Draft boards for the D&AD project. A few minor changes are yet to be made but it is nearly there.
mrdouglaswood
the idiosyncratic musings of a designer
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#111 Design Products D&AD – IP32001
Three weeks into this semester seems like an ideal time to talk about this modules project. After the shambles that was last semester, it is refreshing to be back on a project where you are not put under as much pressure. This should mean that the work produced should be better.
The project for this semester is based on ones set by D&AD for their student awards competition. We had a choice of 4 set by different companies who sponsor the competion:
- Michelin: Create a unique product for MICHELIN that would provide real life assistance to high risk motorists in a roadside emergency situation.
- The Body Shop: Design a contemporary range of packaging for The Body Shop that unites their brand values with the premium nature of the products.
- Oxfam: Present an idea that engages support for Oxfam by triggering shared values and concerns in a wide range of people.
- E.ON: Engage generation “Y” in a relationship with E.ON that champions new ways to use energy in the home and empowers them to enlist others in an energy revolution.
Of the four briefs, I chose to do the one set by Michelin, as it was, in a way, about cars, which I like… very much…
Week 1: In the first week of the project, we sat down in groups, depending on the brief that we had chosen, and discussed the brief. What were they asking us to do? What sort of situation might you be in? Have we been in an accident or other roadside emergency ourselves? After this we were given a week to carry out as much research as we possibly could regarding the company and what sort of area we might like to focus on. I contacted a few roadside emergency services, such as the AA and the RAC asking numerous questions, from which I got no response*. A questionnaire was also constructed and posted somewhere where I knew I would get numerous responses and I was not disappointed. The results given were rich in information and provided a deep insight into what people thought. This along with masses of secondary research gave huge amounts to work with, which was useful for the following week.
Week 2: At the start of week two, we went into the groups once again and discussed what we found out. This then led onto the brainstorming of various different ideas to get us thinking. Different insights and scenarios were also thought of so the idea generation could be continued on as we saw fit. Group discussion over we were to go away and in the style that is synonymous with the product design course here, we were to come up with 100 ideas (which I don’t think is the most effective way of idea generation) for the following week, but this time in the format of an A0 sheet and not a sketchbook as this was thought to make the process easier. In fact it made it a little more awkward. I had the sheet stuck on my wall in my room, and was planning on recording it just to show the process of the 100 ideas but the time it took, eventually led me to scrap that idea after only a small amount of time recording.
Week 3: The 100 ideas were whittled down to 3 and the sheet was handed in. The three ideas (shown below) had to be decided and developed over the course of this next week. This along with a first draft of a scenario board had to be completed in the short space of time. As of this moment in time, I am quite far on in the development part and have pretty much completed the scenario board, which says how the product might be used by the user, and this is, as far as I am aware, at a further point that most other people on the course. The idea which was chosen after receiving feedback from a number of people, was the idea of a high visibility flag or flap which hangs down from the bootlid of a car. This would make the car and driver much more visible when they are broken down at the side of the road.
*The no response was in regard to that week that the research was needed. Today (February 4th, and well into week 3 of the project) I received an email from the RAC with their responses to my rather hastily put together questions, so thank you to them greatly, albeit a bit late.
#95 NCR Boards
Part of the main product design module this semester was for the NCR Student Competition, held with a number of Product Design Courses at Universities in Scotland. Having been one of the ones chosen to go through and present at the final event, I pulled out due to the amount of other work that was needing to have been done for the course at that particular time (amongst other reasons).
The following boards show what my final idea was. The basic concept was for those living in rural india to be able to record, share and view other videos on a device aimed at helping those with their own small business advertise themselves to try and increase their income. It was called RECORD.
#43 There’s An App For That, A Very Well Designed One Too
Again, this post is about something which I found online. I should really stop doing this as, well, it probably isn’t the best of things to be doing when I could be getting on with some sort of work.
