. It is a very versatile component and regardless of my initial idea, I would like to explore using these. Coding is one of those things which goes above my head in comprehending, from experience in the past. But using a simple command line I believe it will be possible to create something quite pleasant. Below is an example of the circuits we built as part of understanding the program and how to create a working circuit board, Regardless of how sloppy it looks; they are lit!
DALE NIERSMANS 