Design Research Demonstration-Laundry Observation

To demonstrate my design research and make it relate to my Creative Work Project, I chose to do a behavior observation on my housemate’s laundry experience. I focused on how she transports her clothes to the washing machine and how she interacts with the machine. Her room is on the third floor and our washer/dryer combo machine is in second floor. I fallowed my housemate while she is doing the laundry. First, I noticed that she use laundry bag but not laundry basket, so she had to drag her bag and lift it when going downstairs to the laundry room.

She reached down and took her clothes out one by one and threw them into the washing machine. She left her laundry bag in laundry room and left. She waited about 30 minutes to move her clothes to the dryer. She step back and carefully opened dryer on the top of the washing machine and band down and grasped a hand of clothes up to the dryer.

She waited another 30 minutes for her clothes to dry. She took her clothes out and put them back to the same laundry bag and dragged the bag up to her room. My observation stopped here. I started ask questions about her laundry experiences. ex. How often do you do you laundry? Did you find any inconvenience while you are doing laundry? How long did you spend on it? By interviewing her, I get to know how she feel about doing laundry.

Why design now?

After reviewing all the works in the exhibition, I found most of design works contain sense of sustainability and environmental awareness. Multiple Chairs use materials that already exist but not raw material. Jetske de Groot uses up-cycling concept to create a series of furniture. Her works not only inspire others but also give the old furniture a new look and another new life circle.Green Map uses another way of communication to send the “green message” and share the information in more than many cities worldwide.

Now is the era of high-tech innovation, a lot of products and communication mediaare able to replace old design like books, magazines and printed maps efficiently and reach more people from different aspects than before. Greensulate is an organic board made from the “roots” of a mushroom. It is affordable and environmentally friendly good for use as insulating panels and also can be packaging and furniture. I find similarities in these 3 articles; where they convey the concept of environmental protection and sustainability with different approach.

Some products, apps and websites bring people together sharing the same interests; also allow people in the world share their information without delay. Social networking is becoming a trained and it sometimes can be informative and educational for me, ex. In the latest of Grey's Anatomy, the TV show, despite the commercial placement marketing, “Tweeter" is one of the teaching tool in the hospital. Interns tweet in the O.R., while operating; it allows medical school students and other professionals in their field to fellow the tweets. It is very useful for all doctors and medical professionals with live decisions and diagnosis. Doctors from other hospitals can scarab in a surgery just by tweeter. How amazing is that?!

Not only tweeter pull people together, Facebook is also informative. While I am reading something interesting, I can share it with my facebook from right away.

Some might think those social network sites pull people away from physical interaction, reducing the chance of face to face communication, however from my point of view, I argue it is the new way of communication.

Visual Design Research: Branding/Materials Review

In order to demonstrate a form of visual design research, I performed a materials review of Bay Area nonprofit arts organization Headlands Center for the Arts (full disclaimer: I am currently employed by this organization). Headlands is an organization approaching its 30^th year of service to artists and the public, and is exploring a redesign of its website; this project has raised the question of branding/identity—how should an arts organization like Headlands brand itself, and how could/should that brand identity carry through its print and digital points of contact with its audiences? As a first step in getting to know Headlands from an (somewhat) objective perspective, I gathered two to three years’ worth of print materials in order to review and assess the current status of this organization’s “brand.”

Headlands’ recent print calendars, distributed three times annually (during the Spring, Summer and Fall seasons), state this information about the organization: Situated in a campus of artist-renovated military buildings in the Marin Headlands, just minutes north of San Francisco, Headlands Center for the Arts hosts an internationally recognized Artist in Residence program, as well as interdisciplinary public programs and subsidized studio rentals for artists of all disciplines. Through these programs, Headlands offers opportunities for artist research, dialogue, and exchange which build understanding and appreciation for the role of art in society. The design of Headlands’ 2010 print calendars is unified by color palette and interior structure as well as a playful text-based design approach. These materials look nothing like Headlands’ 2009 Annual Report (prepared in 2010) which relies heavily on photography to convey Headlands’ location as well as the variety of artists and art works being supported/created on site.

