Reflections on Classes 17 and 18

My experience in last two classes was a mixed feeling of both good and bad. I would say I learned a lot from this class and I am glad that I enjoyed it without getting tired and bored. I enjoyed all the presentations in both days, realized my mistakes and blamed my luck little bit.  I saw other groups' members (not all of them)  had more communication, organization, enthusiasm and group effort than the group I belonged. I felt that my group refused to work together every time an opportunity came and didn't show much interest in making the project attractive. I guess the reason was that no one was interested in design and took this class mostly to fulfill GEC requirements. I have to admit that I didn’t like this lack of interest of the members of my group in the final project.

Overall I think the course was a great starting point to learn design. It made design processes, creative thinking towards design and design in business/industry accessible to us.

Reading Reflections from "Design A very short Introduction"

The last two chapters of the book were on context of design and its future. Both chapters are crucial for an aspiring Design professional like me to understand, but I found the chapters very dry.  I wished the author used examples, illustrations and photos more often and more effectively.

Context:

Design context basically represent three areas, first and foremost, designers’ views on themselves, then design practices in the industry/business and last but not least is government policy, or lack thereof, on commercial design. It is difficult to contextualize a vast, varied and individualized profession like Design, and that is why designers usually do not have any organized body similar to Medical, Engineering or Architecture professionals creating a framework, rules and regulations, governing the members, and handling how professionals would deal in their work with non-professionals.

Every company selling products and services uses design to promote, compete, advertize and differentiate themselves and their products from competitors, but use vastly different design framework. Some use formalized internal design teams, while others farm it outside to design consultants. Sometimes designers make their own companies and use iconic design to define their products and companies.

By and large, western governments do not have a significant handle on setting and implementing a comprehensive design policy, whereas some Asian governments do.

Future:

Many technological revolutions in the last few decades have fundamentally changed the profession of Design and its workings, and in the fast paced world of 21^st century, it is continuing to do so. As designers help create, market and sustain products, in an ever changing world, they desperately need to be up to date with new technology, especially in the visualization aspect, and how it affects the customer and the product, and need for new products.

Journal 10

I learned many things in an unusual way. I believe that creating blogs is unique technique to get information, present it to the world and learn about new thoughts . This was a whole new experience for me and I enjoyed more than formal studies. However, I didn’t like the grading system because I was confused about how much effort I should give for each assignment. When I was checking the blogs from others, I saw many students wrote so little that anyone can guess that they didn’t read the whole book.  But they all got hundred percent no matter how much were written.

Class Review

Class 13, 14 and 15 are mainly based on our last assignment,  “Coleman for the home” that we discussed.  We were once more, to work together as a group and propose and present a product from Coleman which would be used indoors. At the beginning of the quarter, we really didn’t know what group work meant. This time we realize what team work means.  It is partly frustrating and exciting at the same time.  At first, I felt like I can’t work with the time but more I worked with the group the more I began liking it. However the result will tell how we worked individually or together as a team. Overall, I enjoyed the whole process and learned a lot.

Design and the Environment

To me design and environment are like glove and hand, when they fit well, together they serve their owners masterfully while glove protecting the hand as well as the hand looking elegant in the glove. On the other hand, when they don’t fit well, the glove makes the hand clumsy, fails to ease its work, doesn’t look good and also may cause discomfort/harm to the hand. What I learnt in class so far tells me that a successful design should serve its purpose of use, while being sustainable, beautiful, elegant, and at the same time, neither causing any harm to the environment, nor being an eyesore in it. A truly beautiful design can inspire people, enhance their quality of life, and add beauty to the environment around it. A bad design causes more harm than benefit, doesn’t add the quality of life of the intended users and doesn’t fit well with the environment around it. Then there are some designs which at the superficial level may look beautiful, but when all its impacts are considered, it is found to be unsustainable, and causes harm to the environment around it.

Among the design and environment pages:

Proper interior design in hospitals help heal patients. This is a very powerful video showing how the deep connection between human mind and body is pushing for a 'wholistic' approach to treatment of patient, where hospital design, considering various things like access to nature, indoor air quality, noise control, and lighting.

Masdar City, Abu Dhabi, UAE: Introduces the concept of passive sustainability as contrasted with active sustainability, and how it can dramatically improve our energy efficiency, and reduce our carbon footprint, while costing much less than the latter approach. It is kind of getting energy for free. A massive amount of energy in urban environments in desert climates is air conditioning.  By intelligent planning and design, Masdar city achieves a 36 F⁰ lower temperature compared to Abu Dhabi city, thereby reducing energy needs to artificially cool the environment.