How many of you out there have an iPod Touch or an iPhone? Well this post is probably most relevant to you then. A while ago, someone posted a link to this site on Twitter, can’t remember who it was so I am unable to give them credit for it, but nonetheless, it is a site dedicated to showcasing all of the, or what are considered to be the best produced and designed applications in the iTunes App Store.
app.itize.us has a mission statement which is as follows:
app.itize.us is a painstakingly curated presentation of the best produced and designed iPhone applications that are available for download via the App Store.
I agree with every word in that sentence, figuratively speaking of course.
A few weeks ago whilst on this site, browsing, I stumbled across what has to be my favourite game I have ever played on my iPhone or iPod Touch. Colorbind. Essentially, the aim of the game is to connect all the dots on the screen with the coloured strips of paper. It is an utterly gorgeous game which probably wouldn’t work very well on any other platform. It is a good way to let the time slip by. In a lecture, before going to bed, if you have nothing else constructive to do, or even if you should be doing something else.
There are 80 levels in total, ranging from simple one colour puzzles to more complicated 4 colour conundrums. Included is a tutorial, but the game seems very intuitive from the very start. I highly recommend this game, it is without a doubt the one of the best 59p’s I have ever spent. Slight update, I seem to have got the game when it was at its discounted price, it is currently £1.19, but it is still worth the little extra money.
The website for Colorbind is nonverbal.ch
Link directly to application in iTunes: Colorbind
If you own an iPod Touch or an iPhone, or if by the time you are reading this, an iPad, then I couldn’t urge you more to go to app.itize.us and find something which is considered to be wonderfully designed. On top of that I am going to say definitely buy Colorbind, well worth the money, even if you aren’t sure about buying it, there is also a lite version, but why waste time and install that when you could have the full one instead?
#38 Google it.
Before you start to read this, I’m going to give a word of warning that due to the mood in which I am in whilst writing this today (21st February 2010), I do ramble on quite a bit, so if you want to skip to the end, you can just take a look at the pictures and just be done with it.
Over the past couple of years there has been something which has become ever so annoying and what is worse, they don’t seem to know that they are doing this. If you haven’t already guessed who or what I am talking about, then I’m guessing you didn’t read the title of this post. Google are the culprit, Google are the problem, and knowing Google, they think they are the solution. From where I am standing they are slowly trying to take over the world, through the dreaded act of diversifying. I wrote a post about this and how I thought companies were going down the wrong path with this way back in August. In fact it was my second post on here, and guess what. My opinion still has not changed.
Google obviously started off as a search engine, and its popularity just began to grow. They bought YouTube. A good move in the long term but at the time it did mean that they wouldn’t really be continuing with Google Video which at the time, my friends and I would prefer it to their new acquisition. Every so often, a trip into the Google Labs would be in order just to see what sort of things they were working on. To view the trending searches of the day etc, just to see what was going on. It appealed to the geek side of me.
Another step in the right direction was Google Earth, pretty much a standalone extension of Google Maps. I was an early adopter of this, or at least I think I was, and it was great, and it still is, despite being a bit of a resource hog on my computer. There are times where I am unable to resist loading it up just to have a shot in the flight simulator in it.
This is the level of diversification which I would say I was comfortable with. They were a search engine company, who had a range of other products or services which also allowed users to search for what they wanted, whether it be places, or videos.
In recent years it does seem as though Google are trying to take over the world, very much in the same vein as what Microsoft doing. But whereas Microsoft buys out businesses and makes itself grow even larger. Google gives the impression that they will have a shot at it and if it works it works and if it doesn’t then well, at least they tried. Whilst I do admire them for doing this, I don’t think that it is the right thing to do. We all need competition and it just seems that Google are trying to eliminate them all.
They launched Google Wave. Supposedly it was supposed to reinvent the way in which we use email. After the initial surge of interest and usage, it has fallen by the side of the popularity trail. I will go on and check it every so often, as I was lucky enough to have been given an invite by a friend, but the conversations had with people have just dried up. It does work quite well, but as it is still in Beta, or even Alpha form, there are still quite a few bugs in it. My MacBook can barely run it, and my iMac will frequently beachball when I use it. The longer waves have load times worthy of being given their own birthday. I’ll use it if they improve it, but at the current moment in time, there hasn’t been any sort of improvement or modifications since mid December, which was when I joined it.
