Task 3 : The 11th Hour (Reflection)

A Documentary Film by Leonardo DiCaprio.


The title of this documentary “the 11th Hour” puts across to me, a viewer, a caution of warning and a
sense of hope about the state of our Earth's condition. It instill fear into us, humans, that time to save
and restore our planet environment to its original state is running short. At the same time, it gives us the
idea that there is still time to change our ways and attitudes towards our actions on our Earth, and help
save its from its and our demises.

In the beginning of the documentary, Paul Hawken discussed about the origin of cells and genes, and
about how the majority of cells in our bodies are not human at all. He said: “The things that makes us
human are not human.”, which I found to be interesting because I had always the perception that what I
know and feel are so life-like and it was actually the combination of these inhuman cells in my bodies
communicating and sending messages to my brain. It is also contradicting that we humans are trying so
hard to rebuild replicas of ourselves through cloning or by the building of robots, when we ourselves
are not really human in the first place. But it was because of the unusual mixture of our cells that we
have attained life from nature and that developed our human mind. As David Suzuki had said, “It was
the human mind that was the very key to our survival.”, which resulted in the dominance of our human
species over the other life forms on Earth. On the other hand, he also said that “ The human mind...
threw us(humans) out of balance with the rest of nature.” The human mind had caused us to be ignorant
of nature's capability and power, resulting in a rebound effect on us today with the issues of global
warming, climate change, natural disasters and so on. Thom Hartmann supports this idea by saying that
“Our culture is built on the assumption that we are the superior life form on Earth.” However, this is
not the end of our species yet as we currently possessed the technology and knowledge to change our
outcome, as asserted by David Suzuki's statement “We are the only animal on the planet that was
actually able to recognize that we could affect the future by what we do today.”

Nathan Gardels introduced the concept of Greek mythology with relationship to climate change that
was “The revenge og the gods, the revenge of nature”. The intensification of natural or man-made
disasters globally is due to our irresponsible ambitions of industrial and technological revolution that
caused the increase in global temperature thus resulting in climate change. The few degree rise in
temperature in the past had caused the mass extinction of life forms on the planet during the last Ice
Age. The prologue of disasters to come could be seen by the destruction of Hurricane Karina on a
developed country's state in New Orleans, USA. What I found most disturbing was the tone and
attitude in the newscaster reporting these news on television lacking the seriousness in reporting these
events and the real cause of them which is us humans. Sheila Watt-Cloutier further introduced an
example of an ice-free Arctic by the end of the century or in a few decades. The illusion of that image
to me is too scary to imagine and I seriously hope that it will not happen. The flooding of coastal
countries and cities globally and the rise of environmental refugees will to occur if the water levels
were to rise. Leonardo DiCaprio supports this by stating that “ As time passed, deforestation, soil
erosion, vanishing wetlands and a whole hosts of other problems continue unabated, we face a
convergence of crisis, all of which are concerns for life.” I felt strongly about Andy Lipkis's comment
“Take that one tree away, and you will get a flood”, which made me think of the importance of our
forests and also with relation to current studio project I am doing on, how can I use this fact onto my
studio project on floods.

Ray Anderson rose the issue of production's wastage by stating that for “Every truck load of products
with lasting value, thirty two truck loads of waste are produced.” As designers, this reminds us to be
aware of the decisions that we make in the design process and how that we reflect on the end product
and the wastes it produces. In order to do so, Wade Davis introduced that as citizens of the developed
world on how “ We forget how majority of the world lives, and indeed how the majority of the world
looks.” Likewise, Nathan Gardels introduced that as consumers and designers that we “change the
objects of desire in order to get to the root of the problem.” Making a product less desirable for the endusers
will never agree to the ideals of the economic corporations, as their goal is to increase the profits
and to do so will result in selling products. In contrast, we, as designers, could design products to
highly desirable to the extent that consumers will hold onto the products for a longer period of time and
instill their emotional values into the product. On how to do so will be a challenge for designers.

William McDonough brought up the importance of design and that people should “see design as the
first human intention.” He further went on to discuss the importance of raw materials and renewable
energy, and the concept of a closed cycle or cradle to cradle. As designers, we should definitely
consider the complete cycle of the design process and pay attention to the different stages a product
passes. Because its effects of an irresponsible decision on the designer's part will be multiply onto an
exponential scale.

Janine Benyus offered the solution for people and designers to look into nature for answers. She said
that “how we make things in our industrial process is 180 degree different from how life makes things.”
The idea of gazing into nature for inspiration is not new with the example of bio-mimicry and designers
like Ross Lovegrove. However, it is the lack of awareness to it that is an issue, as it is same as to the
lack of awareness to our environment.

