ASSIGNMENT 1

The Everyday

In the book “The Design of Everyday Things”, Donald Norman show lots of examples of good and bad design of The Everyday.

“Complex things may require explanation, but simple things should not. When simple things need pictures, labels, or instructions, the design has failed. A psychology of causality is also at work as we use everyday things.” (Norman D., 2009, pp. 9). He also describe how The Everyday have been designed, such as how a door handle show users to push or pull, or how scissors is designed. Hence those, he discusses that designers retrieved those bad and good design in everything to figure out the way to design the best, most effective functioning as for The Everyday design.

This book is relevant to The Everyday theme because it not only explains but also critique about the design. Therefore, what do make things as The Everyday and how they distinguish with other types of designs?

Norman, D. (1990, February 1). The Design of Everyday Things. Paperback.

Critical Design

In the text, “Design Noir: The Secret Life of Electronic Objects”, Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby debate how to apply Critical Design into the electric industry. So they debate the challenge for Critical Design to narrow assumptions.

Through quite lots of their works as examples, such as : Parasite light, compass table, nipple chair… Anothony Dunne and Fiona Raby research how the Critical Design acts as the main role in massive, industrial manufactory. Furthermore, questions are given and feedbacks from production tests that shows people how they use, how they can feel about the objects that much different from massive products.

This text is related to Critical Design because Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby shows lots of questions also discussions how Critical Design get into the industrial and how it affects the way people using things.

Dunne, A., & Raby, F. (2001). Design Noir: The Secret Life of Electronic Objects. Berlin, Germany: Birkhäuser.

DIY

In the journal “Do it Yourself: Democracy and Design”, Paul Atkinson states that a discourse around the interface between “design” taken as a function of the acitivity of “professional” designers, being part of production design and consumptions of goods and the DIY taken as its antithesis – design process of self-driven, self-directed amateur design and production activity.

He also debates the key issue of how DIY acts as the antithesis of product design of the mass marketplace. Yet, DIY acts as a higher level of class, overcome the social stigma to engage more to the working classes that been excluded previously.

Atkinson P., (Spring 2006). Do It Yourself: Democracy and Design. Design Hist: 19 (1): 1-10.doi: 10.1093/jdh/epk001

Google Warming

In the video on TEDtalk.com “Behind the Great Firewall of China”, Michael Anti shows lots of examples of how Chinese copy all the most popular search engines, social networks, blogs… He also debates that when it comes to politics, there are no real privacy on Internet at all.

Michael stated that nowadays trend is the Internet, now we all work in a super broad, super social environment which includes all the tools we call “search engines, blogs, social networks”. Furthermore, the Chinese government could see the risk having the other countries’ control on those tools, it would harm their politics. However, instead of blocking all of this, they see the necessities in those, as long as they would satisfy the needs in China also they could use those as political tools to govern the country. As it is a much broader tool and any forms or medium we did use in the past.

The video is related because I think I can see how the world have change much since the birth of search engines, social network, blogs in particular and the birth of the whole Internet in general.

Anti, M. (2006, July), Behind the Great Firewall of China. TEDGlobal 2012. Retrieved from http://on.ted.com/MichaelAnti