Wales city design/planning document: Wales, UK has taken a great step in rethinking its public space design for improvement of the quality of the cities there. This detailed report talks about organization, and many examples of faults of current designs and how they are being improved to add beauty, cost effective maintainance, and sustainability.

Wales UK urban planning document 

Dubai Islands have high environmental cost 
Impact of artificial Palm Islands, Dubai:  The ambitious developers of the city state Dubai, United Arab Amirates have developed real estate by creating artificial islands off the coast of the city in the Persian Gulf. The environmental awareness website Mongabay.com discusses the negative environmental impact of this lavish project catered towards the ultra-rich by destroying marine habitat of an extremely bio-diverse seascape, and changing the sea current which may eventually destroy the Dubai beaches.

Palm Island Dubai, UAE (photo taken from the International Space Station)

Aero-dynamic design of cars making them more fuel efficient: This is a wonderful video from the car manufacturer Audi AG (Germany) that highlights how the force of air dictates the designs and shapes of vehicles like planes and cars, and proper design can make them more fuel efficient. Fuel efficient vehicles are extremely important for our environment and sustainability.

More reflections from Cradle to Cradle

I have not tried to read the book while taking shower, but I was tempted to. This is an amazing book on design that embodies its own design and construction as an example of sustainable, high quality design. Below are my short summary chapter by chapter:

Chapter one mainly discusses the Industrial revolution and its positive and negative effects. In one hand, it gave us modern, improved life, cultural and natural richness and on the other hand created a culture that dominates and exploits nature without limit, and continues to generate waste, pollution, crude production chipping away the basic achievements. I like how it describes the whole invention or the design as a strategy of tragedy and suggests that it is high time to rethink and redesign.

Chapter two talks about eco-efficiency and how to achieve it through recycle, reduce, reuse and regulate. It will change the whole idea of living.

Chapter three opens up with example with various types of book production to ask the question, What is efficient production and growth? Every process has side effects; however, we can solve the problem. We need to rethink the entire production line, and product life cycle once it goes into the hands of the user and its effect on nature in its entirety. Then we can come up with inventive solutions like the idea of recycling waste as a plant food.

Chapter four title “Waste is food” aptly describes its content. The authors discuss how in traditional societies, whether nomadic or agrarian, waste products would either completely be consumed by natural cycle and return to nature (bio-products), or be continually reused and recycled as valuable, like metals and metal made objects. With industrial world came ‘monstrous hybrids’ which cannot decompose properly, thereby draining nature of its resources, leaving a trail of poison everywhere it goes, and adds to the future problem of sustainability of life on earth. These, the authors refer to as ‘unmarketable products’, which need to be stored currently to be detoxified with future technologies as they become available.

Chapter five: I like how the authors describe the diversity of needs and desires. Creating something that can be use over and over. For example, using the jam bottle as a glass tumbler once the jam was gone, is very practical, elegant and has large impact on environment.

Chapter six talks about how to put the ideas that the rest of the book discusses into practice. It talks about new ways (products, constructions) of solving problems, with impact on individual user’s needs as well as societal impact and overall, its effects on environment. One perfect such example of this that I find is neither a product nor a simple construction, but an entire city built on the concept of efficient, eco-living. It is called the Masdar Project, which claims to be near one hundred percent self sustainable in energy and water resources, with near zero net carbon footprint, while living in ultra-high tech comfort.

Inside Masdar City, Abu Dhabi, UAE

Peer Blog reflections

Alphabet hunt

                Ricardo had very interesting choice that he captured in his letter hunt. I liked his campus bike theme for some letters and especially the letter 'Q' stood out for me for its originality.

I liked Trevor's choice of 'X' and especially 'Z' for its interesting perspective view. The choice of 'U' was also interesting although mildly disgusting.

Outdoor hunting/sporting trade show:
Trevor's choice of names for his blogs are always interesting. A case in point is his title "Hunting with a big net". His photos of trade shows were also very animated.

CR#3

Course Reflection:

Learning color is always interesting for me, so I enjoyed the color class and its effect and importance one more time. It was a discussion that designing logo is not only important but color does something too.