One of the most recent ventures by Google is Buzz. Where they are trying to take on the likes of Twitter, Facebook and all the other sort of main stream social networking sites by providing something which just doesn’t make sense. I seem to have signed up to it by accident. It appears in my sidebar when I log onto Googlemail. I’ve not really had a look at it, but from what I’ve heard it has been a MASSIVE fail. There has been complaints about it and regarding privacy issues, it has also led to an investigation into it (well from what I can remember anyways). It definitely didn’t appear in Twitter’s trending topics for very long compared to Wave, and I don’t actually know anyone who uses it.
One of the only non search/mapping/email things I will use google for (apart from video since that technically is YouTube), is iGoogle. But even then, not very often. It isn’t my homepage, that currently is the Apple UK homepage. I don’t use it to check the weather as I have perfectly good (well, mediocre) widgets for that. Emails? Nope, I use the Mail application. So what do I use it for? The only thing I use iGoogle for is Google Reader, so I can quickly see if there have been any updates on any RSS feeds I follow. This probably isn’t what Google want me to do, but I have other things which are much better at doing what I need to do.
Whilst I am on a roll, I suppose I will have to mention the Google phone and operating system. The Nexus One is their answer to the iPhone, and it has already developed its own following. The operating system, pretty much a desktop version of their mobile operating system, Android, is planned to be a ‘cloud’ based operating system, where the users information isn’t stored directly onto the computer in which they are using, but instead on a server many miles away. Whilst this has its advantages in some areas such as users of multiple computers, it does have quite a few drawbacks. From what I can fathom out, or can be bothered to fathom out, you need to be able to connect to the internet in order to access all of your files, or most of them anyway, which is fine if you are a tech-addict who doesn’t leave their home, or areas which have internet access, but for others this isn’t really the way forward. However, I have just remembered that I am sure I read somewhere that this operating system was aimed more specifically at netbooks rather than desktops or laptops. Netbooks because they aren’t generally used at the users primary computer, it is usually their secondary, or third computer.
I am not saying that I hate Google. I use them as my primary searching facility, and email… and maps. But the thing I don’t like is the fact that they are trying to do a Microsoft and take over the world, as it were. In doing so they are slowly destroying the links they have made in the past few years. Because of the Nexus One, they have already lost a key position on the board of Apple. Why not just stay a search company, but keeping the most popular additions they have (some, not all)? Become even better at what they do instead of coming up with other services which have an impact, but don’t have the momentum to keep going. I don’t know why, even after this post which is closing in on the 1300 word mark. I guess the mood that I am in has dictated the way in which I have been able to decipher the information and just vented it out as a rant. I’m not complaining. But I am starting to query how much this has to do with design. Ah well.
#33 iPad… Ok
A few weeks ago you may remember that I made a post guessing what I thought Apple’s tablet would be like and the general features it would have. Two days after that post, Apple presented the iPad at their keynote conference in San Francisco. In all honesty, my general mood was quite positive towards the device, albeit I am not that big a fan of the design. I was hoping for something a little more different than the fat iPhone/iPod Touch that we got. It looks like a similar step to when the 2nd generation iPod Nano was redesigned to play video and the 3rd generation one looked like a young fat version of its predecessor.
Anyway, I digress, slightly. My main point of this post is mainly about the fact that the overall opinion of the iPad has been incredibly lukewarm. It hasn’t really been given the reception that Apples other products are usually received with, with the exception of the MacBook Air which I can’t believe is still about. Peoples preconception was warped by the endless speculation on the internet and in magazines, also because this product has been rumoured for many years, well before the iPhone and in fact, even before the iPod in 2001.
That is maybe what the problem is. Everyone had their own idea of what the device would look like, what it would do, and just like you did when you were a child wanting something specific, you would think about if endlessly until the day finally came when you had enough money, went out to buy it and…. it was rubbish.
