Design Arguments: According to Joe

Task 2 Part D

2006-06-29T13:39:00.000+10:00

I Have to say, I struggled to review something that was conceptual. Next time, I may choose something that is in existance, as opposed to an idea, so it may be easier to judge using other people's experiences besides my own. My feedback by the other guys was really positive, but gave me nothing on how to re-write my blog, just how to tackle some small parts of my review, so i'm finding it difficult to now, re-write my criticism, as opposed to just editing small parts, which i ended up doing

Task 2 Part A - Design Criticism: Re-Posted!

2006-06-25T19:11:00.000+10:00

Nokia 888

"The idea is that the perfect form does not exist, form follows you. We create the perfect form for each function."

- Tamer Nakisci

The Nokia 888 is the idea of a young Industrial Designer based in Istanbul by the name of Tamer Nakisci. Entering in the Nokia Benelaux Design Awards, the competition was named as "concept lounge" Which required conceptual ideas of communication methods. After studying the use of mobile phones, being the absolute necessity of anyone over the age of 12 (particularly in Australia) he realised that "It shouldn’t be just something that we carry in our pockets or purses. It should adapt to us, provide us with new ways of communicating, and extend the concept of mobile communication while offering high usability and flexibility in function."

The design targets young consumers who are likely to be active and take place in a lot of different activities. Being a very volatile target group, they are likely to be fickle, and usually tire of the newest craze when something newer distracts them from their last toy...

The Nokia 888 is a phone which Tamer Nakisci believes will conquer the fickle target group of young consumers. The functions that it has creates a feeling of having an electronic pet, as it senses your moves, understand what you want, respond to you in the best way. It learns about you, to fit you better. Or that you don't just have to carry it in your pocket or purse, like a regular phone. As can be seen in the images posted, it can be used as a bracelet; it can be bent in any shape. To simply put it, he turned it into an accessory.

Through the designs of previous models, mobile phone manufacturers have constantly tried, I believe, in vain to turn mobile phones into the perfect accessory. For Example, the Samsung SGH - T500, which came with a Mirror no less, and diamond sequence on the case, or the Nokia 3250 and Sony Ericsson W800i, which are being marketed as an MP3 music player rather than a phone. This design, though only as a conceptual design, may posisbly have turned phones into accessories, which the designer may like, as his young user group open their wallets (or parents' credit cards) and spend big. This in turn brings up some more issues of security, as can be seen by the accompanying images, this phone could be flaunted in every which way on almost any part of the human body. And being a valuable piece of equipment, may become large targets for slippery and sneaky hands.

Technology wise, you can understand why Tamer Nakisci stresses that this is only conceptual. With technologies such as liquid battery, speech recognition (a feature seen on other phones),
and a flexible touch screen. With a touch sensitive body cover, it allows the phone to understand and adjust to the environment, using a single programmable body mechanism so that it changes form in different situations. This leaves questions of its durability/longevity. Some scoff at the idea that phones last only 2-3 years. How long can this last? And how much will it cost? The designer himself admits that, saying that we don’t have the required technology at the moment, at least not at an affordable price.

The new feature which is most interesting is the concept of electronical emotions, or “E-motions.”
Tamer Nakisci describes it as “Some shapes, motions give us a certain feeling, remind us of something. So before you read the message, or even without reading the message you can understand what it is about. Is it bad news or good news? This way you use another emotional level for communicating.” If you send a Love heart to your girlfriend, and her phone turns into an icon of a heart. It removes the need for direct communication. This is where my doubts start to creep in.

Is there a need really to remove the need for communication? There are already grumblings of dissent among certain design circles that our ideas are further separating us from our humanity, from actual interaction between humans. At what cost do we keep developing this new technology which already has started to separate us? (Communications wise)

For more info and to view the animation submitted to the competition:
http://www.tamernakisci.com/

Other References:
http://www.design-emotion.com/2005/12/12/getting-emotional-with-tamer-nakisci
http://www.yankodesign.com/product_info.php?products_id=512
http://weblog.physorg.com/news3164.html

Task 1 Part C - Blog Review

2006-06-25T19:01:00.000+10:00

Task1 Part C Blog Review

www.design-emotion.com

Design and Emotion is a site dedicated to analysing the emotional content of products, brands and design. Marco Van Hout created this site based on his studies in New Media & Communication Technologies. In an effort to continue to stay active in this line of work, the result was this web site.

