Studio 3A: Product Service Systems

Studio 3A: Task 6 Wk 11 Video Reflection - The story of Cap and Trade

The story of Cap & Trade

Desmond Yiu z3255638

Reflection

The story of cap and trade is about how the world tried to deal with fossil fuel abuse and carbon emissions. Currently nearly everything we use consumes fossil fuels. Be it the cars we drive or the phone in our pockets. They all use fossil fuels to run or to be manufactured. As you know carbon emissions are a leading cause of global warming and so the world got together at the Copenhagen meeting to find a solution. The solution they chose was Cap and Trade.

Cap and Trade is a process where governments set a yearly cap on carbon emissions. They then sell permits to pollute to companies. Each year these permits are less and so the value on them increase and in theory the pollution decreases. However this has lead to a market where only money making is the goal. Companies are selling and trading these permits to make profits. There is also the issue with carbon offsetting where a company will claim they have decreased their emissions and get payment for this progress. However many companies have cheated their way into free money by not actually decreasing their carbon output.

“We should be paying our ecological debt”

This quote really hit me. I never really thought of it as a debt and it made me realise that yes, we do need to treat it as one to take climate change seriously. Without us taking it seriously nothing will change.

“Nine out of Ten African farmers will lose their ability to grow food”

This really touched me to. At the expense of others first would countries benefit. This is really unfair! We could potentially be digging the graves of millions of people.

“Solid caps, Strong Laws, Citizen Action, Carbon Fee’s”

The solutions suggested seemed realistic. I have wondered why people have not listened to these people when they were looking for a solution to global warming. Instead they turned to business people. Business people only see money!

The design community should promote alternatives to product materials and focus on real world solutions for global warming as it is a real and very dangerous issue. Awareness of the issue is critical and designers should alert others of this great danger.

In conclusion, a nice short video, something we should all reflect on.

Studio 3A: Designing for disasters Final Presentation: Reflection

Studio 3A: Designing for disasters Final Presentation: Rationale

Studio 3A: Designing for disasters Final Presentation: Pictures

Studio 3A: Task 5 Wk 6 Video Reflection - Design for Life

Video Reflection Week 6 16-4-10 Desmond Yiu 3255638

This weeks video is about Philippe Starck and his search for design talent in the UK. Scary as it is, this weeks video reminded me of my studio experience here at UNSW.

Philippe Starck seems to be an interesting man. His European style is intriguing along with his quirky personality. From the start he said some inspiring things.

“you don’t make good design if you speak about the design, you make good design if you speak about life, sex, flesh, sweat.”

This seems to be a nice quote. It reminded me to not get caught up in the design, but to think about it and look around. Relate it to life and the big picture.

Starck then made a great comment about the military truck.

“only vehicle with the elegance of intelligence, because it isn’t driven by marketing, just driven by function”

I had never thought of a military truck being great or intelligent. Perhaps i was blinded by marketing. The military truck is a great design if you think about it. Transporting the maximum amount of people with the vehicle with the least amount of waste. It was designed for a single purpose and it served this purpose flawlessly.

The next quote that moved me was when a design student was talking about garden gloves.

“symbol of ecological thinking by growing by yourself”.

I had never really thought that gardening gloves would encourage ecological behaviour or affect it. By growing your own vegetables you are saving on transport costs and helping the environment!

But i really think the main point was to realise the story behind the product. To find out about why it was made and the theory behind it. A main part was also to find out the end of the story, where the product goes. By realising these things in existing products we can design for life; design knowing where the product will go in the end.

Studio 3A: Charatte 2

Charatte 2:

Breville Avance



This was an interesting excersize that made me realise just how many parts there were in everyday objects. The amount of parts in the Breville avance kettle amazed me. Some were completely useless; like the little part that held the outer handle piece to the body. These could have been designed better to minimize the parts.

Firstly, we disassembled the kettle and put it into its respective sub assembly's.

Lid assembly. (above)

Handle assembly (Above)

Docking station Assembly (Above)

Main body assembly (Above)

Heating element assembly (Above)

Everything :)

We then used Greenfly to plot our chart data before proceeding to re-design the kettle. One of the main issues was the amount of parts in the handle just because the switch was there. In order to minimuse this we moved the switch to the docking station and made the main body a single mould (+ heating element attachment). We also changed the PP colour to Transparent PP. This was done to avoid the co-polymer moulding process. We also wanted to investigate screw placement for the kettle to make it easier to dissassemble, and decided that the kettle needed a return system so that the PP could be recycled effectively.

