What is design? --Bill Moggridge

In this video, Bill Moggridge told us about design, what is good design and bad design. He also showed us some examples of good and bad design processes, changing in design.

Firstly, he said “Everything is designed.” I’m strongly agreed with him. Human builds up this society because of unbelievable human’s mind.

Then, he shows some National design awards in Washington and the First lady speech which expressed what’s her feels about design education for kids.

Bill Moggridge also demonstrated design disciplines: Architecture, Furniture design, industrial design and glassware design. Design disciplines form teams for complex problems. One example is a service designed for a visitor From China (Intel UMPC).He said this service might happen like that very soon.

What is bad design? An Example is Using I-mode service to buy a drink in Japan. They didn’t understand design process. There are very difficult connection problems in the technology applications. It reminds me of the design confusion we did in the last few weeks. Confusingly designed means that users misunderstand the designer’s intent, resulting in erroneous usage. I think bad design is not that kind of worse, because it can be improved by different ways and turned to be a good design. Designers must learn something from doing this process.

“The key factors in the design process are understanding people and prototyping,” he said.

·         Understanding people:

In human mind, conscious mind is very small proportion of what people really can use, ability to feel, ability to understand without anything to explain. All the things are relatively subjective to subconscious.

We need to design for different people: men, women, child, young people, elderly, disabled people, etc. In this book“51 ways of understanding latent needs and desires”, there are 4 categories below:

Learn~ Analyze the information you’ve collected: flow analysis affinity diagrams, cognitive task and historical analysis

Look~ Observe people to find out what they do: personal inventory, a day in the life, shadowing.

Ask~ Enlist people’s participation to elicit insights: conceptual the landscape experience, collage, foreign correspondents and draw.

Try~ Create simulations to help empathize with people: empathy tools, scenarios, next year’s headlines and informance.

·         Prototyping: for objects you prototype in a shop, for electronics in a lab. For screen design, you prototype in Macromedia or flash. For services you prototype with stories. 

 There are 3 stages of prototyping: inspire, evolve, validate.

Finally, Bill Moggridge told us expanding contexts for design in a connected world: personal, social, environmental.

1. Personal products expand to health and well being.

2. The design of the places we live expands to social innovation programs.

3. Design for sustainable products expands to global sustainability.

Project 1 -handtool-Peer comments

Olivia Lin Qiuyuan

http://haresama.blogspot.com/2011/09/project-1-product-poster-product-usage.html#comments

Ning Sun  

http://sunning3342435.blogspot.com/2011/09/project-1.html#comments

 

Zhaozhao Li http://lizhaozhao3329407.blogspot.com/2011/09/projectone-experience-enrichment.html#comments

Xiaomeng Shi
http://shixiaomeng3361028.blogspot.com/2011/09/design-project-1.html#comments

 

Tingting Wu

http://ttinging.blogspot.com/2011/09/project-one-experience-enrichment.html#comments

Project 1- hand tool

Poster:

Rationale:

My design product is called Choc Mezzaluna. It is designed that based on the original one which is called Mezzaluna. It means “half moon” in Italian. It has a handle on either end, allowing people to use a rocking motion to chop, cut, and mince foods. The blade is sharpened along its whole length, allowing people to rock it from one side all the way to the other for a clean cut.  The handles allow people to control the blade without the risk of injury; they are typically made from wood. You can use special cutting boards with small depressions which are ideally suited to the use of a mezzaluna. It is often used for chopping herbs.

My design product- Choc Mezzaluna improves the original mezzaluna and also promises in enriching the user's experience. Here are my steps of solutions.

·         Firstly, I discovered the position of the Mezzaluna’s handles was a little bit high that made users not very convenient to do the rocking motion so I lowered it.

·         Secondly, handles were upright above the blade was not a perfect way for users to hold. According to Physics, the distance between two hands should be greater than the length of the blade because of the moment of force. M=F*L. The force can decrease when the length increases. Thus, I increased the length of the handle.

·         Thirdly, according to Aesthetics, curves can make people feel pleasurable and then they would like to touch it. The handle’s shape of my choc mezzaluna is more like inward ox horn. Both smooth surface and suitable thickness can fit hands very well.

The blade is the feature of Mezzluna so I did not change it. And the material of the blade is stainless steel.

Name -Choc Mezzaluna originates from its chocolate colour. Dark colour is difficult to become dirty and chocolate colour is close to wood’s colour.

In conclusion, Mezzaluna especially the handle promotes a pleasurable “living relationship” with people. The scale is reasonable and it considers comfort in use, hand anthropometry, expected interaction. In addition, the shape is symmetric and balance that demonstrates the effective integration of design elements and principles.

Storyboard:

Technical drawing: