Category: Unconventional Design

I missed the workshop of enchanted objects so now I am doing my own research/workshop on this. 

From the slides, I realize that the workshop has three steps. The first one is to identify the problem with cats. I am super allergic to cats so I don’t have cats at home. I only played with them carefully when I visited my friends’. From the little connection that I had with cats, I think cats are really bad at letting their owner know what they want. Cats are shy usually so it’s hard to comfort them. The next step is supposed to be the group come up with some solutions based on other groups’ problems. Since I was not there, I can’t work on this by myself. From the research that I did for this workshop, it’s good to let other people come up with something to solve the problem because the idea is fresh for them. They will have more interpolation on the problems. After coming up with the solution, the group has to prototype the solution with everyday objects. It is always good to do rapid prototyping to present the idea. Even when I interned at R/GA, we used pen and paper to just quick prototype the idea and present it to the boss. Utilizing the things around us will make our ideation process more clear. 

The first one is the usage of a tape. My friend lent me an electric device before, since the electric wire of this device is long he used the tape fix it. Instead of using the common tape, he used the skeleton of tape to fix it( I don’t know how to explain it, you can know what exactly it is through the picture). It’s amazing, I hadn’t imagined before that tape can be used in that way. I always use some rubber bands to fix the electric wires and when I want to draw out the wire, I must take the rubber bands off. Then they are easy to disappear! But with the tape, what originally you need to use it in daily life, it’s always there.

Second one is the bookmark. It is different from other bookmarks which are a piece of hard paper. By adding a curve, it can be more beautiful and easy to be used. Readers can be easier to know where exactly they read before. The ordinary bookmarks are not easy to be found sometimes.

The third one is the hand washing machines each floor in NYU shanghai. (I forgot to take pictures.) They are also interactive. Since the entrance of campus building and library is a little bit far from the restrooms. The people who come into school and come into the library are sometimes with dirty hands because touching something outside and they want to be tidy maybe because they are going to read books or go to B1 to have lunch. It’s interactive and convenient to put a hand washing machine near the entrances.

We first worked in pairs and picked 15 pairs of Lego then my partner built something with his Lego.

Then I worked with a new partner and tried to build the same thing as the other made by Lego. This is so difficult because I must close my eyes and only by the description of my partner to the Lego.

Unfortunately, I didn’t build the same one in the end. However through this, I can understand sometimes, only by words, the design is hard to be met the requirements.

So the next part is to design the project my partner wanted to make out. We drew everything we wanted and thought as many ideas as possible. Then we exchanged our projects and ideas for each other’s project.

It really helped me to discover more aspects and new methods to reach my design goal. And with writing down and drawing, it is so easy to understand.

In this workshop, we had a design process by designing and prototyping other’s idea and projects. The subjects we were going to design is cats.

With my group, all owning cats, first listed our problems during raising cats, such as the problem of cleaning the food bowl and the problem of cats’ drinking dirty water.

We picked one, most necessary to be solved, which is the cleaning problem of food bowls. Since the food bowl contains wet and dry food so sometimes, cleaning is a rough and troublesome task. The owner must wash the bowl again and again.

The most surprising part is to switch to other’s problems and help them to solve their problem.

That really expanded my mind and forced me to think more about design.

You should not only focus on others’ requirement but also need to make a project which doesn’t exist or hasn’t developed well and also, you need to keep it in good appearance.

We designed for the problem of the obstacles between the express of cat’s emotions to humans. The problem was a little confused and hard to understand.

So I think sometimes when designing, the understanding of the requirement is also very important. Combined with our own understanding, we designed a translation app for the owner to translate the humans’ words to what cats can understand and vice versa.

In the end, we shared our ideas and designed products with other groups. It’s interesting to see others’ ideas and projects and easy to say “wow, it can be designed in that way!”