Movement & Motion.

rheajeong.com

"Liquid" is an ergonomically focused design for a simple, everyday-use household item: the toothbrush. The design is inspired by a stream of water, commonly occurring while brushing one's teeth. Other than its form and functionality, the other main highlight of this design is its mimicry of the water that one associates with tooth-brushing. Its non-uniform transparency and curves incorporate the liquidity, and therefore natural motion and flow of water. As the user holds the device, there's an illusion created as if water itself is flowing out of the hands. The fluidity of the handle evokes the motion of free-flowing water as well as the actual representation of water.

http://mocoloco.com/archives/023645.php

Recall that overplayed saying: "Life imitates art" or "art imitates life". In "Balloon Bench and Balloon Lamp", I think the latter much more applies. An illusory furniture design, it creates the sense of levitation, even when in actuality, the bench has hidden suspensions behind the "balloons". There's also an implication of flight from our familiar association: balloon = fly. Additionally, the absence of bench legs confuses our visual mind. We then must conclude that it must not be planted on the ground and therefore it must move nowhere else but up. Our eyes imagine an upwards movement from the floating, legless bench to the cluster of "balloons" tied to the bench and away (like the little boy in the image above is probably thinking). Although a stationary object, this design successfully gives us the feeling of motion (and perhaps fools the young ones too).

Tone & Color.

http://www.betterlivingthroughdesign.com/accessories/cut-and-paste-cutting-boards.html

Tone acts on several different aspects of this cutting board design. At the forefront, its dual-tonality of neutral wood and white ceramic creates a classic aesthetic that is modern and clean. More abstractly, tone is portrayed to transform a two-dimensional image into a tangible product with three-dimensionality. The tones of the wooden blocks tell the users how thick (and perhaps sturdy) the cutting board is. It gives way to an isometric view of the product and informs the users of its shape and form. The varying tones created from that natural woodgrain suggest texture as well. Additionally, tone is also active on the ceramic plates, giving the user knowledge of its curvature and dimensions. The shadowing and highlights created by tone tells us how the ceramic plates curve upward for better user grasp of the cutting board(s). Although quite subtle, tone in products help the user form his/her decision through perception of aesthetic or functionality.

Color is one of the areas Apple highlights to create the success of its products. From the rainbow of its iPod Nano/shuffle line to the simplicity of the all-white macbook, they have strategically catered to a wide demographic of users through their use of color. Here, the iPhone 4G is demonstrated to show the importance of color in a successful design. Albeit, there is a group of people that are unmoved by its all-white colorway, perhaps even categorizing it as lazy and mundane. But to a greater number of people, the white is sought after, moreso than its equally functioning black counterpart. White is used to create a sense of modernity and enhances clean, sleek lines. It highlights the smoothness and glossy feature of the phone, as well as the non-industrial appearance of its material. The calming effect of the color lets the user appreciate the product as a whole, without extraneous colorful distractions other than the beautiful interface from the screen. Evidently, white, although the often ignored vanilla of the color pack, has proven itself as a contender through its success in design.

Industrial Design: Basic Elements

The Dot

Hello Haptic is a flashcard kit designed for blind children to be able to experience features in nature that they otherwise cannot visually see. Here, the dot, the most basic element, becomes the main functional feature of this product. It uses the (raised) dot system of braille to stimulate knowledge about their surroundings with a first-hand tactile experience. Additionally, dots are not only exclusively used in braille featured products but are also found on common household devices such as the everyday television remote control.

The Line

Formulating from the basic element of the dot, the line is the next most essential element in industrial design. From sketching freehand to 3-d modeling, one cannot conceptualize a design without using a form of line. In this example, a simple tea kettle is broken down in its primitive form of lines. The combination and connection of many lines form the curve and shape of products and other industrial designs, turning the abstract into an object.

Tone

In the process of prototype sketching and conceptualizing an idea, the most efficient and effective way to brainstorm is to rapidly visualize designs through black and white. But when designing for a tangible product, one must ultimately need to create a sense of depth and three dimensionality to their designs. Tone then becomes a very important factor to rapid visualization when we use varying tone levels to play with the depths and shadows of each conceptual design.

Design Success & Failure.

http://gadgetsteria.com/2009/12/14/kinesis-keyboard-an-expensive-wrist-contorting-mind-game-of-plastic-keys/

The BAD

Perception: The outrageously unique design of this keyboard misleads its users of what its actual functionality is. Initially looking at it, it was not easily registered that this was a regular computer keyboard. I had to squint my eyes to look at the individual keys to finally realize that in fact, this was what it's aiming to be. The standard qwerty board pattern is altered and therefore not easily recognizable.