The video of Girl talk and what it exactly tried to point out was a bit unclear to me at first.  After the discussion and question and answer at the end of the video, I learnt that copyright law holds an extremely important place in design and creativity. Just like the property law protects an individual’s property from being claimed by another, the copyright law protects an individual’s intellectual property, meaning original design, writing, art, music, invention, products, etc. so that another person cannot merely copy that and sell it as a separate product.  One difference is that copyright that protects a product expires after certain time so that other people in society can be benefitted from it in a wider scale.

Of all the classes, I enjoyed most was the guests from Design Circle and Cobego.  It was a mixed feeling of excitement and overwhelm at the same time. The guests covered the whole process of design school that I want to know, like entrance test, student life and their schedule, and their negative and positive points.  They also shared with us their experiences in the real world as designers, and the challenges they faced, the opportunities they created, and jobs they completed. And lastly, they talked in details about the job market in design, what the employers look for in a person to be hired as designer, etc. Overall, they gave us confidence by sharing with us their experiences, opinions and aspirations.

Alphabet hunt

In my Alphabet hunt blog, I have decided not to identify the letters in photos that I have taken during the past few days. I think that by observing the photos, if the viewers cannot figure out by themselves what letter I've tried to represent, then I've failed. I have had fun hunting for letters. One thing to note that the English alphabets are easy to identify in everyday life because of their relatively simple construction. In some other languages, for example, Bangla, the forms of alphabets are complicated enough that this alphabet hunt would be near impossible.

Online Scavenger Hunt

Links to the websites of  manufacturers or retailers who specialize in outdoor camping and recreation products.

•  http://www.ramseyoutdoor.com/

• http://www.academy.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/TopCategories_10151_10051

• http://www.rei.com/

• http://www.basspro.com/homepage.htmlhttp://www.gandermountain.com

• http://www.gandermountain.com/indexGoogle.shtml?s_kwcid=msnsearch_gander_mountain_catalog 

Images of trade show / exhibition booths from the outdoor recreation and sporting industry:

Links to the websites of  manufacturers or retailers who specialize in indoor home goods products.

• http://www.roche-bobois-news.com/newsletter/200611/en/newsletter.php
• http://www.cb2.com/ 
• http://www.ethanallen.com/ 

• http://www.westelm.com/  
• http://www.ikea.com/ 

 Definition of home goods: Home goods are objects that are used in homes to fulfill essential non-essential needs at home, adding ease, efficiency and beauty in living.  

Images of different types of possible home goods.

Reading Reflection

Identity is very important for any object of commercial significance, individual or an organization. The way flag represents a nation, business logo or symbol identify or represent the organization in the same way.  Identity has been more rapidly established with the advent of electronics. It seems that a properly formulated identity has the potential to generate huge publicity for a business group regardless of its size. It helps the business to become more cohesive, more tightly structured, with strict guidelines and standard specification within which product and publication would be designed and manufactured.

System is also an important need for our life. A system can be designed and reformed to make our life easier. System can be interacting, interrelated or interdependent forms. For example, the road direction sign design, and the map design makes our life so easy and simple.  Some rail stations have designs the path with special tile to direct the passenger to the ticket counter. Even thought system of design makes our life better than the past but in global uses there are some conflict in places like Hong Kong or a place where many languages are used, has difficulties in creating signs for road directions. I learned that design could be part of solution if appropriate strategy is applied to solve the problem.

Cradle to Cradle:

Eco leaving, recycled materials, and preserving the earth, are some of the most discussed topics now a days and it seems that we talk about so much that a two year old can also tell us a word or two about that. However, I believe I must talk about the pages of the book, “Cradle to Cradle” before I say anything else. The book was published using Durabook technology, which uses synthetic glue to make paper which is water proof and virtually indestructible, and one hundred percent recyclable. Moreover, it is not more expensive to conventional books and doesn’t use up any trees. So, the book is a perfect vehicle for carrying the Eco-message.

I like the Michaels’ story and journey of creating designs and his experiences. The whole idea of saving the next generation, its concept, examples and the way he highlighted is excellent. His visit of a large chromium extraction factory in Europe which is used in leather tanning process is an interesting case in point. He found out that every laborer in that factory who wore gas masks of the factory is over 50 in age. The reason was there is a risk of developing cancer from chromium exposure and it takes on average about twenty years. Therefore, it made sense for younger laborers not to be involved in this process.