Design and Emotion is an easily navigated site, with Marco Van Hout’s posts easy to identify and read, with ample opportunity for responses by readers. The site also includes interviews with some of the most prominent Design Guru’s in the world as well as up and coming award-winning designers.

Van Hout’s design criticism is difficult to Critique. It’s very similar to attempting to critique art, in that each has its own category to fall into, and unless you study that particular type, your criticism can always fall a little wayward in the credibility department. His site is dedicated to analysing purely emotion-related design, which to me is a new concept. It is a type of design some people had never considered applying to their work, most importantly me. Also, being a specific “design idea” site, his opinions are only expressed on design issues directly related to emotional contexts.

However, his critiques are generally well written, he creates thought provoking statements, and then justifies his concerns and thoughts accurately with relevant links. Even though Design and Emotion focuses on the emotional side of design, he talks of effects, concerns, and interprets difficult design concepts for us slower types.

Van Hout uses the methods described by Wayne Attoe in his Methods of criticism and response to criticism, which he states “Seldom is a critical commentary responding to a single concern, like judgement; more often it will reflect a collection of concerns and concomitant methods.” He uses the Categories of Attoe in regards to design criticism, being: Prescriptive, Interpretive, Descriptive, Impressionistic and Advocatory criticism. However, he tends to drift towards the impressionistic criticism more often than the others, especially when critiquing conceptual design ideas.

In regards to King and Kitchener’s Levels of Reflective Judgement, it’s hard to pinpoint which level and stage Van Hout likes to write from. For his example in Van Hout’s posting Brands, products & emotions (http://www.design-emotion.com/2006/05/19/brands-products-and-emotions/)
It seems his judgements are a result of the process of rational enquiry, his beliefs are justified probabilistically using evidence and arguments; conclusions are defended as representing the most complete, most compelling, or most plausible understanding of an issue available to date, based on the current evidence. (http://www.missouri.edu/~wood/rjstages/rjstages.3.html#pgfId=881892)
Therefore, the resulting Blog can be seen as Level 3 Stage 7 Reflective thinking.

Yet another Blog entitled Timeless design – Nostalgia and Simplicity
(http://www.design-emotion.com/2005/06/07/timeless-design-nostalgia-and-simplicity/)
Can be considered as Stage 1, Level 1 Pre-reflective thinking, due to the fact that it is a completely opinionated writing, and there can be nothing really to prove what is in fact just opinion, and Van Hout recognises this with the simple statement “What exactly makes a design timeless is very hard to say.”
This article, and also this site, seems to fall intot he category of Rick Poyner's The time for being against in that he follows the idea of anything related to emotional design, and applauds any kind of design with an emotional context attatched to it. It could be fooled into promoting design which may be poor, but good enough for this site due to the fact it has emotional considerations.

Task 1 Part B - Biennale Review

2006-06-21T19:57:00.000+10:00

Antony Gormley's Asian Field

Asian Field consists of 180,000 terracotta figures stretched across the designated space. The Field project has been in the making for 15 years, the Artist says the idea being to make one for every continent. Asian field was made from 500 assistants out of 125 tonnes of brick clay in Xianxian village, Guangzhou in 2003. 600 images accompany the clay figurines documenting the 300 local makers and their chosen figurines.
An entire level of pier 2/3 is dedicated to this piece, the terracotta figurines dominating most of the 140 metre space, with the rest of the darkened "entry" space displaying images of Antony Gormley with his chosen terracotta piece and the 300 locals from the Xianxian village who participated in this work, and their chosen clay figurine. Each of the pieces range from 8cm to 28 cm in size, and due to the large number of clay figurines, they snake around and engulf columns and vintage items that can be seen in the background. Asian Field is the most recent of a series of Field terracotta pieces, including Field for the art Gallery of NSW (1989) Field (1991) Amazonian Field (1992) and Field for the British Isles (1993). See www.antonygormley.com, www.whitecube.com

The size of Antony Gormley's Asian Field dominates any artistic experience you may feel for the other Art works at the biennale. Not being the greatest art lover myself, and not yet being able to distinguish the different art genres, it just suddenly became irrelevant once I actually experienced this art work. As you either walk out of the lift or up the stairs and into the large, darkened expanse displaying the images of participating Chinese villages, I felt sense of anticipation for what I was about to see. Once you approach the little clay figurines, you stop, and despite who you are or what you know about art, you have to appreciate the sheer size of this project. There is a feeling of being humbled and studied by 180,000 piercing sets of eyes. At the same time, there is a god-like feeling that creeps up on you, (now whether it is from having a feeling of a giant ruler of his subjects or a bizarre feeling of superiority and dominance over smaller, more helpless little clay figurines that's up to you). Antony Gormley softens people's approach to the artwork, by saying:

"Field is part of a global project in which the earth of a particular region is
given form by a group of local people of all ages. It is made of clay, energised
by fire, sensitised by touch and made conscious by being given eyes."

