Gary Hustwit: Objectified

“Objectified” is a feature –length documentary about our relationship with manufactured products and the characters who designed them. Directed by Gary Hustwit.

The short film started out with the argument; “everything in our lives is designed”. This message at first seems clichéd and rather generalizing. But when though about carefully and as the theme starts to take form in “objectified”, the viewer soon realises that they are indeed living in a world where everything has been designed and made from someone’s idea. But then comes the problem; what is good and what is bad design?

Dieter Rams, a world renowned German Industrial Designer, states that there are too many things in our world which are totally unnecessary. Too many things have been drawn out and made without much deep, meaningful thoughts gone in to them. For example a rubber iPod case, why not just design a product that doesn’t need an additional product to prolong its sustainability? Rams states that not many companies today take the issue of design seriously, apart from one, Apple.

Apple Designer, Jonathan Ive, points out some interesting points when presenting the viewer with the parts and steps involved in making a macbook.

He made me realise that consumers take design for granted in the everyday objects that we use every single day just because it has become such an ordinary part in our lives. Jonathan Ive points out that consumers think products have the forms they have because they’re just ‘meant’ to look that way. For example, ‘of course an iPhone would look like this…’ or ‘How else would an iPod look like’. All of these are assumptions that happen consciously or subconsciously when a product is presented to the viewer. This is stated near the start of the short film; “objectified”. Millions of assumptions are made towards the product the second it hits our eyes.

“Objectified” also brings the element of sustainability and the environmental impacts of products to the viewers’ attention. For example, if something I’ve designed today is going to end up in the dump in 4 or 5 years from now, is that really good design even if the consumer liked it when they first bought it? Well-designed products should last a long time and even if it doesn’t it should have as less impact on the environment as possible. A part of the short-film inspired me as it mentions, instead of losing interest and attraction to a product over time, we should like it even more as it accompanies us through individual stages of our lives. This reminds me of my old iPhone. When I first bought the phone in grade 11, I cherished it like I would my favourite toy as a child. I would rather the cuts; dints and scratches transferred on to my arm then end up on the screen its smooth, silver back. Then as time past, I had subconsciously relied more and more aspects of my life on the phone that at times when it went missing, I would have trouble going through my day or have nothing to do on long bus rides. But then came the day when I had dropped it one too many times or when it came with contact with one too many drops of water. Normally I would be happy to replace my phone and be excited to buy a new one but since I have built this invisible and strange relationship with this phone, I did not want another one.

I guess this was exactly what was described in “objectified” as the relationship between a product or an object and its designer or consumer. This short-film has made me look at objects in my life differently and not just view it as something that was always meant to have the shape it has or look a certain way, but has something that has been carefully and specifically thought-out and designed.

Philippe Starck: Design for Life

In the six episodes of the television mini-series; “Design for Life”, one of the world’s most renowned designer: Philippe Starck and his team has chosen twelve people ranging from 19 to 32 years of age to compete for 6 months work experience in Starck’ agency. During this time, each of them must complete tasks set by Philippe Starck himself and convince him that they are the one who deserves this opportunity.

From a couple of episodes in, I realised one thing. All the contestants came in to this show expecting and wanting to impress Starck with their ability to design or their creativity and ideas. But slowly, I noticed that this is not what Starck was looking for. Starck set these tasks with one goal in mind and that is to train the students’ ways of thinking in to the way a designer thinks. With every project, Starck is constantly looking at how the students have approached the tasks and how they have come to the conclusions of each task. Starck tries to train them to think like a designer instead of just waiting for ideas to pop out of nowhere. Using the tasks, Starck repeatedly emphasise a few elements he wants the students to focus on, which are; the benefit for mankind, sustainability, ecology and ethicality.

For their final project, each of them were to design a product that was non-electrical, democratic, ecological, ethical and for daily use. Not one student’s achievement was satisfactory for Starck because they have all failed to present a finished designed product. As a designer it is your responsibility to design the product and figure out how it is going to be produced and used by the consumer. It is not enough to just to merely transfer your dreams on to your art diary. I have learnt this through the episodes of “design for life” as well as in the Industrial Design course at university.

In one of the episodes, Philippe Starck points out that Designers possess the powers to affect everyone in this world through the objects that surround us everyday. This reminded me just how important Design is to each one of us and how it is such a big part of our lives. This thought was very overwhelming and continues to inspire me every time I am reminded of it. It pushes me to challenge myself to become a better design student and hopefully one day become a designer that can have a positive impact on this world and the people that live in it.

