Foulgey.

This little innovation has garnered a lot of attention recently. I stumbled across it on facebook but forgot to post about it!

 It’s the Tesla Powerwall. In basic terms, its a battery for your house. This is definitely good design. It’s solving a real world problem. Humans have the capability right now to build enough renewable generators to power all our needs. The only problem is that, the renewables we can access are intermittent - their power source is not there 24/7 and usually peak energy usage does happen at the same time as peak energy harnessing.

So, we have needed a way of storing this energy for a long time. This design does just that. Despite it being small, it will have a big impact. Especially as they can be connected together to make larger batteries.

This small object will be able to lower energy prices around the world, giving people more money (they can harness their own energy or store it when its cheap) and it will work some way to combating climate change as we don’t need to rely on the non-renewable plants as much.

Aside from its impact, a little discussed part of the design is its casing. The sleek white case, fits perfectly. White is a powerful colour (tone?) but clean - to me the white, glossy casing alludes to a potential for what’s underneath without giving anything away. 

Came across this the other day, I actually backed it. The first time I’ve done it for something on KickStarter. I’ve had looseleaf tea in the past and whilst its much more flavourful, it is messy. This product which I can take on the go looks pretty smart. 

Our last contact session was with our own tutor Hugh. It started by showing 2001: A Space Odyssey. 

It was a strange beginning but it was to make a good point. What should technology look like? Should it’s form allude to its function? If you saw a piece of technology from the future, would you know exactly what is was for?

Hugh presented a resounding no, and I completely agree. The aesthetics of a design is much more than just its function. It alludes to:

The area it’s from 

What manufacturing tech is available

Which fashion is trending 

Should it stand out from other products (branding)

And most importantly, the designer’s taste

With a rapid rate of innovation in modern times, I feel that aesthetics are changing far faster now than ever. Aesthetics are now trying to enact efficiency too. Take the humble kettle for example. The kettle is thousands of years old, it has a simple function - to boil water. 

The two pictures above of a traditional Chinese cast iron kettle and a Victorian kettle. There is not much difference in the design and you can tell actually tell the Victorian is a derivative of the former.

Moving forward to the start of the 20th century, we have a an electric kettle but with almost the exact same aesthetic as had been used for hundreds of years.

Moving forward another 60(ish) years, the kettle has changed dramatically. It is now made of plastic and has a more upright shape. The handle can be placed at the side because the heat is provided by an element, not by a flame.

In modern times, the shape is pretty much the same, but the aesthetics is rapidly different. We have now developed a glass that is able to hold heat and so keeping the efficiency of the older opaque style. So why not use this glass to create a differentiated product?

Lastly, looking forward, there is a new concept. Efficiency is key, boil only the water you need and do it in your mug so you don’t waste any energy. It is technically a kettle but with a radically different approach.

Our first year tutor, Ben Craven was with us this week. Instead of the usual presentation, he issued as a challenge. In teams, calculate with the energy required to travel a mile in a bus/plane/train/car, how many cup of teas could you heat? 

My team had a bus, but each of us had a different way to solve the problem. This created an interesting dynamic in itself. Being quite a competitive team we each tried our own way.

The main point of this exercise was showing that it is fairly easy to get ballpark figures for any problem. Doing so makes it quick to check if an idea is feasible or to create a rough design.

Designers often look to nature as inspiration with technology. Natures provides plenty of ideas for improving performance or making sometime beautiful. What we deem as beautiful comes from nature so why should we not mimic it?

The tree above is an example which has went horribly wrong. It is a wind power generator which works in low wind conditions (good!) but which looks like a tree from an alien planet.

The description says that it is 'disguised' as a tree. I think the designers may not be looking at the same trees as I am.

If I were on this project I would not have tried to mimic nature. The juxtaposition of a natural form with a mechanical technology does not work well. I would have made aesthetics more geometric and tried to be as efficient as possible.

In short, no. Do not do this. My mind may change if I were to see it in person but a photograph does not bode well for this generator

I’ve never really been interested in design consultancy or trying an upstart business. I enjoy solving problems with design but I don’t often think of myself as the entrepreneur that others fancy themselves to be. This may change when I come across something that really grabs my attention but right now my career is not my life, it is one facet. This was my main takings away from this weeks contact session.

Matt Morais is a PDE graduate and this year came back to help us out and help our tutor Hugh. Throughout the year, we’ve got to know him and he’s nice guy, who knows what he’s doing. Over the past few years, he has been working within the camera accessory industry. Building upon his final year project, he’s set up the company VU equipment with a friend and is working on several designs. I won’t mention any other than this quite nice strap design. If anyone I don’t know stumbles upon my blog, I suggest they go check them out - just google VU equipment.

