Back to designing
A version of Introduction to Design module in China
We all attended a presentation last Thursday held for the Design Innovation Programme students which involved the local and various international exchange students, some from SUTD! The project started way back before our DATE programme and it was not an easy feat for those students who are involved managed both DIP and their own individual project. They dealt with projects involving sleep, fashion, an interactive virtual reality fish tank and more. There was a particular project about a digital name card that interests me. This name card helps to find common topic between 2 people in a more formal event or place for example, a high end museum, seminar or conference. It will trigger a vibration when two persons of multiple similar interests or ideas are nearby each other. They can go on to proceed about their conversation based on that. In addition, it can also provide useful succinct information about exhibits at exhibitions or inform user about the starting time for next conference in case they get too caught up in their new made friends. It is seldom seen at formal events that people get to really know the people around them and often socialize because they have to and this could be a really useful tool.
Design Fiction
Design is mainly about understanding from the perspective of the user to better create an idea or product that could aid him. Similarly, design fiction has been about portraying an idea as succinct and clear as possible from the perspective that the designer wants to showcase to the audience. We have learnt basic skills from sketching to video editing and photo-shopping which are all useful tools to help us present our ideas. Based on several themes like ‘future learning’ and ‘the world in the future’, every lesson we have to complete several tasks and a major task at the end of the class. We will then talk briefly about how and why we created our works. It has to be brief because the whole idea is for the work to be very clear to the audience. If it requires too much explanation then it will not have met the objective of the course. Below is some sketches from the theme “How to make toast”.