The organization also produces three postcards a year in conjunction with its seasonal Open House open studio days; these postcards have historically been designed with a single photo as the primary imagery (meaning that in each artist “season,” which supports 10-15 artists, one artist’s work is featured on the postcard). The organization also utilizes a general information brochure, prepared two to three years ago; printed invite and catalog to support an annual Benefit Auction; and a printed flyer/poster supporting an annual winter exhibition, as well as additional supporting materials.

The thread of connection running through Headlands’ materials is its logo and a general commitment to photographic display of the National Park environment and participating artists’ projects, though the print calendars of 2010 deviate from the established use of photography, as do the Auction and exhibition materials. Taken at once, this organization’s materials are generally attractive and colorful, though as a whole they do not utilize any common structural features or design approaches.

A number of questions arose as I reviewed these materials: To what extent do an organization’s materials need to look familial—as in, related in a brother-and-sister fashion rather than as second cousins once removed? How might a new or improved logo function in a stronger, more integrated fashion, perhaps guiding future design projects as well as providing a cohesive, unified presentation? And how can a nonprofit best utilize print in conjunction with other media in order to achieve that cohesive look, when in Headlands’ case different designers and printers are utilized to achieve (perceived) maximum bang for each buck? This type of review would serve as the first step in developing an organization’s identity, in tandem with reviews of competitors’ materials, interviews with staff, and gathering of audience/user feedback.

(Re)Cataloging Why Design Now?

Why Design Now?—presented through eight topical themes: Energy, Mobility, Community, Materials, Prosperity, Health, Communication, and Simplicity—could also have been presented utilizing deeper people- and environment-based themes. As a part of my review of the exhibition, I chose to recatalog and diagram the exhibition elements based on five themes that were strong undercurrents in the entire triennial: empathy, awareness, alternatives, empowerment, and authenticity. There is inevitably some overlap among these themes, just as there appears to be overlap between the existing topical categories around which the exhibition was focused, but I attempted to identify the overarching person- or environment-oriented tone to each work selected (and, of course, many environment-oriented works are person-oriented works at their core). This analysis was generated after taking notes on the exhibition as a whole, then reviewing my notes for commonalities, and assessing those commonalities to further define categories. Hence the category “Alternatives” came out of notes highlighting change, sustainability, renewable, and reuse; “Empowerment” came out of affordable [housing], self-sustainability, and responsibility; “Authenticity” came out of artisanal and preservation.

After reviewing the entire exhibition, I returned to the Communications portion to make my selections. Taking into account what I saw to be the deeper themes of the exhibition—empathy, awareness, alternatives, empowerment, and authenticity—I selected The Story of Stuff and The Girl Effect.

First, The Girl Effect. Using bold and compelling colors, drawn images and typography, the video introducing The Girl Effect campaign presents the theory that “investing in adolescent girls in the developing world offers the greatest opportunity for change for them, their families, and their communities.” This is a powerful call to the world to consider the often invisible members of distant societies; to think broadly and not fear taking on large problems; to consider human needs well into the future, and to imagine a future better than the one that would be predicted by the continuation of events as they currently proceed. The video, as well as the accompanying website, is clear, simple, educational, purposeful, and hopeful, and presents a theory and solution that is at once deceptively simple and strikingly huge.

The Story of Stuff also takes on a daunting issue (the future of our planet), and dissects it in a visually friendly and informative way. It is an animated lecture featuring environmental activist Annie Leonard, delivering a message about how products affect human society and the natural world as they make their way through the cycle of material extraction, manufacturing, consumption, and disposal. This video, and the conversation behind it, brings together all of the exhibition’s stated themes as well as its themes-beneath-the-themes, as I’ve established above. The story of how consumer goods are produced, packaged, marketed and then encouraged to be thrown away in order to be bought anew is one which draws from the categories of energy, community, materials, prosperity, health, simplicity and more.

Some might say that there is a progressive bias to the exhibition; i.e. if you didn’t believe that global warming is real and that our natural resources are dwindling, you would be frustrated that so much of the exhibition is devoted to alternatives—alternative energies, packaging, transportation, etcetera. Overall, as described by my secondary themes above, the exhibition is inclined toward representing achievements in sustainability—whether that means creating products from renewable or previous discarded resources, or whether it means creating tools and systems (improved water-gathering implements, cleaner-burning stoves, small-business informational support) to assist underserved populations in overcoming roadblocks to self-sustaining growth.

