Innovation Lab: Smart Design and Emotional Design
Smart Design & Emotional Design
Smart design and emotional design is incredibly important to our daily lives even when we don’t acknowledge it most of the time. The way each product must go through multiple phases of both physical and computational prototypes expresses how much care and attention goes into each of the items we use. The basic foundations of designing something revolve around understanding people, their needs, and the extremities such as people with disabilities.
In the video on the smart design of hand grips on products like vegetable peelers and plant clippers, the designers mention how once a product targets its design to be usable for people with arthritis, then anyone in the middle would be able to use it too. To understand more about the original product itself and how to alter it, they used it themselves and mapped out a hand to show the pressure points where people might struggle with. Then it was a test of various materials that became physical prototypes, then put onto CAD, and 3D printed to see the models physically; this long process is necessary to develop the final product.
Bill Moggrige mentions that a person should develop a strong relationship with a product they have, and over time even become fonder of it the more it is utilized. In the physical design for the first laptop he built, he made careful decisions like proportioning it to fit into half of a briefcase, a leg underneath to help prop it up on a surface, and even rotating hinges to move the screen easily and avoid having anything else fall in between the screen gap and the rest of the laptop. These choices were carefully thought out, and obviously shows how many prototypes and “what if” questions must be asked to construct the final version of a product. However, another key point Moggrige discusses is how he felt more of a connection to the software on the screen, rather than the laptop itself, which motivated him to think more about the design aspects to add a more enjoyable experience into the interaction. The general goal for smart design and emotional design is to improve the way in which people use things which in turn improves their daily lives without much notice.
Two Products
One item I use daily and have an emotional connection to is my coffee machine. I have three coffee machines at my dorm: espresso machine, capsule pod machine, and a hand press machine (back home I also have a drip coffee machine). Out of the three, my favorite is the capsule pod machine because it is easy to use, convenient, and quick as it does not require any preparation. All I need to do is pop in a pod, click a button, and wait. Every other day I do need to refill the water and clean the machine, but the entire process is not tedious at all. I am someone who runs on caffeine and cannot live without it, so investing in this coffee machine has saved me lots of time and money. I also used to be a barista at a boba shop, and worked with my cousin to run her coffee shop, so I enjoy making coffee but sometimes I don’t always have time to prep and stamp coffee for my espresso machine, which makes the capsule one much more convenient for everyday use.
Another item I find incredibly useful and have an emotional connection to is my makeup/skincare container. It is a 2 and a half tier container with 3 drawers and 8 slots on top. It stores all of my stuff neatly and saves a lot of space on my desk. I have also organized each compartment for specific things such as: brushes, stick-shaped items, powders and creams, etc. The container also has a lot of extra space so I can put other items like my hairbrush, perfume, lotion, lint roller, etc. I also find it to be quite hygienic as my makeup products are stored inside the drawers so that dust or other things don’t contact it. On the top part, I only put things that have lids so that it doesn’t matter as much when dust builds up. Overall, this container is incredibly neat and tidy because everything I need is all in the same place, each item with their respective position, with all of it sitting in the corner of my desk where it doesn’t bother me.