the little things we complain about...

This is so funny. Here's a link to Louis CK on Conan, called "Everything's amazing, nobody's happy". It's about how spoiled we are these days with technology. It reminded me of my past discussion about the paradox of choice. There are so many funny one-liners that are so true!

"How quickly the world owes him something he knew existed only 10 seconds ago."
"You're sitting on a chair... in the sky."
"Give it a second. It's going to space!"

Learning from Nature

I've always loved nature, and in the last year or so I've become fascinated by biomimicry- learning how we can mimic nature in design. Ideally this design allows us to solve problems more efficiently, causing less environmental damage. For example, there is quite a bit of design happening that mimics gecko feet for adhesion purposes and lotus leaves for their ability to self-clean.

My classmate John and I were just chatting about jellyfish and squid and he mentioned a TED talk by David Gallo called, "Underwater Astonishments." I love the bioluminescence of some of the jellies in this video. And the Octopus Vulgaris's ability to change pattern, color, brightness and TEXTURE to blend into its surrounding algae is absolutely incredible (see above).

I'm perplexed by how much money we spend on space exploration, when we've only explored 3% of the deep sea and it is believed to house more diversity than the tropical rainforests. Time to go scuba...

Design Project 3 - DIRT STOP

The Problem:
Teens and adults in the US maintain poor eating habits that are manifested as unhealthy diets and serious medical problems. Unhealthy eating is encouraged starting in childhood in the form of prepared snacks and meals that conceal the origin of the food and disconnect the consumer from the process of preparation.





Framework developed from human factors research- shows a void of individuals who understand the origin of food and who are significantly involved in food preparation.




Design Principles for DIRT STOP:




The goal of DIRT STOP is to provoke ...

behavior change in kids aged 4-11 towards a lifestyle that involves
healthy eating by creating an experience that enhances the
understanding of the origin of food and regularly
engages kids in the process of
food preparation.


Where can DIRT STOP experience be implemented and who benefits?






Who wins?

- Children and Parents! Kids look forward to grocery trips. They are engaged with family and friends. It’s fun to play with food while learning where it comes from.

- Businesses! It’s a play destination that regularly draws customers to the store. Our framework shows that it fills an opportunity gap.

- Humana! Behavior change in childrens’ eating habits translates to healthier adults with fewer medical problems.
“Obesity-associated annual hospital costs for children and youth more than tripled over two decades” - Institute of Medicine

- The Earth! Customers shop for local and organic foods and demand products with less packaging.

Do too many choices make us feel worse?

As a follow up to Gladwell’s talk, I watched Barry Schwartz's TED Talk, The Paradox of Choice (start watching at about 8:00). It’s an interesting comparison to Gladwell’s talk because Schwartz discusses the negative consequences of having too many choices. He says the first effect of it is that we experience a sense of paralysis- not knowing what to decide upon. Secondly, and what I find most interesting, is that because we are faced with so many choices (for example- 46 styles of tomato sauce- chunky, zesty, etc.) we end up less satisfied with our resulting choice than if we had had fewer options. This is because it’s easy to imagine that we could have made a different and better choice and these imagined alternatives induce us to regret the decision we made. This regret subtracts from our satisfaction even if our decision was a good one.

Part of the reason we feel worse with our decisions when we have so many things to choose from is because our expectations of how something should be go up with so many options. Schwartz tells a story of when he went jeans shopping and had to decide between hundreds of different styles, cuts, washes, thicknesses, materials, etc. He ended up picking jeans that were definitely more comfortable than he says jeans used to be without all the choices, but nevertheless, he was less satisfied than he used to be. He said he “did better but felt worse.” I like his explanation for this. He says that because there are so many options, we become responsible for the outcome, not the jean maker or the world around us. When you don’t feel completely satisfied, you think to yourself, “I could have done better.” There is no excuse for failure and we blame ourselves. Schwartz connects this to the boom in clinical depression over the last couple decades. We may be doing better with all these choices, but we feel worse.

