I think that Candles are really interesting, not only that they are visually appealing to watch as an therapeutic experience, they also produces smell depending on the nature of the candle, even extinguishing a candle produces a different smell. In short, a candle will utilize 3 out of the traditional five external senses which are sight, smell, touch but not hear and taste.
There are always meaning to everything and many objects have different meaning depending on the cultural context of the objects, However, candle have similar meaning across the globe as the candle symbolizes light in the darkness of life especially individual life, illlumination; it is the symbol of holy illumination of the spirit of truth.
There are festivals among different cultures around the world which uses candles as part of the “rituals”
Judaism – Hanukah, the ‘Festival of Lights’- a candle is lit for each of the 8 nights. Used to ward off evil spirits, life safe as long as candle burns
Hindu – Deepavali, spiritually signifies the victory of light over darkness, good over evil, knowledge over ignorance, and hope over despair.
Western Christian – Halloween, candles were carried from eleven til midnight, if the candle went out it was an evil omen, if it didn’t it meant one year free from witchcraft.
Mahayana Buddhism – the lighting of a candle or an oil lamp represents the light of wisdom illuminating the darkness of ignorance.
“Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the single candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared”
Main Idea
I want to play with the idea of Light and darkness which is the most common way to depict a candle, however the Project should incorporate a sense of aesthetic and should look nice and pleasant (Opinions on the matter vary from person to person) especially in the analogue stage.
Idea 1: To Build a secret hideout for us to sleep in IM Room.
my initial idea was to build a structure that allows people to go up and as IM student, we could sleep there or rest there, since it would be really nice to place a bed on top and we could just go up and sleep during our free time. and this is part of my research to build the system, of if it gets too expensive, I might use the bamboo pole in the IM room to make a ladder since the height is 4meters tall, and a metal ladder is quite expensive in the first place. I also used a drone to check if it look like it is walkable or not, apparently it seemed like we could walk on it!
http://www.rombout.design/vertiwalk/
after the researches, I decided to try to inspect by climbing up once to make sure if it is walkable, as it might be a fake ceiling thing, in the end, I used a ball tied to a long pole and threw it onto the top to listen to the sound, it sounded really hollow with the dampen drum sound and I gave up this idea because I don’t want to vandalize the school by making a hole on top.
Bye my secret hideout.
Idea 2: scout around to find materials which are cheap and make sense for interactive spaces.
first, the place should have decent price range and generic product, and maybe carry some big items at cheap price. so 2 place came to my mind.
Daiso and Ikea.
90cm x8mm plastic rod x3
180cm x 5mm flecible rod x2
210cm x 16mm plastic rod x1
90cm x 5mm bendable rod x 3
80cm x 3cm wooden pole
plastic fence
Wire net
mini table and chair. imagine making a mini space with this. ahaha
146cm x 90cm sunshade
39cm x 39cm cat preventing carpet thingy
broom. can create a flying lesson of harrypotter. LOLL
31cm x 30cm wooden pallet
500cm x 30cm reflection foil thingy for kitchen
600cm x 30cm foam sheet
57cm x 32cm x 34cm foldable netting bag
36cm x 36cm x 23cm food cover
all the above are from Daiso, so $2 each.
30m paper roll $9.9 and paper roll stand $14.9
circus tent thingy, $24.9
Swing $29.9
Cushion $3.90
Ice maker plastic, 10 piece, each piece could make about 30. ice seems like an really interesting object to make use of, because it got an element of time in it.
$0.9 ceramic bowl, it might be really fun to smash them, but then, safety concern.
210 to 385cm extendable metal rod, they could only extend but not lock, $9.9 This might be really good for constructing something..
floor lamp, $7.9, this one is another interesting object, visually they look good and when placed in repetition, they might look even better. and many things could be done to them ,like painting on it.
Table lamp, $3.9, even cheaper, smaller, but because they are cheaper, more could be used, making the the space even more interesting, depending on how they are placed.
mirror $3.9, mirrors are super interesting to work with, as they reflect light and give a sense of additional space.
double side frame, $0.9 another cheap item that can be placed anywhere.
Candles, this is the object I am most interested in till this point.
more candles. yes, I could figure a use for them.
IDEAS TIME!!!
These were the ideas I drew down in Ikea.
a circular white room will be constructed( probably in cloth) and a circle of spotlight will shine to the middle of the room. when the viewer enter the room,they would cast shadow depending on where they stand, or no shadow at all. and the viewer would be blinded by the light and feel confused.
a room with nothing but two big pairs of eye, since psychologically speaking, people will feel discomfort when others are looking at them, so by entering into a room with nothing other than a pair of eye staring at you seemed to be weird. however I think someone else had done this.
