Citizen Designer in Three “Built” Projects

This week our class was prompted to relate three built projects in the world to the Citizen Designer, an article by Steven Heller and Veronique Vienne.

I chose to illustrate the principles via 3 different design industries:

1. Product Design

2. Music Industry

3. Architecture

Article Take-Away

Citizen Designer calls attention to the premise of design as citizenship and the evolution of society to approach design as a “professional”. This is an interesting observation to me, because I feel like I see this tendency a lot in the university setting. The university and “having a degree” and everything is very often (more often than not most likely) attributed to the prosperity of “self interest” in the modern psyche. Luckily as arch or design students we are forced to take ecological concerns into account all the time, but I still feel we are pushed to consider and react to things professionally and without personal outlook sometimes. Simultaneously, this ability needs to be in-check of course, this is why I like the idea of the Bauhaus notion of “Objective Rationalism”, and especially the non-biased Cranbrook critique experiment from Pg. 8 . I think an important part to this article is to visualize this human tendency as almost as some kind of super power that enables awesome design, but must be identified / contained / and controlled to be a rational and logical designer at all times. (I believe I am paralleling Marvel’s Human Torch at this point)

AB ROLLER- INFOMERCIAL PRODUCTS

1. One example of obvious failed design is a lot of cheap products that could be found on late night infomercials. I haven’t come up with a great catchy word for it yet but it’s something like- once removed…secondary stage… product design. Where as primary stage would be the initial design that already works and the second design is based off. As a society we have developed an attraction to products and inventions that simplify everyday processes- but this cycle has gotten out of control with some of these cheap infomercial products. There are all kinds of examples of this but just for the sake of naming one everyone can recognize , let’s go with the “Ab Roller”. This product is a completely unnecessary “secondary stage” design as we have already found methods of exercising that are scientifically proven to keep you in shape, but we as a society get a thrill out of seeing these “too-good-to-be-true” inventions that claim to simplify a process that we are too lazy to do the right way- when really they are only unnecessary and can be identified as the Citizen Designer’s notion of “wasteful design” – operating of a business scheme mentality.

 

ARTURIA MINIBRUTE ANALOG SYNTHESIZER

2. On another level, in the music industry- products have been tailored so much to match the digital age of music production, relying on 100% on digital electrical signals (1’s and 0’s) rather than actual electrical current responsible for variations in sound . This is why I, as a somewhat self-proclaimed musician, am excited to see a new wave of analog synthesizers coming out. Such as the “Arturia Minibrute”.
http://www.arturia.com/evolution/en/products/minibrute/intro.html

This product engages a few aspects mentioned in the Citizen Designer. Namely, the necessity to connect product design with something threaded deeper in society than “business success”. In the Minibrute’s case, this is the late struggle of digital/analog in the music industry.

The Minubrute takes some interesting approaches to these confrontations. Placing lots of emphasis on physical attributes- such as perfecting the feel and action of knobs and faders on the interface. This might sound arbitrary, but think about if you’re playing live music and your volume knob slips out of control and you fry some speakers or something. Not good. Also its a simple matter of putting comfortable control back into the users hands. They also put a lot of attention into the feel of the keys. This is what makes the design successful in the 2nd wave of analog instruments.

3. I wanted to pick something of a larger scale for my last example. I remember seeing this video for a disposable coffee cup-inspired disaster shelter. It approaches ecological design as a societal responsibility in a multitude of ways.

Awesome Video: http://vimeo.com/89316055

The structure is an insulated rigid structure known as the “Exo” Here are some design details:

80 square feet

sleeps 4 adults

climate controlled

digital door locks

remote monitored temp. and fire detection

under 400 lbs

It is designed specifically for economic efficiency, ease of transport , and ease of installation (can be moved by 4 people and set up in two minutes without tools)

This approach to design can be adapted my many different fields- that is, taking a cultural need and basing design around it.

Comment from Classmate:

“1. Totally agree with this. Why people spend good amounts of time making these things blows my mind. I love infomercials just because they are so outrageous. I have never seen anything about the Exo before, but I love this idea. I love the fact that the idea came from to go coffee cups. It really makes so much sense though. If only we could take the people wasting their time making info-crap and put them to use making cool stuff like this. Or possibly if this idea got translated into dealing with slums or something? Theres a whole other level of problems there, but I could see it somehow translating.” -Chloe

Chloe and I share this vision of an application to different sectors besides disaster relief. There is a lot of territory to explore in applying this type of citizen design to low-income areas, or even correcting unsustainable practices of urban sprawl or high density living.

1/2 Baked Power Outlet Design

Nate Kaylor

Half Baked Design: Power Outlets

I used this opportunity to expand on something that’s bothered me for a long time. An everyday object that keeps getting overlooked as other technology evolves around it is: The Power Outlet.

EXHIBIT A:

Some general information can be obtained on the “AC power plugs and sockets” Wikipedia, and is actually quite fascinating.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AC_power_plugs_and_sockets Power sockets were a late 19^th century invention that served as the interface between external energy and internal application. As consumer culture grew in the 21^st century, a dependence on electricity accompanied it- and now we have come to the point where every electric consumer device plugs into this thing that is essentially the same as it was 100 years ago.