Schwartz argues that the more options there are, the easier it is to regret anything at all that is disappointing about the choice you made. From an economist’s perspective, this is like opportunity cost: how much we value things depends on what we compare them to. It’s easy to see attractive features of things we reject and this makes us less satisfied with alternative we choose. At a more general level, a common belief is that income redistribution only benefits the poor. Schwartz continues to argue, however, that reducing choices is a pareto improving move. What enables choice is material affluence. Therefore if choices are reduced, and income is redistributed, everyone will be better off, because as we’ve learned, too much choice can make us feel worse even if we’re doing better.

I find Schwartz’s discussion very pertinent for the consumer. While we may have a taste for variety, it is not necessarily in our best interest to be bombarded with so many choices. Some choice is better than none but we've passed the point where so many options improve our welfare. As Schwartz puts it, “everyone needs a fishbowl.”

How much variety do we desire?

Malcolm Gladwell is the author of the Tipping Point and Blink, and in his TED talk, "What we can learn from spaghetti sauce," he discusses the contributions of Howard Moskowitz, an experimental psychologist who fundamentally changed our understanding of what people want and how the world of marketing can use this information.

For a long time in the food industry there was the belief that people wanted the most “culturally authentic” food: For example, we thought we all wanted thin tomato sauce that sinks to the bottom as the Italians enjoy it. People thought that if we were given this culturally authentic style of food, we would embrace it. We were looking for “cooking universals” but soon we came to realize that authenticity was not actually what we preferred. It’s hard to imagine in this age of excessive choice, but for a long time, products were developed in a way to appeal to all consumers, not specific sub-populations (chunky, garden variety, spicy). I thought it was interesting that Gladwell connected the surge of choices in products to the study of genetics. He says that genetic variability opened the door to understanding variability in a broader sense. We no longer were just figuring out cancer, rather we were at the point where we were asking the question of how one cancer varied from another cancer.

As a designer, what I find interesting is the notion that people are often unable to articulate what they like or want. You can’t expect that interviews with subjects will directly answer your questions or solve a design problem. You have to actually give people the examples of what you are talking about and assess how they react to it. For instance, no one was saying that they wanted chunky tomato sauce. Even when asked directly if they like it, they didn’t know that chunky was what they wanted. But after administering a taste test analyzing numerous variables, it became evident that chunky was one of the most preferred attributes in tomato sauce. This idea that people often can’t explain what they want or need is very compelling to me as a designer. I think about this when I interview people and try to hear what they are not saying. I am learning the value of presenting prototypes and gathering feedback based on reactions rather than just asking what people think of an idea.

Gladwell further explains that even when we think we can articulate what we want, we are often way off. He says that when you ask someone what type of coffee he or she likes, no one says they want weak, milky coffee. The majority of people say they like a dark, full-bodied roast. But the reality is that studies show that most people prefer the weak, milky stuff. Gladwell also discusses the idea of horizontal plane segmentation- the example of the grey poupon mustard popularity- where you turn your back on something you like for something you aspire to. I find this very intriguing.

Gladwell contends that when we pursue universal principles, we are actually doing ourselves a massive disservice. He says that in embracing the diversity of human beings we will find a sure way to true happiness. It’s an excellent talk but I think certain points are arguable. I’ll discuss the issues of having too much variety in my next post. In general, I think that society has a hard time managing excessive options and we’ve gotten to a point where so many options are benefiting the suppliers now more than the consumers.

Design Project 2

This project is for our client, Humana, a health insurance company that's trying to approach health from a wellness rather than sickness management perspective. Our job is to see how we could achieve this by designing a product or system that encourages behavior change.

Our assignment:
- Provide additional insights into consumer attitudes and behaviors relative tohealth
- Identify unmet/unspoken needs relative to health
- Generate ideas for products and service that meet those needs
- Create basic prototypes of those ideas
- Concepts of systems for behavior intervention
- Presentation clearly outlining the system, how it works, and how it can scale

The first steps in this project involved brainstorming and human factors research.
Ethnographic research- I've interviewed over 25 people in the last week regarding the issue of health. As we refine the scope of our design I've been refining my questions and picking more specific populations to interview.

I started by interviewing individuals who spanned the gamut of "extreme users" in regards to insights on health: alcohol addiction, exercise obsession, serious althlete, new mom, pre-diabetic (extreme diet change), very healthy eater, unhealthy eater, unaware eater, single full-time working mother of preschooler, overweight and unmotivated individual, manager of a store that sells pre-made almost-ready meals, hospital cafe staff, Stanford janitor.