Onto the idea of candles, first, build a shelf with many candles lit on it, these candle have different smell and together they would smell like a bakery which is baking vanilla and cinnamon. whereas there will be a piece of cake(unflavoured) on the table, and the viewer might just taste the vanilla and cinnamon in the cake. Don’t know, but can try.
This is an slightly more interactive piece, there is an array of candles in a dark room. viewers are given a lighter and an candle snuffer (extinguisher) and can do whatever they want, be it to extinguish all the flame or to light all the candle, the fun part comes when multiple people doing different stuffs in the room and it will be a battle of light and darkness.
I personally think that this is a really good read and it seemed to me that Kim Goodwin was writing from the point of view of a designer within a product design company(product could be tangible(physical product) or intangible(service or digital product). As in the corporate world, there will always be a team of people weather big or small, who fulfills the different role within the project like designer, engineer, marketing and so on, this information about designing human-centered product within the ecosystem of structured company would be really useful when we graduate and step into the real world. As of for now, we not only have to understand the role of the designer(which was covered in this reading), we too, must learn everything from the engineering(the coding/construction) to marketing (pitching/selling the idea) prospect that will lead to the completion of a project.
The Design Process:
In terms of project planning and management, I partly agree with the chart which the book is focusing on, the “Process”:
This chart seemed really logical, but I think that in real life designing situation, the research and project should be happening simultaneously.
I drew this chart as I personally think that it would be rather inefficient if we were to plan a project before doing any research regarding it, normally during research, there would changes made to the project which will drastically change the planning of the project or even scraping the idea due to really similar product already existing in the market without prior researches. This is why, I think that the safer way is to research and plan simultaneously to avoid wasting time, effort and resources.( As mentioned in the reading – Project Planning is happening “Before dedicating resources to a project”.)
Research, the good old research.
I always think that research plays the greatest part into designing,
“To solve a problem, you must first understand it. Good research helps you make the best product definition and design decision later on.”
I totally agree with this sentence as a research well done will not only help the designer to understand the situation better, it will also help them to understand what resources is available to them which will help them to complete the work in a more efficient manner. For example, sometimes, outsourcing the productions of parts might be of a better quality at cheaper price and faster than to produce them in house within a certain company, and this information could be found during the research.
In Summary
I really think that this will be a good guidance to creating a human-centered product or services if I am to read the whole book, by reading this chapter, it gave me the rough idea of how to plan for the planning process, as I did not previously know that we were supposed to think about implementation of support to our project/product which we are making.
When I was reading the Principles, it mentioned that “Does it help your user to accomplish their goals?” and ” Will it help the users minimize their work?” as the evaluation of weather a supposed principle is both true and applicable to the problem in front of you, these evaluations are indeed wonderful, however, not all products and service were designed with maximizing user’s convenience in mind, how about in situation where the customer is not the user, do we take the end user or the one who is paying the bill into the consideration?
In the situation of selling service as products, having the best service(above user’s expectation) at the reasonable price would greatly increase the perceived value and customer’s loyalty to an extend, and so is a good marketing strategy. If a good marketing strategy is being considered during the planning phase but not as an after thought (like now we have a good product, but how do we sell it?), could the marketing strategy be seen as the product itself?
I found the Thoughtful Interaction Design really enriching and there were many useful ideas which I could learn from. Although Lowgren was specifically mentioning about the topic revolving “Designing digital artifact”, like he mentioned:
“Interaction design refers to the process that is arranged within existing resource constrains to create, shape, and decide all use-oriented qualities (structural, functional, ethical, and aesthetic) of a digital artifact for one or for many clients.”
Thoughtful Interaction Design?
Good Design?
I did some research about Jonas Lowgren and his main area of expertise includes collaborative media, interactive visualization and the design theory of digital materials. He focuses on the digital world and “design” to him is very different from how I interpret it. He places huge emphasis on the “digital artifacts” while I am for the inclusion of more than just that. I think that his concept of thoughtful interaction design could definitely transverse from the idea of just within the digital world into the physical world because not only do we interact with the “digital artifacts”, we also interact with the “physical artifacts”, take for example, a normal physical door. By not placing a door handle on the top corner of a two meters tall door, it might seemed commonsensical, but that is “Thoughtful Interaction Design” to me.