How this project can be given a warm and almost "fuzzy" description of the work process is something yet to be discovered. My views of confusion were concerning, however I discovered another reviewer shared my view on this: http://biladesign.wordpress.com/2006/06/05/biennale-effort/

It took an outsider to the art community and even to this Blog report (a friend of mine, and an accountant no less) to point out how some people could see this art work as an exploitation of the population of china, and also asked the question of: "Where does this artist get the idea to put his name on the work of 300 Chinese villagers and 199 other assistants?" hmmm. Interesting.

Task 1 Part A Reflection Time, people...

2006-06-21T17:25:00.000+10:00

To say that the responses to the questions were interesting is a ridiculous understatement! I thought by leaving questions 4, 5 & 13 it would generate some interesting comments.
Saying what music I prefer based on what I had written in my other answers was always going to be ridiculously hard, it's like finding a needle in a haystack really. I found it difficult to answer that one about Music for Cleo, and took a massive risk in throwing out a name (which was Ben Harper) and I was quite surprised to find I picked correctly. And quite satisfied too! But then I thought she wasn't interested in politics, when in fact it forms part of their family bonding sessions over the dinner table. I could never understand that considering most of our family are in and out of the house we hardly ever sit at the table all at once.
Now number 4 generated the most interest for me. After I decided to leave that one out, I asked some of my friends what their answer would be "No, you can't play an instrument." then when I said "Yes I can, dammit!" they said "guitar." They find it quite funny, my wierd shaped hands being able to dance across the old "ebonies and ivories." So, Cleo and Maggie, don't feel bad, apparently NO-ONE besides my mother and father know I play the piano, even some of my closest friends who walk through my house and think the piano 2 metres from the front door is a really nice, big shiny black bookcase. Seriously.
Overall, this exercise was the most interesting I've done in a while, just for the fact you start to get an idea about what people think of you after knowing so little about you. I don't think it's life changing though. I like the fact I can be surprising, it makes me mysterious...

Task 1, Part A. Taste profile questions

2006-06-19T18:29:00.000+10:00

Ok. Task 1, Part A. Go easy on me!

1. Favorite Television Show in the last 2 years. How many hours television do you watch a week?
Prison Break, best show in the world. I watch a lot of TV but if I had to put a number, on average about 2-3 hours a night. Depends on what's on.

2. What sort of camera do you have? What do you take pictures of: events, friends and relatives, things I find interesting, beautiful things?
I have a canon powershot A-70 digital camera. Mostly pictures of events I'm at, of friends and every once in a while different types of architecture I find interesting.

3. What sort of car would you like to drive? How often would you get under the bonnet of that car?
A Jeep Wrangler 4WD soft top. I'd look under the hood whenever I have to.

4. Do you play a musical instrument? Which?

5. List your most favorite and least favorite type of music?

6. Which of the following would you visit or attend at least twice a year: art galleries, museums, public lectures, public libraries, political meetings, demonstrations or rallies?
Museums and art galleries

7. List 4 films you have seen in the last year, from favorite to least favorite, and indicate how you saw them (cinema, video/DVD rental, video/DVD owned, pay TV, free-to-air TV)?
Troy (pay TV)
Snatch (DVD owned)
X-Men 3 (cinema)
Giovanni Stecchino (foreign movie, Video)

8. What is your favorite sport or game to play? What is your favorite sport or game to watch?
Soccer and soccer. I watch all sports though.

9. Where would like to travel to (apart from to friends or relatives)?
Overseas. Europe, Africa, South America.

10. What is your primary source of news? To what extent to do you take an interest in the news
The telegraph. Not a great deal unless it affects me.

11. Should the government be spending more or less funding on: tax relief, sport, the arts, the environment.
More!

12. Which country are you from? Could you live in a country other than where you were raised for the rest of your life?
Born in Australia, with Italian Parents. I couldn't live anywhere else but here really.

13. Where do you tend to meet your friends: at each other's homes, shopping centres, pubs or clubs, cafes and restaurants, parks or exercising?

hullo

2006-06-19T13:49:00.000+10:00

this is a test blog