I gathered heaps of great information from these individuals that helped us refine our scope.

I'm paired with John and David for this project. In our most recent brainstorm, we narrowed in on an idea that spawned from three of our high-level categories that developed from our preliminary human factors research:

1. ritual
2. uninvolved/inactive kids
3. power of psychological/mental

Our idea has to do with the process of food creation/preparation- the reality that most kids are not involved in the process of making what they eat- also that they are unaware of the origin of the foods they eat. We suspect this lead to adults who are unaware of how to prepare tasty, healthy foods. This results in an unexcitement with food preparation, and an indifference towards the increasingly prevalent unhealthy and wasteful trends of eating.

Since the first round of interviews, we've defined our user group to be elementary-middle school-aged children.
I've moved into interviewing: 5th grader who has healthy eating habits, mother of 5th grader who has an extremely obese sister and niece, 3rd grader who has moderately healthy eating habits, mother of 3rd grader who is very busy with three kids and a full-time job, my own mom on how she raised me to be a healthy eater.
I'm hoping to gain access to a school lunch to observe- or at least observe at a large gathering of children and hopefully introduce some prototypes if we have time.

Images below:

I think the current food pyramid is an aweful design. I remember when it was revealed and I felt the same way then (even before I became a critical designer...). The shape affords no hierarchy of information- apart from the yellow strip (the bad stuff) I have no idea from this chart what stuff I should be eating the most.


















This is a photo of a typical meal order at "delish"- the store that sells fresh and frozen almost-ready meals. The most interesting thing I learned from my conversation with the manager was that the 'psychologial effect of saying "I made dinner" is so critical to this company's success.' I found this intriguing. It's more than just knowing it's healthy food- it's that feeling that you're doing something good for your kids- that you put some time into preparation, that allows you to not get mad at yourself for picking up takeout or microwave a dinner. Even though it might only require 10 minutes of prep, it's enough to allow busy moms and dads to feel like they are good parents. And this is essential in preventing a downward spiral of unhealthy habits.

I'm beginning to observe how exactly kids eat. We brainstormed the types of snacks kids like:
themed, crunchy/crispy, with hands, one at a time, rolled, funsize (mini), inedible looking or named, on a stick, pop it in your mouth.

We are fascinated by the "ants on a log" concept and will be expanding more on this over the course of the next week and a half for our design solution.

through a kid's eyes

:: armpit, background objects, electrical outlet ::



















The four year-old who took these photos may have been trying to capture our faces, but this is what he took, and the reality is that this is what he's also seeing and noticing. These are things that are at his height and capture his interest. I love giving the subjects of my photographs the camera themselves and seeing the world through their lens. I've done quite a bit of collaborative photography in the past as an art student at Northwestern. I think this interest makes a natural progression into my new career as a designer because I'm realizing the value of empathy and being able to see the world from someone else's perspective. A child's perspective is so raw and unscathed by assumptions and jaded views. As an adult, it's easy to overlook so many things that surround us because we are so set in our routine subconscious definitions of how things work. If we put on our child goggles, I think we'll have the opportunity to truly notice and observe our surroundings, even the most seemingly mundane.

translucence

I thought these leaves, which were just beginning to change to yellow for the fall, were so beautifl in the sunlight- I find it interesting how the sun almost creates a white border around each leaf. And the overlapping shapes can get very complex. I like trying to figure out what this new color is that the overlap is creating. In general, I also think translucence can be a powerful tool for design displays or presentations.

Is design only limited to things that are tangible?

Reflection:

