Reflection - Don Norman: Emotional Design

The video of Don Norman: Emotional Design taught me that products with emotional design are accepted like a piece of wonderful art. Sometimes objects may not need to be functional, if it looks good, people will admire it. Emotional design is important for designers as they need to know how the product would interact with the client's mind. As Norman said about behavioural design, people like to feel in control of the object or environment. The human emotion has such a big role in design, products need to be designed to 'make' the person feel that specific way.

Task 2: Good Design - TearLab(TM)

When given the product to research on, I had no idea what The TearLab was. There wasn't any images of the product in the IDEA gallery. So I decided to do my own researches on the internet. There were a few images of the TearLab, however it looked very plain and medical that I knew i wasn't going to be interested in it. I also thought to myself how did that thing win an award?

Though it looked difficult, designers don't get to choose what projects they want to do.So I took the challenge. Reading through articles and watching a video of how the device was used allowed me to realise that every award winning product isn't chosen because of their appearances, but also their visual design suitability.

Reflection - David Kelley: Human-centered Design

The David Kelley: Human-centered Design video informed to me that the advancement of technology revolves around human behaviour. This I found is very true, our lifestyles are spoilt with extravagant technologies because of our inevitable demands in society. David Kelly and his company targets the human needs and wants, by designing great objects for the rich and poor, they hope to provide people with a much better lifestyle.

Him and his team designed a system in a Prada retail store in which the customer feels indulged with attention. The changerooms were especially different to normal ones in high-end fashion stores. These changerooms would allow the customer to have answers brought to them. The frosted glass walls would turn transparent as the customer wishes, computers showing complete information about a clothing and all other accessories in relation to the item.

Spyfish is a submarine tele-presence vehicle that was designed to help people who are less advantaged than others to experience things they cannot. The person is given a choice to stay on the surface while viewing the scene underwater.

The team are also involved in other remote places where technology has not yet emerged that quickly. However they include them into the developing world by designing better basic equipments. ApproTEC is of the projects which designers and students aim to support people living in poverty by designing low-cost manual tools to help them grow crops not only in rainy seasons but also off- seasons.

I learnt that David Kelly's success to designing products is to first analyse the issues affecting people’s behaviour and personalities. Industrial designers should not just aim at one target market, but also to include everyone into this man-machine era.