All in all a good activity.

Studio 3A: Task 3; The 11th Hour reflection

Reflection Week 4 19‐3‐10 Desmond Yiu 3255638

The 11th Hour


The thing i noticed at the start was the huge rush of negative energy flowing from my screen and
slapping me in the face. It showed natural disasters, disasters from human activity, famine, hunger, deforestation, effects of global warming, our industrial impacts and many more very negative scenes. This very much woke me up and made me think about all these issues.

The topic of where we came from, our origins also touched me. One of the people talked about how our civilisation used to live off the land, using sunlight as our energy source. This source warmed us and allowed our food sources to grow. However it all went downhill when we found ‘pockets of ancient sunlight’; fossil fuels. The use of these saw our rapid expansion and led to our huge impact on the earth. Now we are totally dependent on oil. Everything we do has oil in it, from our cars, to the plastic wrapping that wraps our food imported on a boat from another country. This really touched me as, although i knew, i never really put much thought into it.

The discussion then lead to how we humans are heating the atmosphere and how it creates climate change. It really scared me when a man said hurricane Katrina was only the prologue and disasters of this size would become more constant in the future.

“At the end of the day when we all talk about ‘saving the environment’ in a way it’s misstated because the environment will survive, we’re the ones that may not survive” “As we destroy nature, we will be destroyed in the process”

These two quotes moved me. I actually never thought harming the environment would come around to harm us.

“we created our habitat, we don’t need nature, we have been focusing on the economy..” “probably the greatest weapon of mass destruction is corporate economic globalisation”

These also struck a cord. We are so bound by the economy we lose sight of what’s actually
important.

“ones organisms waste is another’s food, this is the ideal model of the industrial system” “imagine designing a building like a tree”

With current technology we can cut our global carbon footprint by 90%. The idea of designing
buildings like trees and cities like forest was amazing. I could envision this happening and it lookedso beautiful to me.

This video was a great watch, thoroughly enjoyed it.

Studio 3A: Charatte 1

N-IVAR

Initial 5 value adding ideas:

1. To change the general shape of the chair to a more curved design.

2. To create add-on slots that allow additional customisable add-ons (Both functional and pure aesthetic)

3. To create a system where the backrest is changable.

4. Every piece would be painted a different colour; every chair would be different.

5. To supply customisable pattern/texture stick ons.

The 5 Physio Ideas:

1. Turn the chair into a porta-toilet!

2. "Growing" child add-on. Grows with the child.

3. Bench add on (Requires 2 or more chairs)

4. Study-mate add on (Takes advantage of uncomfortable chair to maximise studying)

5. Step-ladder add-on

The 5 Physco Ideas:

1. Customisable uphostering (each part)

2. "Noisy-Chair" add on. Pressure sensor detects weight and makes a different noise for each weight.

3. Heat sensitive cushion, leaves the sitters imprint on the cushion. The longer they sit, the longer the imprint would stay.

4. Memory foam add on. Moulds the shape of the user.

5. Different type of finish for each piece. Customisable. Makes each chair personal and different.

The team Design solution.

N-IVAR
Board1

Board 2


The chair itself is made of untreated pinewood. We decided to go with a few add-ons:
1. Firstly two velcro attached cushions, one on the seat, and one on the back. Possibility of Memory foam for cushion material to increase the physco attachment. Memory foam would mould the users unique shape onto the cushions. The increased comfort would hopefully increase the physio attachment.
2. The chair would have a storage compartment where the seat lifts up to reveal a compartment. This usability would hopefully increase the physio attachment and also the memories of using it could hopefully create some attachment to the chair and increase the phycho attachment.
3. A name plate (aluminium) on the back of the chair. This was a customisable plate that had the users own name thus increasing attachment to the chair. It set appart the particular chair from others.

This task has challenged my design thinking about preomoting long term satisfaction and product attachment. It made me realise that these things are actually quite important for the future as the world fills with landfill. It was very empowering designing beyond the orignal product, very fun task. I also feel that we created a good solution for the design problem.
Since this task i think my design philosophy has changed, if i were to design a piece of furniture i'd probably think about end use and re-use.

Desmond yiu