In light of our most recent project for Humana, I think this is an interesting question to discuss. DP3 attacks the large issue of health- we’re supposed to make a product or service, but we are getting at something very intangible. A possible design solution could be viewed as a tangible bike sharing program but the scope of the design and impact are much less tangible than moving people around on bikes. Beginning with the background behavioral science research and ethnographic studies phase of the design process, it is evidenced that we are not thinking about tangible things. The way people act, their motivations in life, their values and judgments—are all intangible things. From my interviews, I’ve realized that health is manifested (and recognized) in so many different ways from one individual to another—from weight to disease, fitness to consistency in checkups. We can’t just be focused on something that is clear or definite. We have to ask questions that deal with things completely unrelated to health that will hopefully inform us of how to tap into the issue of health. Lifestyles essentially define much of health but they are not tangible things. Lifestyles are affected by culture, social norming, jobs, families, religion, wealth, etc. When all these things are informing health decisions, we can’t possibly pretend that a design for the issue of health necessarily is going to result in something tangible. If we begin with an intangible concept- like health and lifestyle, it’s likely that the solution will likely also be intangible. Nevertheless, everything is always expressed somehow, in some fashion. So if we take the definition of tangible to be something “real” then certainly all design is tangible. Design is not just a final product or experience but it embodies everything that leads up to its creation.

PEZ or shipping containers? (scale and appearance)

I went to the Alameda flea market today and I loved the location where it is held- the huge shipping containers all scattered around like colored PEZ, and the enormous lifts that pluck them up into the air as if they are no heavier than PEZ. It reminded me of the effect scale has on the individual's sense of reality. It also seemed a bit ridiculous. In light of my thoughts last week about gravity with the Q drum invention- this is just so anti-gravity. To build these enormous lifts only to move a container from one place to another- it seems like such a waste of energy, materials, etc. Maybe it is not, but that's the way these lifts made me feel. It's interesting to think that maybe these lifts are extremely efficient and it's just their appearance that makes me feel like they are wasteful. It reminds me that, in general, an object's design may be efficient and well-made, but if it appears otherwise, it may lose the interest of many users. Even though these lifts seem excessive, I'm still attracted to them because of their sheer scale.

a different perspective

As I took photos of a few projects tonight, I found myself attracted to a yellow rose in my kitchen. I examined the seemingly never-ending folds of the petals. I took at least twenty photos before I decided to turn it around. I was blown away at how much more stunning and unique the backside of the rose was. This type of discovery has happened to me before so I wanted to make note of it, as a personal reminder, to always look at an object or individual or whatever I'm observing, from a different perspective. It's amazing what emerges just by turning your head or putting yourself in someone else's shoes. Perspective is key.

doodles

My highlighter leaked on a stack of papers. I enjoyed the chromatography that sneaked out- so I cut the corners of my papers off and arranged them in this pattern. I like the idea of this gradient for visual design and for creating texture.

I was on the train and decided to see if I could capture the essence of my neighbors' portraits in a simple line drawing. At first I didn't think I was successful, but after shading in the different values (either skin or hair) I find that these quick snapshots are enough for me to relatively accurately visualize most of these peoples' physiognomies! I especially remember the two on the upper right, the middle two on the right, and the bottom right ones. It's actually fascinating that something so basic can really trigger a clear image of their face in my mind. It makes me think that we have so much stored up there, we just need something to bring it to the surface. I need to keep this in mind when I design. I feel like there's a lot of potential here.

This is truly a doodle. But I enjoy what differing line lengths can do- in terms of movement and emphasis.

Straight vs. curvy lines- how do they affect the mind- what do they remind of us- how do they affect our moods. Does any of this matter in design? I definitely think so.

designs that make me think

An ongoing collection of designs that make me re-think certain assumptions and will serve as an impetus to think "out of the box"

DESIGN CAN CREATE TIME

The design itself is so simple, it's genius- the pot inside a pot notion with water in between, creating a mini-fridge, I believe because of the evaporative cooling. Regardless of how it exactly works, my favorite part about this design is the effect it has on the user. The designer notes that because of the device, women can keep their produce longer (more than a week) rather than rushing to sell within a day before it goes bad. This allows them to attend school and do other tasks in the newly generated free time. Amazing. 

DESIGN RECOGNIZES AND MAKES FRIENDS WITH GRAVITY

The first time I read about this rolling water idea I loved it. It puts the task of carrying water into the hands of anyone (child, elderly, etc.) who can pull a rope. It doesn't require the energy or strength or balance that carrying water on the head does. And I imagine the movement- constant swashing around- keeps the water from getting stagnant. Just the general idea of working with gravity- or at least considering it when designing- seems so obvious yet can generate new solutions to current design problems. Or can provide improvements to designs that you may not even realize are design problems...

Does all design have a designer?