Apart from the fact that it doesn’t have a camera, nor use a touch OS X system instead of the iPhone OS it is using. I really do like it, and am very tempted to buy one, even more so that I will be able to attach my camera to it, meaning I could take that with me instead of my MacBook or buying more SD cars and instantly view photos and have much more funcitonality. This decision is probably because I want something no one else will have, or very few people around me have. It happened when I went back to Mac a few years ago with my 2.16Ghz MacBook, the top of the range white polycarbonate one. Only one other person I knew used Mac’s. I went to university, and very few people had them on the Product Design course, but now, almost everyone has one, and it has lost its special quality, I’ll come back to this bit later. The same thing happened when I got my iPhone. I got it on the launch day for the Pay as You Go version on O2 in 2008, only about 3 other people I knew had one, but now, it seems that there are more people with one than without one. The same thing happened when I got my iPod Touch 2 years ago, and my iPod Video 4 years ago, and my iPod Mini 5 years ago (but this one to a lesser extent than the rest).
I like being different. It’s what makes me me. And when I say different I mean a lot more different than the stereotypical person of my age. The things I buy are generally an extension of me. I didn’t buy an iPod or a Mac because everyone else was, I bought them because I felt they were capable of handling what I could throw at them, and I bought them before everyone else jumped on the bandwagon. I am not blowing my own trumpet here, just telling the truth. Going back to what I was saying about my MacBook. Now that everyone else seems to have one, it has lost a little bit of significance in my eyes. But there is one redeeming factor about mine. It is the polycarbonate one. And apart from one other person having one, albeit a black one, the rest are the Aluminium ones, and in my eyes they will never have the same character that my MB has. They are produced on a far greater scale and whilst they do look good, they are probably easier to copy than the white and black ones by other companies. The exterior doesn’t behave the same way either. My MacBook is covered in scratches, the clamshell doesn’t line up properly, and the palmrest has masking tape on it because of a crack which has appeared in the usual place on MacBooks of this age. I still love it to bits as it was my first laptop, my first computer and a significant point where I moved back to Apple after a few years of Windows due to my parents decisions.
It is this early adoption which is what gives products a special connection with the owner (in most cases), or getting in before everyone else does. Nothing is perfect to start off with, and the iPad is a clear example of this, but there will still be people who buy it and will want to see how great it really is at the start, show it off, use it to its full potential and generally make the most of it before everyone else is converted and wants to buy one too.
The final thing I will quickly mention whilst I am still talking about the iPad is the remaining omission of multitasking and flash. I really don’t care about either. Multitasking is fine when you’re on a fully fledged computer as that is what you are expected to be doing. On my phone, I have never been in a position where I have needed multiple apps running at the same time, and I use quite a few apps. If I prioritise what I need done, I can get done far quicker than if I am in and out the same apps every couple of minutes, and I have proven this even on my computer. As for flash, I am not a big fan of it. It is too much of a resource hog, especially on my MacBook, and I don’t miss it when I’m on my phone. If I have to use flash, I will, but the websites I frequent hardly use it.
I am aware that I have rambled and ranted on for well over 1000 words now, but I was just in the mood to write a lot, and the iPad still seems to be a hot topic (well as of writing anyway on February 2nd). My thoughts may have been slightly biased since I do like Apple things… quite a lot, but that is neither here nor there. And no, I don’t like the name iPad, it is quite stupid.
#30 The Fabled Tablet in Apple Flavour
If the internet is to be believed, then in the next few days, Apple is set to announce a tablet computer. Essentially a large iPod Touch or iPhone, the tablet is rumoured to share many of features with the two mentioned devices. It will have a touch screen with much more advanced multi-touch and a 10.1″ screen.
For a long time it was speculated that they would enter the netbook market. A market which has grown hugely in the past few years. The tablet is also not too dissimilar in size to these netbooks.
Whilst I am still not 100% sure what I think of this rumoured product, I personally think someone has thrown a curve ball and we are in store for something much more interesting. On top of that, I would like to see a new iPhone, with new features and better specs, a greater step from the 3GS than the 3GS was from the 3G. This is because, unashamed, I would like to replace my iPhone 3G which I have had since launch date, and this is on top of me stating I would keep using it until it dies.
