Story about Stuff

By watching this video i come to realise there is alot more to this world than i thought. It was really shocking to see how much power the cooporate world has over the real world. Annie Leonard explains how there is five stages to life cycle of a product and how all these stages affect so many people in so many negative ways, which i think is wrong cause eventually we are going to terminate ourselves!

Some facts were really eye opening and really shows that we as humans aren't performing the tasks as stewards of the planet!! Like in the past 3 decades 1/3 of the planets resources have been consumed, what is this seriously we should be trying to preserve our resources, trying to re use them, we all are aware of this though heartless co-operate people just keep doing it to make money!

The video describes the effects the 5 stages of the lifecycle and how each cycle affects the environment's flora and fauna, also us human beings.

The Stage of Prodcution uses energy to mix toxic chemicals with natural resources to make toxic products. We don’t know the full impact of toxic into products. 100000 synthetic chemicals sinerdistic health impacts aren’t tested! Due to cutting down of trees and clearing land,  200000 people are day are moving into cities to look for jobs because there land has been wiped out by extraction. These impacts   on humanity and we are doing nothing to change it. We are killing our own kind and there are people out there without hearts shouldn't designers like ourselves try and make a change in their products as they are fully aware of all of this!

Distribution of  products globally is the most unjust type of labour in the cycle. In the video they used an example of a radio costing $4.99, the real cost is that of people who lost their land, people  who are contaminated by toxins, different countries labouring to produce products and resources which are under-cost. So morally alot is lost, which is really confusing because we treat our own  in such a inhuman way.

  99% of stuff we consume is trashed within 6 months in the US. Victor lobow quotes “our enormously productive economy… demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption… we need things consumed, burned up, replaced and discarded at an ever-accelerating rate.” Now from what I understand, why is this occurring? if people are aware of this happening why is it happening?! If you think about it this way, people are being told to buy more things, being brain washed and again these are the cooperate people telling us this just to make money. We should be saying "hey our things are still functional!! why are we chucking them out!!!" The way planned obsolescence is put into the products is really fast starting from Industrial designers in the 50’s, how they planned obsolesce in their products so well that it leaves faith  in the consumer to buy a new one. But morally as designers i think that we should be designing stuff to be more functional rather than stylish but still have the style to last such as the  Fender Stratorcastor, a design in guitar unchanged and function still the same!

Perceived Obsolescence is another factor to the consumption of products. This convinces people to throw away stuff that is still functional, such as an ipod does the same as 1^st generation but looks better. Fashions are prime example of this issue, you don’t keep up to date with products then spciety mocks you. Advertisments and media have a big role in this.  People see over 3000 ads a day which is more than a person saw in their life time 50 years ago. Phycologically they make consumers feel pathetic for not having all the good stuff and things but they can fix this by buying the advertised objects. The media only show the consumption part of the life cycle. Happiness is declining as we have more stuff but have less time for leisure. Leisure now consists of watching tv or shopping and the US shops about 3-4 times more than Europe. As this world becomes more busy we tend to buy products to give us satisfaction giving the co-operate people satisfaction.

I believe this is the stage where we can make most difference in society to fix the previous problems but even though its not enough. In the US, 4.5 pounds a garbage a day produce per person. Garbage either dumped in land fills or burned then dumped in land fills polluting our ground, air and water. The toxics used in the production stage are burned releasing them into the atmosphere and even making super toxics due to the insineration. Dioxin is the most dangerous man made toxin known and incineraters are the number source of Dioxin’s.

Recylcing helps reduce prssure at disposal and extraction stage. Even if recycling 100% of waste from consumers doesn’t fix the core of the problem. Some products are designed not to be recycled like juice boxes with the metal, plastics and paper which the materials can’t be separated for true recycling

Solutions for this linear method is to make things sustainable, zero waste, green chemistry, closed loop production and use renewable energy. The fact is that as a whole society, co-operate and socially, we should take a look at our actions and change them for good because sooner or later this planet is going to waste itself and along with that, us too.