In conclusion after viewing this documentary, I am more aware and conscious of the negative impacts
of industrial and technological advancements, like our uncontrollable need for fossil fuels, on our
fragile environment. On the other hand, I have also be able to understand to look into technology's
positive aspects for inspiration and and the importance of design and a designer's job in relation to our
environment and the possibilities it offers. Lastly, as designers, we should cultivate our passion for
design and the love of planet, to be more compassionate to its calls for help.

Design Studio 3A - Design Charette 1

 Today for my Design Studio 3A, we all had a design charette exercise. We had to forms groups of 6 people or more and assemble an IKEA dining chair in 15 minutes. After that, we had to brainstorm on reasons why we hated the design of the chair and its faults, and it was followed by an overall discussion. Thereafter, we had to sketch 5 ideas or more individually within 15 minutes on ways to improve the chair on the problems we had discussed earlier, which again is followed by a sharing of ideas with the group. This task was then repeated for 2 more times on how we can design it better for our physical pleasure and psychological/ sociological pleasures, which was followed by lunch. After lunch, we had to finalize on one of our group idea and do up an A3 presentation sketch and a mock-up model of the design. Finally, each group had to present their ideas and received feedback from our lecturers.

Overall, I really enjoyed the whole experience and it was my first time doing such a design exercise. It was a highly pressurized design thinking exercise and I was thoroughly drained after that.

So here are my sketches from this design exercise (please reminded that these were done in sets of 15 minutes, so do excuse the quality)

Some of my design ideas are on how to make the chair collapsible, or providing the users a routing service to router out the contours of their bottoms to increase their comfort level, or remaking the chair into a stool when the backrest is damaged or even having the users breaking out a piece of the chair seat with them writing a note about a bad memory, instead of throwing the whole chair away when they had a bad memory attached to the chair.

My group's chosen idea was to design add-ons for the existing chair for mothers having a newborn baby or even the elderly. The idea is to allow the user to change the chair into a rocking chair with a more comfortable backrest. As these are add-ons, they will be able to be removed when they are not needed. The proposed material for the add-ons are laminated plywood for its durability. Users will only need to slot the chair's legs into the rockers and attached the backrest with a C-bracket onto the chair. It could be sold beside the chairs in the IKEA showrooms and shelves as an optional product. As the design for the add-ons are meant to fit in the style and cost of the existing chair, the price of the add-ons will be generally cheaper than the users buying another new rocking chair.

Here are the pictures of the final design.

Picture of the final presentation

And finally, here is a video I made of the overall exercise. (My first try at video-making, sorry in advance abt the quality)

Task 2: Objectified (Reflection)

A Documentary Film by Gary Hustwit.
http://www.objectifiedfilm.com/


I remembered that after watching the documentary for the first time, I felt emotionally touched and
happy about it. It was because finally I felt that there was some public recognition for the things we do
in our Industrial Design profession. We had always been somewhat of the back stage crew in the design
field, unlike the areas of fashion design or graphic design.

However back to the main point of this task, there are a number of interesting topics that were raised in
this documentary. The areas of discussion that was highlighted were about the idea of good and bad
design, the designer's and the identities of consumers by their possessions.

The idea of a good design differs for every designer, and it is very interesting to hear what each of them
said and from there on identify my own view of what a good design is. I would like to start with Dieter
Rams's ten points of what a good design should be as what he spoke of in the documentary. He said that
a good design should be innovative, be useful to it users, be aesthetically pleasing, be understandable to
its users, be honest, be unobtrusive, be long-lived, be consistent in every detail, be environmentally
friendly and have as little design as possible. I find these points to be very true in every aspects and
some of his points are further reinforced by other designers' views. For example, Erwan Bouroullec
said: “Often our hardest job is to remove, remove, remove bit by bit, anything that is unnecessary, that
gets in the way of maximum unity.” and also Naoto Fukasawa said: “ I thought about how people don't
think about the tools they are using while they are using them.”, “...actions that human beings make
subconsciously without thought.” and “Design dissolving in behavior.”. I feel that as designers, when
we are designing a product, we should not design it so as to intrude into the end user's lifestyle, but
instead design a product that allows the users to use it without any discomfort and aid him, and allow
him to carry out his daily rituals as per normal. Because if the product presents an issue of being
uncomfortable, the user will get hurt either physically or emotionally or even both. One of our main
objectives as a designer is design a product for our end users to meet their needs in an inconspicuous
manner. David Kelley also said that as a designer, we should “design something that gets better with
use.” An example that he gave was his grandfather's leather suitcase that was handed down to him. This
will resulted in the product having a longer life span and thus being long-lived.

