story of stuff

The lady in the documentary mentioned that linear system isn’t able to work on planet indefinitely, because every steps along the system is reaching its limits.

All the process in each step did not taken the people into the account, what it means is that, no one knows there are actually organizations behind each process. Eg government, however corporations > government because globally, within 10 largest economies, 49 own by government and 51 own by corporations.

Extraction is a fancy word replacing natural resource exploitation  which is another fancy word for trashing the planet. We have to understand that there are limited resource on the planet for us to “extract”, in the pass few decades alone, we have used up 1/3 of the natural resources. The manufactories then use these natural resource along with toxic chemical and energy to create toxic contained products, then human consumes or exposes to these toxin, the worst is that the food product by the top of the food chain for the top of the food chain is breast milk, which is fed to the next generation. U.S. alone releases 4 billions lbs of toxic waste.

Corporations able to sell product so cheap which is impossibly profitable, because they externalizing the cost, in other words low price product are due to the fact that in each processing stage, community or natural environment pay for the cost, in other words damaging the environment, exploiting underage workers, deduct worker’s health insurance. Their goal is to keep the inventory of toxic contaminated goods moving and keep the price low by exploiting (shown above) and keep the customers buying.

U.S. after 911 president bush convince the general to continue to shop, like jimmy carter said in one of his announcement “ we are no longer identify ourselves of who we are by what one does, but what one owns…” usa primer public value is based upon how much they consume, however 99% of product in U.S. are trashed 6 months after consumption and ironically U.S.  ultimate goal is to produce sustainable consumer goods

Planned obsolescence – Design for the dump

Perceived obsolescence – throw away things that are working fine, but they change the look of it, so that the trend leads the way, and people who don’t have the newer version, it shows you have not contributed into the value system as part of the national consuming community

National happiness in usa peaked at 1950s, right before the consumerism exploded

Recycle isn’t enough even if 100% of household trash is recycled, because the factory produces 70 bins of trash to create your one bin of garbage.

Confusing Design

Design Excellence

Human-centred Designs

David Kelley said in the lecture "put behaviour and personality into products". how i interpreted is that a product should not only function merely for its purpose but also synchronized with the user, connect and almost engaged with the user during the usage or simply around the product. the New York City Prada store he mentioned is typical human-centrally design, what makes this Prada store so special? what difference does it have than the one five blocks away? the store itself as an product has convenience, witty, curiosity and technology, 4 things i believe any person would like to see in a product, in this case for example

• the scanner, it can scan any of the garments and basic information will be shown on the scanner screen, but a prospective buyer can also view a footage of the garment such as the runway show etc when press a button on the scanner pointing to a big standing screen.
• changing room, once garments are present in it, a screen outside of the room will display the exact number and type of garments, as well as other suggestion of preferences of the similar style of fashion.
• crystal liquid glass window door is very fascinating to me, it is quite witty because it makes outsiders wonder would they actually get to see the person change cloth, but with a press of a button the entire glass door becomes misty.
• delayed mirror in the change room is also a great design because i personally find difficult to examine the back of a garment that i currently wearing, the delayed mirror has a 3 seconds lag so you can spin around and see the back without having to sprain your neck.

Designing the Cubical in the video is definitely the ultimate human-centered  design because human uses it, human stays in it for 8-10 hours a day, 5 days a week, and human has a lot of problem with its design.
It is all about the person. Most employees feel claustrophobic, trapped and imprisoned in cubicals, design this needs specific behavior and personality thought into it in order to make the users feel good and comfortable , hence human-centered. The final cubical design has sun-penetrable walls, sections of walls contain small aquarium, hemic, speedball to punch with the boss of your choice, a flower in the face of wilt when the user leave the cubical and rises back up when the person comes back.
Human centered design from what i have learnt from David Kelley lecture is that, every product has to not only function but also makes the user feel certain way or behave in certain way, designs are driven by human.