When I grow up

When I grow up, I don’t know what or who I will become. I want to be lots of things. I know that I want to be a designer of some sort, and that I want to make a contribution to the time line of design. As we have explored during the semester, there is no one time line to the history of design. Any one history or time line for industrial design would leave out too much. So the question is, when I grow up, how I will approach the issues in the world; will I be a “green designer”, a “humanitarian designer”, or … it’s an endless list really…

Throughout our lectures, I have been trying to analyze and question how I feel about the topics we have been exposed to. And in the end, find out where I fit in to this extensive interdisciplinary of design. At first, it was kind of a struggle because the more I explored deeper into the areas in design, the more confused I got. I guess I had never really questioned where I stood as a designer and why I wanted to do what I wanted to do. And as soon as we started writing these short essays, the small organized pile of knowledge on design in my mind turned into an ever-expanding chaos. It’s like Gödel’s Paradox: “All systems are either complete but inconsistent, or consistent but incomplete.”

At first, for me design was solving problems and it had to be meant for a specified user group. Throughout the lectures and my responses I realized that there were so many things that we had to keep in mind during a design process. It didn’t end with just solving problems. It was so much beyond that. Looking at my blogs, my classmates’ blogs and our discussions in class I realized that people had different perspectives about designs. This meant that it wasn’t only about function; design is also focused on how people approach it. People don’t only use these designs; they think about the designs and interpret them in their own ways. This means that design should not only bring solutions to problems and be functional but go further and evoke emotions in people and make them think. Because people are not robots, they have minds and emotions. And this is where the chaos in my mind started to organize itself.

My sudden realization was that I wanted to contribute to help solve the issues of the world but my approach would be just like the Campana Brother’s described, for me “design is to bring emotions, bring fun and bring joy to people”. As I compiled all the explorations I made in my blogs, I combined what I liked about each topic and came up with where I stand in the field of ID. Now, I feel comfortable and enlightened about my approach on design and where I want to go from here. I am ready to grow up more…

Art + Design

Before I came to RISD, I felt like there was a distinct line between art and design. I interpreted design more like engineering and solving functional problems. Art was meant to be experienced, it wasn't functional. Today, having spent 2.5 years in the RISD environment surrounded by artists, I lost that line. And I'm glad I did.

I don't think we as designers would go very far without thinking like artists. Without the inspiration process we go through, (that we do just as if we were artist,) we would always end up with the boring solutions that wouldn't bring an innovation to the way we perceive objects. Most of what we do in ID RISD is based on user groups and if we did think like an engineer and not an artist, all our works would be functional but they would be dry, there would be nothing else to get from our work.

In the presentation last Monday, I enjoyed being exposed to Tobias Wong’s rather obnoxious approaches to design and the video we watched about the voice activated blender “Blendie” because they had successful points of view. I know it’s an extreme approach but we cannot say that these designs are useless because they make people think and they evoke certain feelings in the users or the audience. And this is how design separates from engineering and becomes something more. As Campana Brother’s described in the video we watched in class:

“A designer goes much deeper than function or form. Today, he brings emotion, because otherwise all the chairs, if we have just one chair it would be so boring. So I guess people nowadays they like to have a relationship, kind of interacting with pieces. And for me, design is to bring emotions, bring fun and bring joy to people.”



In my design studios, we always have assignments where we have to design towards certain user groups where it is very marketing oriented. I was never pushed by a professor to go any deeper than the function and form and I didn’t really question it because my mind really worked more like an engineer than it did like an artist. But I somehow felt unsatisfied with the design process I followed in the projects as I developed my understanding of design. There was something missing. In class, seeing the Campana Brother’s and how they explained design brings emotions and joy to people made me feel safe and refreshed. That is what I want to do.

Maybe I won’t be helping the whole society by solving their problems by I will try to make the world a better place by creating design that matters because it evokes feelings in people and makes them feel more alive and also makes them understand the issues in the world. Maybe I won’t be a humanitarian designer in the sense we talked in previous lectures but I will certainly create design that matters.

better world by design

inspirations from nature... BIOMIMICRY


"The more our world functions like the natural world, the more likely we are to endure on this home that is ours, but not ours alone."
~ Janine Benyus

Although I wasn’t able to attend this weekend’s Better World by Design conference, I was looking through the resources to learn as much about the contents of the conference as possible. Eventually I ended up in the website http://asknature.org/ looking at the question “How would a butterfly inspire your next design?” This made me smile, because I knew that it wasn’t necessarily talking about the aesthetics of a butterfly, it was rather talking about looking at a butterfly to invent Innovation inspired by nature because “nature has already solved many of the problems we are grappling with. Animals, plants, and microbes are the consummate engineers. They have found what works, what is appropriate, and most important, what lasts here on Earth.” The science where the nature’s solutions are imitated to solve human problems is called Biomimicry.