Dieter Rams said that he was disgusted by the “...arbitrariness and thoughtlessness with which many
things are produced and bought to the market.” This statement made me asked myself, “As designers
today, what can we do?” Because the poor designs of products are just as a reflection of the designer
and the consumer. The designer in that he who design the product, do so so as to make another product
with no intention to add any value into it; just designing products for profit. This will lead to consumers
being uneducated about good designs and then result in polluting our market with bad deigns and also
polluting our environment as it creates more wastes in the landfills when consumers discard them. The
consumer is also at fault here for buying the product as he/she did not put much thought into
purchasing the product and just solely buying it for its function. This will lead to them throwing away
the spoiled product and buy another, in turn contributing to wastes.

Anthony Dunes talks about the idea of “mass-communication more than mass-production” which I
found to be interesting. He was more concerned about educating the public rather than producing
designs and making profits. The thought of educating people about good design really tackles the
problem at its core. It motivates people to ask questions about their individual decisions and them
asking “Why?”. I feel that when consumers ask questions like why this and not that, they can help
contribute to the elimination of bad designs as lesser people will be buying them. Moreover, designers
themselves should be then asking whys twice instead of once. Asking whys about the consumer's whys,
which allows the designers to be more empathic towards their end users and further understand their
true needs and wants in order to design better products.

Rob Walker also had some ideas of what good design is. He said: “Good design is something you
want.” and that “Good design is something that distinguish you, it's some sort of a mark of progress.” .
This is also true in that when a user has experienced a case of bad designs, he would generally be on
the lookout of a better design for his situation. Thus, there is always a need for consumers to seek better
things, which leads me to my next topic of the identities of consumers by their possessions.

The consumer's self image is a reflection of his possessions. An example to justified Rob Walker's
statement about “Good design is something that distinguish you, it's some sort of a mark of progress.”
will be when one gets a promotion and would generally be happy about it, and would in return like to
celebrate and buy something for himself like a new car or a new house. Thus, when one has more
expensive belongings, he would have a higher social status as determined by the society. However,
these ideals of consumerism were put into our minds by the media, the major co-operations and
business people, whose main goals is to encourage people to spend more and purchase more. Rob
Walker stated that “ We (the consumers) tend to want new things.” and Marc Newson added that it is
“All about wanting new things.”. So the question here is that whether it is us, human beings, to be
blamed for impulsive behavior of wanting newer things or is it the media that turned us like this with
their advertisements? Another thought that I had was whether it was possible for ourselves to be
brainwashed of our old habits and be reprogram to start afresh in order to save our Earth from
environment damages due to consumerism.

Moreover, Chris Bangle talked about his views of how people look at products and infuses themselves
into it. He said: “We (Designers) have to create it in a way, you as the observer, look at it and you put
the emotion into it, by the way you scan it. Because that car has to be a reflection of that emotional
energy that you want to see in it.” and “Like avatars, I show myself to the outside world through this
car.” I feel that it is our human instincts that wants us to be not alone in society that makes us consider
about our self-identity. This desire to be notice by our community resulted in us, the consumers to buy
products to dress ourselves in a desirable way to be accepted by society. However, this is all a mere
perception of ourselves thinking that it really matter when in fact, it is just a false reality.
I would like to end my entry with a quote from Karim Rashid saying, “Are the things we are doing
really making an effect and making change?”

what is the real need to travel abroad, if current technology allows us to "be" there virtually?

I took this post from a comment I made in my last post.

Yes, definitely it does. However, sometimes like in my case, I have to fly to Australia in order to attend University. Even though I do not travel much (Flying to Sydney was only my 3rd time flying on an airplane), I do understand the carbon impact that it produces and also understand that there are ways to offset the carbon footprint I have caused by for example donating to non-profit organizations like Carbon Neutral and The Nature Conservancy or even planting a tree.

Hmmm... just a thought, if students could study at their home country and not travel abroad and receive the same education, will that eliminate the need for study abroad? If the development of inter-countries communication will to be further improve, it could happen. With current communication technologies that allow people to work from home, but yet able to "be" at the workplace, I do not see why this cant be applied to oversea education.

However, one can argue from the point of by traveling oversea, one could experience a foreign land that differs in climate, culture and etc. These are things the any virtual environment can not replace.

So the question is what is the real need to travel abroad, if current technology allows us to "be" there virtually?

IDES 3221- Task 1 - Ecological Footprint

 I was tasked to find out about my ecological footprint at www.myfootprint.org. And I found out that my current lifestyle was not as eco-conscious as what I first thought I was. Some of the factors are not within my control like the rented apartment that I am staying, but there are still other factors that are within my control and I could do something about them like the food I consume and the transportation I take.

This exercise has definitely opened my eyes to my current situation and it also gives me a reason to be more pro-active in my effort to save our earth. 

Btw here are my results.