Experience Enrichment Comments

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Project One: Experience Enrichment

Rationale:

The hand-tool chosen and re-designed was a toothbrush aimed at a target consumer of children 4-8 years of age. This product was chosen because it is often noticed that a child’s hand is less co-ordinated and strong as an adult’s. This often makes simple tasks such as holding hand-tools like knives and forks or bathroom utensils more difficult for children.

A solution to this problem was to make the grip larger and rounder so it is easier to ‘grab’ for a child’s hand. The egg-shaped handle toothbrush allows a child’s hand to wrap itself around it without making the child’s fingers overlap which can often cause problems and decrease the grip on the hand-tool. The shape also allows a variation of hand-sizes to use. Wether it’s a 4-year-old girl or an 8-year-old boy brushing their teeth, their hands are still going to wrap around the toothbrush the same way.

The toothbrush is also s

elf-standing which prevents the bristles of the toothbrush from touching the surfaces of its surroundings such as the bathroom sink, which are always covered with germs and bacteria. This helps decrease the a

mount of bacteria entering the child’s mouth and helps prevent sickness and nagging flu’s. The self-standing toothbrush would also draw attention and interest from the child and enhance the child’s experience while using the toothbrush. Engaging with the toothbrush should help make tooth-brushing a more pleasurable experience for the child instead of a chore.

The toothbrush can be manufactured using simple injection moulding methods with inexpensive plastics such as polystyrene (PS) or polypropylene (PP). The Bristles are made of synthetic nylon fibres.

Task 5: Design Confusion

Life Pscycle-ology - The Secret Life of a Little Mobile Phone

This educational short film gives us a view on what we don’t normally see or take notice but is surely part of everyone’s everyday life. It follows the life of a mobile phone from being collected as from resources, manufactured, assembled, sold, bought, loved, used, replaced and forgotten.

Usually we use our phones for a year or two, maybe three if they’re lucky. But what happens to them after that? How many of us actually recycle or treat them properly after they are no longer in use? This creates an enormous amount of junk and wastes our resources as we leave them in the dumps. Only 1% of all the mobile phones are given new life through recycling. Products are often designed to last only for a short period of time before being replaced by faster and better ones. This makes consumers want to spend more money on replacements for the old products. Products like mobile phones and digital cameras should be designed so that they can be upgraded or easily disassembled after their lifetime so that materials and resources don’t get thrown away and wasted.

Mobile phones and electronic products such as digital cameras and memory sticks can be ‘designed for disassembly and longevity’. This enables re-usable components and materials such as; gold, palladium, nickel and silver, to be recovered and reused new products. Nowadays companies are starting to recognize the opportunity in transforming valuable pieces inside these used products into pieces for new products ready to be used again.

It is important when designing products to make sure there are designed for disassembly and longevity. Firstly if they last longer, then fewer replacements need to be bought and less waste is reacted. Secondly if products can be disassembled easily, they don’t need to be shredded in pieces just to recover the valuable resources and materials inside them.

Don Norman: Emotional Design

In this video, Don Norman discusses the concept of emotional design, the subject of his book, Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things.

One of things I learnt from this video is that everyday objects can easily affect us in an emotional way, consciously or not. They can do that in a variety of ways; the how they look, feel, function or the way they interact with us. For example, if a product functions perfectly well like a sharp pair of scissors but look horrendous or feel terrible in your hand then they’ll still create a negative emotion in your mind. But if an object functions perfectly well and looks and feels great then the chances are we’re going to like using this particular product.

Don Norman points out the fact that a well-designed product needs generate positive emotions in the consumer without having to over compensate in its functionality or appearance. The examples he used are the dashboards of several Mercedes-Benz and BMW vehicles. While attempting to gather more controls and combine them on an electrical screen, they leave drivers scratching their heads and fiddling with the computer screens.

“Take the front seats in my S550 test car, for example. You can easily spend 15 minutes fiddling with them before even putting the car in drive.”

As consumers wants more and more features in their cars, more buttons and controls need to be added to the cars. But it’s about how easy they are differentiated amongst each other or how easily they can be located and utilised. If there is a row of a dozen identical buttons with tiny symbols above each one, it is not going to be easy for the driver to find the right one while driving.

Norman points out that one of the challenges of our future is to successfully improve the functionality of products without making the process of using it much more complicated and time-consuming. This is what generates a positive emotional response in the consumer when using a product that not only functions well but is easy and fun to use.