The reason it hasn’t changed is obvious, it’s not really a ‘broken’ device. It works fine and we’ve just decided to keep growing as a civilization with these unchanging portals around our buildings. But when we look at the problems it causes us on a daily basis, we can start to consider a ½ baked design to replace it and implement a new way to harness electricity all over internal structures.

Problems:

• no standard international power socket
• Complication of trying to access power sockets
• The ridiculousness in the amount of battery powered devices we depend on wired power for when we primarily use them indoors anyway.

In a world without limitation: My ½ baked solution will take place in three stages in order to gradually wean society off of the concept of chords and power sockets altogether. 

Stage 1: Wireless AC sockets can be purchased which transmit electric power anywhere in a building and siphon electricity wirelessly from infrastructure built into the walls of every room (no more complicated than the troubles we go through currently to equip a room with power sockets.) From there devices can simply plug in to the wireless boxes anywhere around a building or structure.

Stage 2: This same wireless technology will start to be integrated with product companies so that they are manufactured with wireless electricity devices that plug into the same socket on the phone as an a/c power cord. This way users still have the option to use a/c corded power if they have no other choice.

Stage 3: In some glorious future I invasion a building interior, void of any sporadic power socket. All companies will have by this point adapted the wireless electricity standard so every device comes with internal hardware that wirelessly siphons power from the building infrastructure.

 

My classmate, Elliot, had an interesting comment regarding the current state of this technology in the world: “Im not sure if there is anything available yet in which power could be transmitted. Most wireless devices now are for sending signals rather than power and require an additional power source (batteries or cord).”

I think all the 1/2 baked designs are abstracted from current states of technology, but none the less  a lot of my project was inspired my recent developments of wireless power transmission that I have seen. 

One example of this is the wireless charging pads for personal electronics. 

Currently these aren’t all that great as they involve real funky attachments that you have to superglue to your phone battery and stuff like that. But I talk about this issue in my 1/2 baked solution: It’s not only the product that needs further design- it’s the 3rd party members of the equation that need to be addressed as well. How can we implement these designs into further mainstream product design, and ween companies and designers off of traditional methods of power supply. 

Ethical Thinking Week 6: Playing with Design

De Bono’s “3 intellectual ages of man” are-

0-5 yrs: “WHY”

5-10 yrs: “WHY NOT”

10-75 yrs: “BECAUSE”

This concept stood out to me because there is something evident presented to us through the childrens’ designs that contrast starkly with the design process of an adult. De Bono’s attributes this partially to a child’s ability to design in ideas rather than “things”. This is extremely true in adult designers to design in terms of “things” or concrete and tangible ideas that are meant to make more sense of things that already make sense. It’s a successful way to “design” in some respect. But it also is a narrow field of vision, the childrens’ designs utilized whatever they could imagine and were able to communicate it with broad imagery, where as a professional adult designer presents concepts with very firm imagery, showing exactly what will be accomplished and how, leaving nothing up to actual imagination, but mere forces of the world that have already been invented for better or for worse. For a quick example: designing a house out of non-sustainable materials – because its easy to recognize / understand / and implement. But in the end you still have a structure trapped in a viscous cycle of unsuccessful design practice.

For my small scale example, I wanted to look at something musical because the new era of digital music is producing new products that completely abandon all traditional analog rules of music, resulting in a redefinition of musical instruments. Teenage Engineering’s Op1 “Portable Synthesizer” re-envisions the idea of a keyboard and transforms this into something that matches the digital era of music creation – with a plethora of interactive effects and computer compatibility. The entire concept and physical design is a way that product design blurred the idea for physical musical instruments. (I.E. the traditional “keys” have been replaced with buttons, still playable but not completely emphasized)

 

An example of playing with design in architecture is accomplished with the projects of Frank Gehry. Designs such as the Guggenheim quite literally play with basic elements such as light and shape to distort traditional architecture – creating something completely unique and new.

The first thing to come to mind in “playing” with larger scale urban design is the works of Kevin Lynch, and his re-envisioning of the way we analyze the success of city planning. Rather than envisioning the city as a one dimensional sole entity- Lynch came up with 5 “dimensions” to analyze urban planning as an integrated “organism” that grows and develops along with its inhabitants.

Response from Elliot

I was also intrigued by the concept that children design in ideas rather than things. However, I disagree that most adults design just things rather than ideas. In many of my classes for ID, we are told to get ideas down rather than to come up with a product right away. An idea is a very open concept where a solid thing doesnt allow for much more creative thought. I also included Gehry in my assignment, I think he has a very good approach to architecture and has a playfulness that can be very appealing. I wouldnt really be surprised if more people add him to their writtings this week. The keyboard is also an interesting product. I like how they try to move away from traditional keys but kept them in basically the same position, the white keys lower and black keys above and centered between white keys. It is an interesting concept and reminds me of a beat pad that can produce and unlimited amount of sounds.