Why Design Now? The clear answer is that this moment is one of amazing opportunity for designers—not just to make new things or to create new identities but to fundamentally change the way that people live on this planet, how they consume its finite resources, and how they conceive of themselves and their brethren in the context of a swiftly growing global population.

Design Research Demonstration: Throw a Party

For the demonstration of a form of visual design research, I chose to stage a small party and photograph it. Without telling the participants what I was specifically researching, I supplied drinks, martini glasses, napkins, different kinds of crackers, hummus, apples and chocolates on two different platters.
To break the ice and make it feel more like a party, I started by asking Elsa about her winter break. We got onto the subject of snowboarding, then places we've lived, and other things before I talked about what exactly I was doing by throwing the party.
I told everyone that my particular focus of the research was how they were using the martini glasses. Next steps in this line of research would be to examine the photos, zoom in on finger placement on the martini glasses, circle important variations in the way a martini glass is held.
Further research could be conducted by staging more parties with more people, video taping them, and holding them in different environments with more widely varied users.
This method could be used for a wide variety of research topics. I could have been observing interactions between the users and the plates, or preference for food types, or what triggered the flow of conversation topics. Observation is merely one method that could be used for visual design research; employing several different methods is often best for thorough examination.

Why Design Now: The Personal Touch

The Why Design Now exhibition is filled with an exciting array of new products, ideas, buildings, and modes of communication. The most prevalent theme I found was that of innovation and ways of dealing with current problems that would launch us into a new world in the future. Sustainability in terms of eco-effectiveness was a theme that cropped up again and again, as well as finding ways to solve social issues such as accessibilty, poverty and fair treatment of workers. Many of these projects seek to redefine sucess as a triple bottom line; celebrating social and ecological accomplishments as well as profits. These themes could be considered zeitgeist, as they are being focused on now perhaps more than ever before. Yet this could also come across as curatorial bias, since the design world is still working with unsustainable materials, manufacturing processes that have been around for decades, and traditional ideas and modes of communication.

The two most fascinating entries that I found in the Communications portion of the exhibition were the Multiple Family chairs and Etsy. A "maker" at heart, I was drawn to these entries that celebrated the handmade as opposed to the mass-manufactured. These entries reflect a desire for connection with one's objects that goes beyond simple functionality. The feel of familiarity that comes from the Multiple Family chairs may allow the user to feel more attached to it as an original object, lengthening its useful lifespan and further preventing it from reaching the landfill. Etsy accomplishes the same landfill avoidance by again establishing that connection from object to user, by achieving a closer association to the maker of the object. The user is able to have a more "authentic experience" with the unique handcrafted objects sold on Etsy than would be possible with a mass manufactured object. The originality of the pieces from each exhibition allow for greater communication, customization and personal connection from object to user.

Clothing from the Painted series and Alabama Chanin also close the gap between maker and user. Designers of Painted couture connect with its users early in the process to customize the pieces according to desired looks and experiences. Several makers collaborate on one piece, adding a variety of personal touches for a truly unrepeatable artifact. Familiarity is simultaneously achieved by invoking the tradition of Bulgarian needlepoint. Chanin's work again celebrates the maker by allowing them the majority of creative control; each piece is bought back from the artisan after the material is sold to them. The traditional techniques used to make each piece create a sense of nostalgia for the user, which helps cement that personal connection between user and object.

Other entries in the exhibition beyond the tangible product design world also seek to answer the desire for personal connection. Twitter users connect with each other all over the world, 24 hours a day, 140 characters at a time. Get-Together connects seniors with similar interests via telephone, spurring group meetings and activities. Nokia Open Studio reflects a desire for designers to connect to people of growing slum populations, who share their desires for a mobile device that would connect them to each other and the rest of the world.

Design and technology advances of the last century has, in some cases, inadvertently separated us from each other. Making authentic, tangible connections is becoming difficult. Computers, cubicles, automobiles, mass production and the like have promoted an environment of sterility and sameness that we naturally crave escape from. These designers have sought to challenge that separation both by returning to traditional crafts and by employing new technology. Clearly we have the ability and will to overcome the present issues, paving the way for a more creative, distinctive and united future.