Ethic Dilemas within Industrial Design

        I feel that the most important ethical dilemma within industrial design is upholding and benefiting the profession. This includes mainly keeping a professional state of mind, and being able to proudly put your name behind your design. If a product is obviously a cheap spin off of a ground breaking successful product, than as a designer you are copping out and essentially creating filler for a landfill, or at the very least a material which can be broken down and recycled into something more beneficial for mankind. Also if a product is obviously half-baked and is lacking elements of basic ergonomics or convenience, it ultimately will fail and become dollar-store material or dog and small children's chew toys. Thus devolving the ultimate goal of industrial design: facilitate life for the user and/or world.
      On a more specific note, I feel that each design should bring something new to the table. Each design might not be mind boggling or IDSA award winning material, but it should include a concept or process which has not been done before. This could even include combining two or three existing concepts and connecting them in a way which is new and innovative.
      I feel that no product should be shamelessly copying another in order for profit. Each product, even if it is in the dollar store will affect the user. If the user is shopping in the dollar store, than they probably have a hard enough life, besides battling with a poorly thought through and designed product trying to achieve whatever the products meaning in life could be.

Helfand & Drenttel

What's Helfand & Drenttel's main message?

Helfand & Drenttel’s message was to put an end to preconceived notions of  the ignorance of designers. It is that design is actually a huge ingredient in the concoction of life we call society. Design heavily influences culture and at the same time culture heavily influences design. In order for this vice versa of culture and design to exist, both have to pay especially close attention to the other. Design must reflect and embody a culture in order for its people to pick up on it. If this society of people do not pick up on this design than their culture will not reflect the design. Whereas the designs they support inevitably become associated and therefor a poster child for the culture. An example is Ferrari and Lamborghini associated with Italy and Italians. 

A statement I agree with and why:

Yet for designers, the Periodic Table, like other areas of science, is often just a genre that’s ripe for appropriation, offering an easy visual metaphor and a ready source for imagery: 

As a designer I agree with an element of this. I agree that designers see this template of a highly recognizably symbol. This is a symbol of knowledge and organization. Perfect. Of course this highly regarded symbol civilized society can and should be turned on its head, mocked, and completely redesigned. Wether this is to “generate value” or not is beside the point. The point is that designers look at something think how can I make this better? How can I make this more interesting, or humorous?

A statement I disagree with and why:

Regrettably, the current state of design education does little to refute this notion: our curricula primarily support the strengthening of formal skills and the cultivation of conceptual abilities. Intellectual diversity — and by extension, an understanding of cultural diversity — is less encouraged, but why? 

In most design schools, for instance, we discourage learning a second language because it requires too much time in the language lab and therefore away from the studio. Along the way, our young designers aren’t expected to really study science or math; history or anthropology; economics; music theory or literature. They’re not even really required to learn to write. 

As a designer I disagree with this wholeheartedly. I feel that as a designer we hold the capacity to retain and utilize bits of knowledge held in all aspects of life. Designs have to relate to humans and therefor they must be designed with human behavior and different areas of human interaction in mind. Design can focus merely on form and aesthetics, which even so differs from culture to culture. Culture is relative to the society, geographically or socially. Science, history, psychology, sociology, writing, and literature are all components which could be used in a deadly arsenal of a designer. Elements of this could be used for metaphors, ideations, and obtaining sub conscience human relation. 

How do you think Drenttel & Helfand would define 'innovation'?

I think they would define innovation as creating a new “look” or “culture” by bringing together elements of preexisting cultures and situations surrounding the environment of the product or design. 

Innovation of Use/Tyopological in Industrial Design

Transcend The world's first alpine goggles with real-time GPS data viewable through a head-mounted display system. Transcend also boasts data transfer and post-processing software.

Innovation of Use

Recon took the usual concept of goggles and added a whole slew of additional features which boost convenience and capacity of use. This is an example of innovation of use, “a product that improves or modifies its usage...as compared to products already on the market.” These goggles when given the power to project images on the screen allow many possibilities. Recon made sure to cover as many as they could think of, including capitalizing on a very popular trend of smart phones. They integrated the technology of receiving texts into the display. Although they totally revamped goggles with very new concepts of measuring speed and altitude, they made sure to also include features which are common and held dear by the people.