Biomimicry is a subject that I have been recently exposed to in my advanced studio “Reactive Matter” and have been amazed by it ever since. The course description for the class started with answering this question “How would a butterfly inspire your next design?” and it was mainly the reason why I was so intrigued to take this class. So, for example the international governing body of swimming, FINA has rules which limit technologies the competitors can use in an Olympic pool. However, new Speedo LZR RACER swimsuit made use of the hydrophobic property of the wings of certain butterflies so that the suits drag less and Olympic swimmers can swim faster than previous records. This is one of many examples of biomimicry. Biomimicry is more importantly used to come up with new ways to solve green and environmental challenges which is really impressive. I think it is incredibly wise to imitate the nature to solve our design problems and I think that these websites about biomimicry are great access sources for visuals and case studies to inspire me in my design solutions. The website asknature.org even has a search bar starting with the sentence "How would nature..." to provide us with inspirations from nature.

Check out the websites below for more information on biomimicry:
http://asknature.org/
www.biomimicryinstitute.org

Design that matters

A revolution in design

“The majority of the world’s designers focus all their efforts on developing products and services exclusively for the richest 10% of the world’s customers. Nothing less than a revolution in design is needed to reach the other 90%.”
-Dr. Paul Polak, International Development Enterprises

After our lecture on Monday, I came home both excited and overwhelmed by what I had just learned in Dr. Bruce Becker’s lecture. It was overwhelming to see the depressing number of refugees and the conditions they were in but at the same time it was an exciting opportunity for me as a designer to be involved with a very important issue in our world and to actually design things that matter rather than designing for market-based “needs” that our worlds revolve around. This lecture helped me see the bigger picture which I could get involved in.

I have always wanted to create and improve design that matters, but I didn’t know to what extend I could push it to. To make the world a better place, I have always thought about how to improve the problems I observe in my surroundings, which apparently only respond to the richest 10% of the world’s consumers. Even if I tried to design for the less fortunate I would always end up designing towards the 10% because the issues I had to solve in order to come up with a satisfying design for the other 90% felt overwhelming and I was often discouraged. And I thought that it would not make sense for me, as a single designer, to tackle the problems I cannot solve by myself. It is ironic because I chose industrial design to contribute and make design that matters but after seeing the rate of consumption, our limited resources and the amount of waste, I ended up feeling useless because world doesn’t need any more stuff.

Dr. Bruce Becker’s lecture made me realize that there were so many ways I could contribute by creating design that actually matter by designing to the other 90%. As I looked into the website of Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum’s exhibition (www.other90.cooperhewitt.org) I found out that of world’s population, 90% “have little or no access to most of the products and services many of us take for granted; in fact, nearly half do not have regular access to food, clean water, or shelter.” Dr. Bruce Becker’s lecture informed me about refugee’s living circumstances and made me realized that it is our responsibility as designers to come up with humanitarian design solutions for such users who really need our help.

And I also learned that instead of being discouraged I should try to solve at least some aspects of the problems in humanitarian design. Maybe as a single designer, I cannot solve all the problems by myself but together “one soul at a time” we can help make the world a better place by creating design that actually matter.

Meaning of Products|Relationship between Designer and Society

Meanings of Products are initially created by the designer who is influenced by the society of his time. However, as time passes and the world changes, the consumer products are marketed towards change, and so the society can alter their meanings. The new version of the design is now designed towards what that certain time's society expects from the design. So, the designer is influenced by the society again. Even though, the designer looks like the one in power, it is very hard for a designer to overcome a society's way of thinking at that time. In the two case studies we examined, the changes in the meaning of the exact same design were dramatic due to the time era the product was in.

After our class last week I started thinking about how interesting it was that in old times men used to wear high heels and today it is not acceptable for men to wear high heels, it is a product that is meant to be worn only by woman. The relationship between a certain design and how it is assigned to a certain gender was something I have never really questioned before. However the more I thought about it the more I realized how products get meaning not really based on what designer wanted people to interpret but rather by the society’s reaction to that product in a certain time period. As the society’s perspective on certain issues shift, the meanings embedded in the products shift as well.

Astonished by the thought of the major changes in society’s reaction towards vibrators and high heels, I started wondering about the relationship between products and gender roles people have to fit in to be accepted in a society. Products help people define and reinforce their roles in a society. Like girls in today’s world reinforce that they are girls by wearing bracelets, necklaces and rings. Gender roles are social constructs. Simply put “Based on the anatomical difference between men and women, each is prescribed varying and often stereotypical social roles that are reinforced at the individual level and by larger society”.

Gender roles are reinforced in everyday design. The first example I could think of was that women wear fancy jewelry with gemstones that are considered feminine while men wear simple, plain jewelry which are considered masculine. Then I suddenly remembered the day I found out that the fancy ring my grandmother was wearing was passed onto her from her father. I first thought she meant to say her mother. Because, you know, women are the ones who wear those fancy rings with gems on them in today’s world. I tried to correct her but she insisted on saying that it was from her father, and in fact most of the fancy diamond and precious gemstone rings in her jewelry box were once worn by his father. I was not happy about it because for me it was unacceptable. How could a man wear such feminine rings? Was he gay? My grandmother explained to me saying that back in the day, these rings were fashionable accessories that men wore. As a kid, I was very confused. However, now I can see that society constructs the meanings of products and as the world evolve; the meaning of products change according to the changes in the understandings of our society.

This critical thinking helped me realize that as I designer I could only go so far by trying to give a product its own meaning. Because it is really hard to make people see my design in my perspective, everyone will have their own understanding and often, this will be the understanding the society accepts as a whole. In the end, society re-fits the meaning of a design and customizes it in its own truth.