Going back to the ‘iSlate’, as it has been dubbed (rubbish name in my opinion), one of the tablet related issues I am most interested in, is its exterior design, the way it looks. The basis of this, I believe, will depend mostly on what operating system it uses. A modified iPhone OS, or a modified OS X system. If it is the iPhone OS route, it will primarily be portrait oriented interface and exterior design, and horizontally if it is the OS X route.
Since I did a reasonable job guessing with the Magic Mouse , I’ve had a shot at what I think the tablet would look like. Guessing it will be a mostly landscape device, I have made it look not too dissimilar to the iMac. It even has a Jay Leno/iMac G5/Intel chin on it. There may also be a possibility that it has a stand on the back so it can be angled on a desk, in a similar sort of fashion that the iBook G3 had a handle. The back of the device, I think will be the same sort of shape to the iPhone 3G(S), but if it isn’t, then it probably will share many design cues with the next generation iPhone, rumoured for the summer. There isn’t too much to play with on touch screen devices due to the current technology, in terms of shape since it needs to have a completely flat surface for the screen, hence why all, or most of these touch devices look very similar.
And on that note, I leave you with a video of Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer being asked to sign a MacBook Pro, quite funny, if maybe only for the geekier side of you.
#25 I’m Falling for a “bell’italiano”
First post of 2010. Happy New Year and all that jazz I suppose.
Now that all the formalities are over I can get underway with the serious business, and it has happened again. The last time this happened it didn’t exactly end the way I hoped it would, but I sort of have a feeling that this time is going to end better. A beautiful Italian has entered my thoughts and I can’t quite seem to get rid of her.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. You don’t really want to hear much about my personal life, and you are correct, I am not talking about a woman (not this time anyway), but instead, a car. A very beautiful car. An Alfa Romeo. The 147. The first one. Before the facelift.
Why have I fallen for this car, and fallen for it again, because as I recall, I fell for it the first time I saw it when it was launched in 2000. The reason is simple. The search is now on properly on for a first car. I want something different, and because I have not driven a lot of cars in my time, my choices are purely (at this moment in time) based upon the looks of the car. The design. The company. The emotions it evokes. And the Alfa, manages to tick most of my boxes.
The 147, designed by Wolfgang Egger and Walter de’Silva, is easily one of the most gorgeous things ever to be created by man, alongside the Bang & Olufsen Beosound 9000 designed by David Lewis and the Barcelona Chair designed by Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe. It has won awards f0r its design, and once it was given its midlife facelift, a journalist described the car as losing feminine features, namely due to the shape and size of the iconic triangular grill. That is all I am going to say about that bit.
Fine fair enough, I am gushing about it, and my thoughts and emotions (slightly) are getting in the way of saying anything constructive. The car isn’t perfect. It is an Alfa, and of course we know that they aren’t exactly the most reliable of cars, they can be expensive to run, and everyone will secretly hate you for having one because they know they really want one, but don’t want to suffer the heartbreak of standing next to the road in a cloud of steam when it fails on them. These small foibles however, give the car a personality, a soul, a character which is lacking in other cars today, and yes that is slightly cliched for Alfa Romeos, but who cares, because we all know it is true.
In fact, soul, character and personality is something which is missing from pretty much all products today as well, for the simple reason that companies don’t care about that. They just want to shift as many products out of the factory as they can possibly manage. Sure we can add those traits to products ourselves if we decide to personalise them, I swear to god that my iPod mini, my first iPod has a soul, but it isn’t the same as something which has been built with the same passion that food is made with, the same passion people when they are with someone they love, the same passion to keep going with something even though it might not be the right thing to be doing.
And on that note, before my heart starts to do the talking instead of my head, I leave you with a video clip from Top Gear, on the Alfa Romeo 147 GTA. It may not have been the most memorable of posts to have written as my first of the year, and some of you may have gotten bored halfway through, but each to our own.
Goodnight.
