charrette- chair concepts

add arm rests to the chair to make more confortable
add wheels to make the chair easier to manouver add cusion or contoured foam via either clipping it to the chair or other means to make more confortable

add back rest that has good lumbar support and a soft back to make the chair more ergonomic

add block underneath chair to make the chiar taller for people how are too tall for the chair and find it uncomfortable for their legs

turn chair into storage compartment when its use as a chair is finished by placing back rest parts between the four legs and buying a seperate drawer.

make lots of chairs in differnt colours (maybe out of plastic instead of wood, although wood would also be viable) then when a set of chairs are bought, the parts can interchange making a colourful chair

make veneers that can be stuck on to chair to make it look for fashionable, these veneers should be able to be modified, so a customer can bring his or her picture which can be scanned into the veneer so that you can have a personallised chair

make the parts able to be sold seperatley so that when fashion changes or there is any damage to the chair, instead of buying a whole new one you can update with seperate parts

much like the colour idea but with seperate pieces all in different shapes so that when you buy a chair that looks one way and another chair that looks slightly different you can interchange the parts so that you can make your very own combiation

make chair stackable to save space in house

stick white board material onto chair so that it can be drawn on and erased whenever the person wants to write a note to themselves etc

make marker that can draw on chair leaving fond memories of children etc permanently marked on the chair

i found this exercise quite usefull not only cause i had to learn how to work under time contraints, pressure and also be creative in demand, which i found both thrilling and stressful at the same time (i learnt that it is possible to just churn out ideas, some will be good and some will be crap but you can sift through them later and find the good ones)

i found it useful because it gave me a different perspective on how to reduce my own ecological footprint in a way that i hadnt been doing before, i was thinking more about materials, which is still good, but increasing the lifetime of a product by after purchase products or helping it make a conncetion with a person is probably a better solution cause less waste is being generated.

completly unrelated to uni work but is really interesting

hey guys have a quick look at this 3 min video its really cool, about the reinvention of a water bottle

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FDqJ0XUBvA

objectified

i found this documentary to be incredibly interesting
firstly just about the evolution of products and the design of them, where for example the design of a product was meant to tell you exactly what it was and how to use it nowadays its more arbitrary, this makes the product look more calm and collected, as it doesnt show how difficult it was to make but rather give an impression that is was incredibly simple. for example apples products had a large amount of thought put into the machineing of it but when the product sits in store it looks so simple and easy that the consumer feels it was a simple process. as dieter rams said "people react positively when things are clear and understandable".
despite this the quote that is said by henry ford "every object tells a story if you know how to read it", rings to be true, if you look at the little marks that are on the inner side of the mac you will find little dents and bumbs that show the process of making it.
what i also found intersting was dan formosa comment that "if you design for the extremes the middle will take care of itself". i think this is an important quote as it makes so much sense but isnt something a desinger often thinks about, most designers think of the average or the middle, but the chances are that if you design for those who are less able or extreme in one way or other the average will still be able to use the product, and probably will find it easier or more comfortable to use.
i agree with the idea that is made in this video that design is a search for form, what form should a product or object recieve. whether it should fubnctional like the dyson vaccum or a more beautiful and elegant. this is up to the designer to decide, and to do that we must undestand our audience, whether it be culturally or otherwise.
i found intersting that so many of the designers were talking about taking away, the less design was in the design was better, dieter rams said that good design shouw be innovative, productive, astheticly pleaseing,understandable,useful, honest, unobtrusive, longlived, consistent in detail, environmentally friendly and as alittle design as possible. There seems so much that needs to be done this doesnt appear to mean to have a really detailed complex product but rather the opposite, to have a simple product that encompasses all of the above.

Ecological Footprint reflection

i found this quiz to be quite useful not only in making you aware of how much each persons footprint effects the earth through examples such as carbon footprint, food footprint, houseing footprint, and goods and services footprint, as well as how many earths would be needed to support each person like me but also how i compare to the rest of the population.

i thought is was really useful that i was able to see how i could change this while still doing the quiz by clicking the links.

i have to say that my mark suprised me i didnt know quite how bad i was to the environment, despite knowing that there is much more i can do, i thought that i was still slightly better than i am.

on the other hand i thought that the quiz was a little bit frustrating, many of the questions asked were difficult and i didnt not have the knowledge, things such as household income and size of land are not things i am aware of, and i think that while it can help give a more accurate answer these questions can also deter alot of people from doing the quiz, and it is really important that people do, do it and maybe change some of their habbits.

as i was going through the quiz the little post that was telling me how well i was doing compared to the rest of the population was already encouraging me to change my ways cause i really wanted to do better and be a cleaner person.

i think this quiz would be useful for anyone from all walks of life to do just to understand what they are doing to the environment and what we can do about it

to us designers its important to understand the effects of our footprint as well as our consumers as we are designing the products that will later go into the home, and it is our responsibilty to design products that are more environmentally friendly