I think that for an artifact(digital or physical) to be an amazingly-thoughtful-interaction-designed, it has to be design with the consideration of all targeted user, how and where will they use the artifact, and account for the safety while fulfilling the expectation of the users, the specification of the client, and when it goes above these basic of an artifact, it has to inspire other designers to follow or “copy” the system or the ideology behind it while simultaneously, the original designer/company would improve the existing design and strife for a better version because nothing is really perfect,
Working with design means that you continuously need to define and redefine what you think of as good design. It is a never-ending process of thoughtful reflections.
And when something was brilliantly designed, not only the customer wants it, the competitors(existing or potential) would want it too.
The iPod Generation 2
I think that the iPod classic 2nd generation from 2002 was brilliantly designed in the aspect of thoughtful interaction design, it had also changed people’s life drastically, even though it was not the pioneer of the iPod series, nor the one that made the biggest leap in sales, I personally think that the 2nd generation iPod classic was the breakthrough within the realm of interaction design, not forgetting that there were many iPod generations to come after the 2nd, each had their multiple system updates and then upgraded to the next generation and then came iPod touch, which gradually evolves to the latest iPhone X. (Just to be clear, I am definitely not a supporter of Apple and even dislike it as a brand, but their product marketing and system design sure is amazing.)
The biggest change that apple made from the generation 1 to generation 2 was the inclusion of Windows system for syncing the songs from iTunes, as the biggest downfall for generation 1 was that Apple forces the user to be running an Apple computer system to be able to use the iPod, this resulted in the potential user who doesn’t have an Apple computer to be excluded. In Generation 2, Apple included the Musicmatch Jukebox to manage the user’s music library and transfer music to the iPod which made generation 2 the first iPod for Windows.
I always think that the ipod were magical in a sense that the circular touch-sensitive wheel, these were really the thoughtful interaction design that was mentioned in Lowgren’s book:
Design work is given form and structure by designer’s own thought, consideration and actions.
These circular touch-sensitive wheel was designed in the consideration as of how they marketed the iPod: to”put 1,000 songs in your pocket.”(which was really ground breaking during that time). The designer took the system advantage(also the limitation) into consideration… Imagine that the iPod does not have the circular wheel for the user to scroll through the song list, and the user did have 1,000 songs, how long or how tedious would it take to click the down button or the next button to go to the 499th song in the list?
With the circular wheel, the user could easily scroll through the list at great speed by spinning the wheel.
The whole form and aesthetics, material used, hardware, software, even till packaging, was well thought of for the optimal user experience, the size is just right to be carried around in the pocket of jeans (target audience demographics placed into consideration), the placement of the screen and the directions was ergonomically constructed so that user could use it with single hand operation, back light of screen vs battery life were well balanced to have good visibility and above average battery life so that user could use the iPod wherever they go and it should last long enough until the user could charge it(understanding the target user). Every aspect of the iPod was efficiently designed to suit their target audience. And by watching the advertisement from that time, it is rather clear who the target audience was.
and then came this:
Young active hipster.
In Conclusion.
I think that through the eleven pages of reading, this quote impacted me the most as a designing student,
“We are all living in a world almost completely artificial and designed, and every new addition, every new design adding to this world has an impact on how we experience the whole”
(I like how it goes from a designer’s perspective to a user’s perspective here)
“Design is about shaping the world we live in by creating the conditions” and “it means that you influence people’s work, leisure, and everyday life.” It let me realize that we are actually living in a world that is partially ran by designer, every thing we saw, every thing we touched, was designed by someone at some point of time. We, the designers in making, may hold the power to change the everyday life of the people we’ve never seen in our life.
Bike sharing had been in Singapore for almost a year and it is rather successful (transportation for us wise, not in business or government policy) and we could virtually find these bikes anywhere and everywhere (like in the drain, read: man throw ofo bike into canal)
There are 3 major bike sharing company running in Singapore, namely OBike, MoBike and OFO, and out of the 3, OFO is in striking yellow and would be nice in contrasting to most background and so we decided to use OFO for this work! (not because OFO was free from Monday 22nd January to Sunday 4th February, we would definitely pay if we have to. Really.)
During our first session of mOFOs we shifted bikes to create a roadblock in a void deck, by doing so, we had many curious passerby coming to us and asked why are we blocking the path? and we told them that we will remove the Ofos and they are like “ohhhhhh ok”. One even took the pictures of the bike too! she must’ve like our installation and think its really organized and definitely did not think about complaining us…
And on our second session of mOFOs, we went to Chinese gardens and shifted the bicycles around, Senior Nat saw us during his MRT ride and he alighted the train and helped us to carry the bicycles. Thank you again Nat! =D
at the end of the day, we got photos taken by random passerby and it was uploaded onto Reddit Singapore… well… that’s free publication!
Team mOfos Signing out.