Reflection:

I was thinking about this notion and the general assumption that design has a designer. This really seems like a chicken and the egg type of question. I pondered nature as an example- and the fact that nature exists without a "human" designer yet it clearly produces designs. For instance, the vascular system of a plant- it's an ingenious solution for water transport and defies gravity and is so effective- yet no person figured this out and made it, of course. The design emerged from its surroundings and the necessities of of what existed. 

Does that mean that design just emerges eventually, with time and evolution? Certainly designers have expedited this process. Therefore, from the perspective of a human thinking in terms of generations, not eons, I think that most design has a designer but some designs can just emerge based on circumstance.

I think it usually takes a designer to notice what is emerging and make it into something though. A user can practically generate a design- which would imply that anyone-- not just designers-- can design. For example- a baby grasping onto a chair and pushing it while walking practically designs itself into a baby walker- but an adult watching this must translate this action using creative powers into something feasible and thus the baby walker is born. Then, on the other hand, there are designers seeking out possible designs to make- they are searching for problems, and poor user-interface, ugly objects, and dysfunctional design. And with discovery, they are able to focus on an idea and make or improve a design. 

Here is my mind-map relating to the question of design having a designer.

Design Project 1

The second ME 313 design problem deals with designing an emergency relief shelter.

There are many specifics

noted, such as:

a) the shelter should be able to be deployed by an illiterate population or a child

b) the shelter has to be more durable than a tent

c) the shelters should be able to stack and allow for food/water rations

d) consider long-term use of the shelter- ie. after the emergency is over. * I think this point is interesting to brainstorm *

There are so many more things to consider. Such as- what type of emergency is it? Flood, terrorism, civil strife, hurricane/wind. These all affect the type of structure we design (durability, safety, temperature control, flatness of ground).

Karen and I are teamed for this project. We started out by brainstorming the essentials- structure, disaster type, deployment options, etc.

We brainstormed ideas- I'm researching origami for folding material- Robert Lang's designs for airbags, heart stents and 100 meter diameter lenses for space telescopes- all of which fold up relatively tiny- serve as inspiration.

We also discussed the idea of two elements rather than one- a main structure and then a roof. This seems potentially more achievable to design than a one-piece structure.

In the end, we decided on displaced people and refugees of civil strife to be our target user group for the shelter.


Design goals:

1. Self-Assembly- simple and safe deployment- (so that children can easily put the shelter together and it has a slow, expansion-type deployment so they are not be injured when it pops open).
2. Reinforcement for long-term use- (because many of these shelters together turn into communities that last long after the initial displacement- potentially for years).
3. Construction transparency- (so that the shelter can be easily taken apart after the disaster and used for parts- i.e., foam roof for bedding, aluminum bars for new structures, etc.)

Design features:
a. airflow under the roof
b. protection from intense sun- separate roof and dark/light colors of shelter help regulate temperature throughout the day
c. color- UN blue
d. size- can stand under it, sleeps 2+
e. single- action deployment
f. shape allows for formation of community of structures- ideal for safety, weather protection, and extended families

The following are a few images from our final presentation. (The model is 1:2.5 scale- the real thing would be more than twice as big- roughly 8ft tall and deep, and between 4 and 5 feet wide- depending on which part of the shelter you are in)

Design Project 0

This is the first design project for ME 313. It has to do with the overload of digital media we face in modern society and asks you to develop a potential product or experience solution to this issue.

I "mind-mapped" ideas about about my feelings about analog vs. digital photography.

Then I got to the root of the question which was,

"why do we even take a photo to begin with?"

I decided that we:

a) want to preserve our own memories and feelings, and

b) want to share these with others

My design solution was to tackle that initial moment when you take a photo, rather than deal with the aftermath. My "flick : slide : squeeze" camera:

1) captures the visceral response of the user and matches this to the importance of the photo (ie. the flick is a photo with little value, just a quick capture; whereas the squeeze is of utmost importance and, seeing as these "squeeze" photos will take up a lot of digital memory, the camera's squeeze mechanism records the accumu

lations of squeezes so that you are aware of your decisons. The "slide" photos fall between the flick and squeeze)

2) this device can be taken to different levels of specificity depending on the user

3) the images end up in different places- this saves time and makes it easier to share.