Oscar Lee's Blog

After participated the Charette as an industrial student, I realised the important of product life-cycle. As an industrial designer, it's critical that he must understand the general product life cycle of its kind. It's through this understand, an industrial designer can pro-long the life of his design either through physical-attachment or emotional attachment. It's a trend that designers are expected to be able to design for what have already been designed. It means adding value, adding function without reducing the form aspect of the already existed product. We're at the tipping point of harvesting nature resource, sustainability has became the top priority in today's design consideration. Some designs, however due to current limitation e.g. economic aspect, political aspect etc are creating problem for our environment. It's our generation goal to reduce these problem when we're designing beyond these products. Again, "designing for what have been designed" is what I believe in.

Secondly, group work in this Charette provided me an insight of what can be done as a team. Through the time limit given, it's impossible for a single man to complete every tasks. However, with some level of management, tasks can be best allocated to the people who are skilful at that aspect. Also, it's through this management process, people who are more willing to accomplish their allocated tasks. In this way, we can minimise wasting of time due to the fact some member don't know what they're doing. We can control the quality of the outcome by establishing a team foreman. By communication between the team foreman, we can let the process run smoothly. Only the foreman is needed when modification occurs during the process while other group members can keep on working on their allocated tasks. At the end of the day, it's all about effectiveness and efficiency that counts.

Just how much longer can our mother nature survive? From the documentary "The 11th Hour" we can see all the cause and result that heavily affect our mother planet. We can see the "globalisation created by the human mind, the mind that have evolved and have the ability to reflect back onto ourselves; to take stock from our own existence." However, if all the evidences are so obvious, why are we doing anything to reduce our carbon emission. That questions have many elements. Anyway, from the micro view, seems like we can't do much. How about if we start from a micro view to save the planet? Things like recycling, things like efficiently using electricity, things like using minimum water resource to do our laundry and dishes. I personally think that we really can make a difference if we do care our day to day living. If we pay attention to our daily consumption of nature resources, looks like a lot of things we are having are luxury. It's time to ask ourselves, do we really need that to survive? Again, as an industrial design student, I think it's time to consider helping in saving "the collapse of our eco-planet system and the search of out sustainable future". As a new product come out, it has its own life-cycle. Can we not created a new product but rather extended and reuse the old things instead? Can we bring old product into a new life-cycle? We're at our "tipping point" as Malcolm Gladwell suggested. It's at risk that we are affecting our next generation' life. "They're shouting at us, what are you doing!" I believe that our generation, as an industrial designer can really make a different. I believe that our priority design goal is to design for the already designed. I believe that as long as we're part of nature, we always need to respect her, help her and sustain her.

Design is everywhere is our society. From the moment you wake up, you’re constantly engage with design. However, not too many people realize that they are looking at these products as a consumer side perspective. Most people just look at the product and say, “yeah, that’s fine, that should do the job I need to do.” Little do they know that lot of thoughts had gone into that ‘fine’ product. As City Rail advertising slogan suggested ‘A lot have gone into a forgettable trip.’ Consumers purchase products that satisfied their need, help them on a current task or solve a problem in their life. Thus products that surround a person indicated the style of the person, the mental capability of the person and last but not least, the preference of the person. A successfully designed product can engage the target users that they have a feeling ‘Of course it’s designed this way, what other way can it possibly be!’ It’s through continues engagement with a particular products, users can figure out what they really want, who they are and who they want to be. On the other hand, designers seek out the world partly from the consumer’s perspective and as an outsider that constantly asking themselves why this product likes that. It’s only through practice and experience designer can design a successful product. The product speaks for the designer. It illustrates style (form). The product should be creating a harmony instead of chaos in the given target context. Also the mental capability (thoughtfulness) of a designer can be seen via the product he/she designed. How is the product put together? Has the product solved the users’ problem? These elements all required in-depth thinking from the designer. All of this can be seen everywhere, anytime because design is all around us.