 Matt’s story on the surface was leave uni; build upon the final year project;  start a company; and bring in some profits. Below the surface it wasn’t quite as simple. It takes dedication, going to shows and presenting your product, contacting manufacturers, constant prototyping, budgeting and being wise with money as you don’t have a completely steady income and also a bit of luck. He used crowdfunding to get his project off the ground. Something which at times is completely bonkers. No one knows which projects will fail or succeed on websites like KickStarter.

All of this uncertainty isn’t for me and so hats off to Matt, it’s an impressive history which I’m sure he’s learned from. More so than if he had entered a grad scheme. But I asked if he had the chance to go back would he do it all again? He said no and that speaks volumes to me. 

For the next month, my life is going to be creating a modular home. 

There are just under 16m dwellings  in the UK with only 1-2 people in them. With the average size of a home at 76 m^2 this is a big waste of space. There is also a large push from the government for people is build or buy their own homes and who doesn't want to own their own home?

My product is a flatpack, modular home. People buy their land and then their home. It starts out small for what you need and then gets progressively bigger as their family expands or they feel they want more space. So it can turn from a tiny home to large home.

Doing this should mean people can buy their homes for less than average sale price and their bills will be less - heating less space = less bills.

During research I've stumbled across this - HiveHaus

Its hexagonal house blocks. Each side of the hexagon is a replaceable panel. I've been playing with the very same idea. I've subscribed and got a brochure and need to do some research on this but this could be a great help.

The downside to this home seems to be irregular floor space and I don't believe they're stackable. I think that's where my USP will come in.

This has still been a great thing to find - even better it was on George Clarke's Amazing Spaces on C4 so I need to go find that episode!

Stumbled across this video. Disney created a computer orphan which splits up the volume of a design into blocks and then through an algorithm subtracts or adds parts so as to balance the part and make it spin. Definitely going to look into this type of thing for my spinning top

Our contact session was with Professor Tom Inns, the director of the GSA. There was no pressure to make a good impression.. He explained his background in the researching the effects of introducing designers/design thinking into a company. In his case, the introduction visually changed the products a company produced. This was interesting in itself as in this course we have never truly had the chance to sit down and discuss design thinking.

The rest of the talk was about product development in general. The risks & success that can come with it and also different strategies that a company or individual can take. A slightly grim statistic was that just under half of all projects fail. I imagine, if it were to take into account all the garage or home inventors that number would be much higher. 

Failure is needed though, failure is good. It makes you try harder the next time and it teaches you to persevere.

The Miito is a redesign of the kettle? I’d say it gets rid of the kettle altogether. It’s a magnetic base (bit more complex than that) and a rod. To boil liquid, simply place your container on the base and then insert the rod.

It works by induction, so the rod is heated via the magnetic field of the base, the eddy currents in the object heats it which the rod then transfers to the liquid. In theory quite simple, but the tech behind it is probably more complicated.

With the constant philosophical push from the Vitsoe project, of “Do we really need x? What if we change Y, can we get rid of X?”. This is a example. By changing the entire object. You simply heat the water in the container you need. You remove the process of filling a kettle, to boil water, to then fill up another mug. 

This week we visited the GSA’s Digital Design Studio - it’s a resource which many of us didn’t know existed probably because it’s a small studio nestled over in the Pacific Quay (by the Glasgow Science Centre).

We were shown around the various facilities available, all of which were pretty impressive but the one tool which stood out for me was the 3D scanner.

The 3D Scanner, scans an object and creates a virtual representation. Currently it’s used widely in the Film, Medicine and Design Industry. The application we were shown was the creation of a virtual Glasgow. Pretty cool but in my mind this would be great for a designer.

There is always a call for designers to go back to using traditional mediums for prototyping, it gives us more respect for form and shows us what is and is not possible to manufacture. Staring at a computer screen can leave you a bit disconnected. With the help of this tool, you could create something, e.g. in clay, then scan it into a 3D modelling software and refine it.

I can also imagine reverse engineering using this tool. When you need to do a product autopsy, something like this would be a massive help.

Two sessions in one week - we should feel privileged. This session was with R. Shearer the GSA’s Interactive Prototyping Teaching Assistant. Being brutally honest, I didn’t feel that the talk was that worthwhile.

He went through his background, as is the norm, but then never really went anywhere else. His job entails that he helps out students and others with creating models and prototypes, whether they’re functional or for aesthetics. He did go over the reasons why you would create a prototype - how parts fit together, how mechanisms work, to check aesthetics, to check user interaction etc. That was interesting but something we already knew, albeit need to do more of.

What I feel would have been useful, would be to discuss different techniques and methods to create certain models. Like using laser cutting to etch patterns on to a surface or using clay or foam to rough out shapes. The practical side is something which no one in our course has a base level of. Everyone has their own strengths as it is learned through doing with your project and your project is of course unique to you.