Typological Innovation:

The Xbox 360 is not by any means a recent development in the gaming world, however I thought of it as a very good example of typological innovation. The 360 was designed by Astro Studios in collaboration with Mike and Maaike, owners of a well known design firm. The original Xbox, designed by a Teague, a Seattle based company was a groundbreaking platform in 2001. The Xbox was a black rectangle which excentuated the letter X and worked with more geometric forms. The Xbox 360 had to have as much as an impact upon the market as the first Xbox. Therefor they switched up the design philosophy. The 360 is a white vertical hourglass shape. Mike and Maaike said they designed this with the concept of gravitational pull, hence the sides pulled in towards the middle. The overall product utilizes more organic and rounded shapes. This is even demonstrated in the controllers. Typological innovation relies on aesthetics to connivence the consumer of it’ absolute domination in presence and power than its previous model. This is normally done by turning the original product on its head and in general working with a completely different design philosophy. 

Revised Industrial Designers Dilema

Not all products designed by industrial designers are perfect. Some "walls" which prevent certain products from becoming successful are: solving the right "problem" in which to facilitate life of the consumer, and the practicality of how the product solves the problem. These two issues are the problems in which industrial designs face and must overcome to have a successful career. 

Griffith, a highly educated industrial designer, seems to be running into these "walls." A major idea  which gained Griffith a "$500,000 MacArthur Fellowship-a "genius grant,"" actually turned out to be impractical. He had developed a much cheaper and more portable way to manufacture different sizes of eyeglasses with one tooling device, his "product." Instead of fully researching the situation in order to find the real problem at hand, getting third world people the medical attention to prescribe them a correct eyeglass prescription, he assumed it would be the manufacturing. 

Griffith is no doubt a talented and skilled indivdual. He was able to create a machine which could develop a 3-D model out of chocolate from a CAD file. He also developed a device which could generate energy by swinging it around the users head. Both of these are no doubt innovational products and devices. Although in their final delivery of how they execute the function is flawed. The 3-D printing could be an incredible feat it it could be done cheaper then the existing product, but chocolate as a medium can only facilitate a chef. The same with the electric generating device, running out of battery on a cell phone or laptop is a terrible fate to happen to anyone, but to swing it around their head is seemingly one of the least practical ways to solve this issue. I have seen a concept to solve this situation of running out of battery but instead of swinging it around like a weapon, it simply is spun around the finger. 

Therefor industrial design is the melding of not only form and function, but there are many other considerations to be had while sitting down sketching. The issue of solving the right problem for the situation and solving it in a practical way are both imperative issues which must be met in order to have a successful product as we can see with Griffith's sitauation. To avoid this dilemma I feel that a little more research such as, simply talking and consulting other designers, and people who will be affected by this design can solve these problems. 

Homework 8.30.2011

2) What types of problems or dilemmas similar to those that Griffith encounters are you aware of in your own design field?

     The key of industrial design is to solve a problem at hand, heightening the quality of life for those who are effected by the problem. Griffith seems to have a habit of solving the wrong problem. This was the issue with his eyeglass manufacturing machine. Although it was very efficient, simply shipping eyeglasses from China solved that problem. The actual problem at hand preventing people in third world countries from obtaining eyeglasses was the issue of knowing what prescription they needed. 

       One other problem which seemed to face Griffith was the practicality of his designs. This resulted in an alienation of the larger market of the general population, which promotes products and yields success to the designer. A couple of his products which come to mind that fall under this category are his compact generator which was used by swinging it around the users head; the other is his machine which can take digital designs into three dimensional objects, but the object is chocolate. This is a cool idea, but the market for that is so limited, rendering the product not so much of a success. If he were able to put this technology into something more people could utilize I feel like it would become much more popular of a product.

      All of these issues are very relevant to industrial design. The foundation of industrial design is finding the perfect combination of form and function. However, there are many other factors to be kept in mind for a successful design. The materials, manufacturing process, and most of all the audience are a few key elements of design.

3)  How are these problems being solved? Write down what you find. 

    I feel like these problems are solved within any highly successful product. Such as the iPod, television, and folding bag chairs. These products were able to address the general population and trigger a positive response. Each one of these products took an existing quality of life: music, seating and packaged them in a unique, more portable, and generally more convenient way. 

1. Additional question: Try to identify the types of problems that Owen describes. Some of these are encountered directly by Griffith; others are articulated by him. There are at least six. 

1. Enough money to fund designs
2. People losing interest in environmentally sustainable products because they are more expensive and less convenient. 
3. Identifying and solving the wrong problem to his perceived problem in society. 
4. The practicality of his designs. 
5. Making job specific products without a well thought out audience to support the product.
6. He struggles with trying to keep each of his designs absolutely revolutionary and unique. He states that its “tempting to become a very vanilla consulting company.” This is ambitious and the opportunity is great for success, however it is much more difficult to find success in this field of ground breaking products. Part of this is due to bureaucracy which was found when dealing with sustainable energy products.