My Design Career + Design Exhibition Sketches

My design Career Started out in Year 11 at St Dominics College with the Selection of the Design and Technology. At first I thought it would be interesting to study some design as i thought i could stimulate my brain in different ways. By the end of the course I had successfully finished the Major Design Project which was nominated for Powerhouse Museum Display and I was striving to design more!

I want to be a designer because I believe I have the potential to come up with ideas that are different and could benefit humanity even if it isn't the minority group of society. I also think that I have different Skills to offer both intellectually and practically.

I chose industrial Design for many reasons. The first inspiration was in early 2009 when I went to the Powerhouse Museum to see the DesignTech Exhibition of all the Top Major Design Projects of 2008 HSC students. During the Tour of the Museum a Speech was given by Alfred Boyadgis, who came First in Design & Technology for the HSC in 2008, describing what the journey of Design & Technology in the HSC was and promoting Industrial Design at UNSW. From then the course sounded like me, it had all the aspects of what areas and career options I wanted to study and it seemed like a course that i wouldn't get bored of.

Another Factor was a friend of my fathers who had study industrial design at UNSW and he told me that it was an excellent course to study that was interesting. But the choice of UNSW came from him saying that it the teachers there were better in the method of teachings and were recognized more in the design world. So Half way through the HSC my Goal was to study industrial Design at UNSW and being nominated at the end of the year for Powerhouse Museum Display I was sure that I had made the right decision.

I think my future in design will be that of helping humanity in some way. Growing up in church my whole life till this day I find it a necessity to help other people. As a young boy also, I had a very strong interest in the Human body and how it worked, So I see myself designing products that will somehow help those in needs like medical products. It is something that is also close to my heart as my grandmother has rheumatoid arthritis and seeing her in and out of hospital and struggling with everyday tasks I always think to myself "I wonder if I could do something to change that! not only for her but for other people with the same problem." At the end of my studies I plan to focus on these plans as so I can achieve to solve the problems of the people that are in need.

Design Confusion

concepts for Corkscrew

So for the pleasure product i have come up with some concepts "Rina" says on the right track but a bit more work is needed with the form and researching on how to get it made. Aluminum casting is an option.

Design Exellence

Human Centered Design

David Kelley decribies Human Centered design as "Designing behaviours and personalities into products".

Basically means instead of building 3D models or having presentations of ideas, new technologies are being developed and implemented into the Target Market functional environment. This is done so that Designers can analyse the behaviour of the clients in use with the product rather than assuming what people will do with the products.

The examples of this Design Philosophy showed in the video are good examples especially the one where you scan the clothes and you can virtually match different styles of clothing and the LCD door that when the button it alternated it's see through or not. By analysing this design philosophy it shows that you achieve different results than presenting to a design board with maybe no relation to the design or it's brief. The advantages of monitoring the behaviour is so that by analysing them you can improve the clients needs,which i think is essential for industrial designers as it further broadens their knowledge of ergonomics. This method of design also gives the designers an indication of what would be successful in the market, rather than testing the product with samples and prototypes but testing in it's actual environment gives direct indication of success. THe only down fall I see in this method of design is in its cost or budget of the project as not every design turns out to be successful and investing so much in technology and implementing in it's environment just to go to waste would make a massive dent in the company financially.

I noticed through the three examples of design that the relationship between the people and the product of are increased interaction in comparison with innovations of the past. If we take for example powertools and juxtapose them with say, smart boards, the interaction increases just as the technology increases. These trends are evident in design especially in the last decade as we develop innovations, rather than tools that performing tasks for humanity souly, develop technologies that humans can use easily work with the technology rather than just command it.

The interaction of Man and Machine is increasing in time; so i also see industrial designers taking on this philosophy of Human Centered design rather to the traditional making renderings and models to communicate their ideas. In a sense it does seem logical to go with this method as it gives the best results or indication of what the target market thinks of the product and you can notice different faults or any modifications that need to be made to the design to make it better or even perfect! In saying this i think it would be very difficult to work with this philosophy as you would have to have a very good idea of what the reaction of the target market would be when interaction occurs and have excellent knowledge of the function of the product and how it would look in its environment. In conclusion the philosophy would suit very experienced designers!!