We had a talk by Alasdair Macdonald about inclusive design. The talk claimed that design should be inherently inclusive. Making a design easier to use means the product can be used by everyone.

I agree with this to an extent. Products should never confuse the user and should have high usability. But designing specifically for ease of use means alienating some groups.

Take the mobile phone Doro Liberto. It is designed specifically to be easy to use and they target the elderly. In doing so they create a stigma for the phone with the youthful generation.

Would it not have been better for other phones to look at their products and design in such a way where there is not 1000 different options? Where the phone can be picked up and used by anyone and not seem like a Rubik's Cube?

Inclusive design is good but it should be in every design. It should come naturally through the design process and testing. It should not have to effortfully forced into a product so it then excludes user groups.

During the spinning top project, I came across ForeverSpin. It’s a company in Toronto which machines very precise spinning tops in all sorts of metals. Aluminium, stainless steel, brass, copper, gold, titanium and so on.

As a practice run for the final Pecha Kucha. This week we did a Pechi Kechi - 10 slide presentation with 10 seconds for each slide. It was tough. A few in the class messed up in their delivery, unless you practised this you were apt to fall on your face. Mine did not go too badly, the timings could have been better but  I didn’t stumble or lose my place.

The Pechi Kechi topic were on a given designer. My designer was Giorgetto Giugiaro (I had to ask our Italian class mate, how to pronounce the name). Until this point I had not encountered his name, but that reveals more about me than him. He was originally an Italian car designer - go to wikipedia and his notable cars will easily go over 100+ in numbers - and has been named Car Designer of the 20th Century.

I say ‘was a car designer’ as he now has a design and engineering studio, ItalDesign, where all manner of things have been worked on. From the bizarre (a pasta), to the huge (Juventus Football Stadium) to the most notable Nikon F3 camera.

What struck me the most was the sheer volume of designs this man has worked upon and the breadth of disciplines. It really hit home that design is a very fluid field. Learning your craft in one discipline, say product design, does not limit you from working within others like automobile design or architecture. Its the thinking process behind a design that allows you to move forward.

One last interesting fact about Giugiaro. I own one of his designs. My car an ‘08 Fiat Punto Grande was designed by him. Pretty funny coincidence. (Disclaimer: the car below is not mine and is also considerable cleaner than the one I own.)

As part of the Vitsoe project, I was given the opportunity to attend a workshop called “The Great Recovery”. Held by the Royal Society of Arts (RSA), it encouraged us think about the products we design and their entire life cycle.

The materials we use for products are exhaustive, we will eventually run out. Using all of the material up is not the biggest threat though. It’s more likely that we can no longer reach new material because of technological or political reasons. We can only dig into the earth so far. However most of the materials we use in products today are actually sitting in landfills used in old products.

So, we should react and think of a new way of designing. By creating a circular economy we can get of our self-destructive material use. The designer should think ahead - how long will the product be used? what will happen after the user it done with it?  can the product be mended? can parts be switched out? By designing in this manner we protect the earth and also make our economies more self-sustaining. Why not create more recycling plants? Or hire workers to sort through landfills for materials which can be recycled? Surely both of those can only be for the greater good.

That is the more optimistic view point. The more cynical side of me says, with the products I will design in my lifetime, will their material use make a difference? In the grand scheme, my input will have very little effect. Go ahead and Google unsold car graveyards. Every year thousands of cars go unsold but because of the current companies, new shapes and models must be pushed out so they can keep up profits. This is just one example of wastage. Why are these cars not recycled and surely this unsustainable?

This weeks contact session was on skilled craftsmanship and what that truly means. I have two responses to this week.

Firstly,  it was brought up that many young people no longer want apprenticeships. Our presenter was adamant that this was due to government policy. The small wage given to apprenticeships putting people off. 

I agree this may be the reason people today are less likely to try for an apprenticeship but I wholeheartedly disagree that increasing the wage will fix the problem. The current minimum apprenticeship wage (employers CAN give more) is £2.73. Working on the rough assumption of 40 hours per week (full time), you earn just under £6000 a year. This doesn't seem like much when you consider for the same time in university you'll accumulate MORE than that per year in debt, is it such a bad deal? 

Surely the stigma associated with apprenticeships should be dealt with. Showing young people the other options to university is more beneficial than a rant about how the government is killing our economy with low minimum wage. 

As an aside - maybe blame the employers? Society will only move forward when we take responsibility for our actions, not when we have to legislate for every problem.

Now, point 2. It was also highlighted that traditional hand-crafts are being replaced with mass manufacturing and 3d printing. I therefore posit one simple argument. They are the new traditional craftsmanship.

Just as digital typography took over from the traditional printing press, should we fight this? As long as the quality does not deteriorate, I have no argument