Balance: The keyboard tries to balance the components but fails to consider balance as functionality, which should be prioritized for this user-based product. True, the separated sections of the keyboard are balanced spatially but the operation has become much more complicated. It would be unnatural for user ergonomics to coordinate two hands to type so separated from each other.

Stress: The scalloped sides poses a dynamic stress for the design but doesn't succeed in relating its purpose.

Attraction/Grouping & Positive/Negative: The keyboard's intention to group certain sections of the keys does not pose any advantages to its user. The two big groups do indeed take advantage of the left-right home keys but separating the miscellaneous keys in the middle does not seem to be effective. The odd grouping is one of the main factors of why it was hard to recognize the keyboard as what it is. The excessive negative space also does not help its ambiguity as a product.

http://www.core77.com/blog/object_culture/jinyoung_chois_housewares-esque_multi-tool_19716.asp#more

The GOOD

Perception: The colors and curvilinear form denotes friendliness and an unassuming design. It captures ones attention because of its resemblance to a toy and its simplicity leaves room to the imagination. In the sense of knowing and immediately understanding the purpose of the tool, the design skimps on that aspect.

Balance: The design successfully achieves balance structurally, functionally and visually. Its form makes it a self-supporting structure that users can easily throw around in the kitchen. Its multi-functionality is the result of its well balanced functionality, wasting no space for the sake of aesthetic. It is also visually composed where no one element overpowers the other.

Attraction: The interesting shape and contour of this tool attracts the user to explore its uses and discovers that each point represents a different tool. The use of vibrant colors also attracts the eyes to inquire.

Visual Thinking Research.

*NOTE: Did not print out puzzles but worked on them simultaneously while both on iChat. Additionally, the puzzles didn't require for us to do any physical modifications/writings and were purely visually done.

Identify which spiral only uses one rope and which ones uses two ropes.

When initially seeing the two spirals, I was a little overwhelmed. I knew that they were supposed to be different but at first glance, they seem identical. So I split the work and randomly chose the left one to dissect first. I followed the loop from end into the middle but my eyes got weary trying to follow the loop in the center. So I re-strategized and mentally split the loop in half and followed one line at a time into the middle. There I found that the line re-looped outwards from the center and would eventually work its way back to my starting point of the spiral. Once I established that the left spiral was the one-roped spiral, it was somehow easier for me to see that the right one consists of the different loops/ropes. Then when I took a step back to look at them as a whole picture, it became more apparent that they were two different spirals and that the right, two-roped spiral looks less complex than the left hand spiral.

Wesley Wong, my co-puzzle solver, also started his strategy by picking a spiral at random. He just so happened to choose the right spiral first and also traced from end into the center. When he found it was a closed loop at the center, he checked the left spiral as well, just to verify. He noticed at this time that although similar, these spirals did not have the same pattern (pattern-seeking strategy). He also noticed that the right one was more simple of a swirl than the left and chose to solve that one first.

Which month of the year does this stand for?

Immediately, I look at it holistically and think it's symbolic for a month and theses abstract shapes stood for something. With this top-down sort of strategy, I made the puzzle more complex and sort of unsolvable. I overlooked the features of the shape and got hung up on the goal of trying to find the relationship between these "symbols" and a month. I tried to find similarities of its shape and even the colors to any of the months but alas, I was beat to the finish line.

Wesley typed "July" as his answer before I got to solve it myself. At first, I still could not see it. He then explained that at first, he also thought the colors were indicative of the solution to the puzzle. Understandably, the bright colors featured is highly impacting and grabs your attention. Partly why I chose to even solve this puzzle was because of its colorful attribute. Wesley quickly gathered that something else was grabbing his attention, other than the colors, so he separated each shape's features. To him, he saw j-shapes and the u-shape when he took off the tops in his mental imagery. After establishing that there's at least one "j" and one "u"-like characters, he went down the list of the months and matched it to july. His use of bottom-up visualizing helped him solve the problem quicker, especially that this puzzle is harder to visualize when one looks at the whole picture. In fact if I had just started physically looking from bottom and upwards and mentally dissect the shapes into parts, "July" is easier to locate.

Top-Down Visual Processing.

http://www.konstantindatz.de/?p=529

"Dodekalender" is a product concept for a paperweight calendar in a 3-d form. First, our eyes fixate briefly at the whole product. After perceiving that there's more to it than just the colorful shape sphere/block, we look closely to specific given areas to give us a better understanding of what this product is trying to accomplish. We fixate at each pentagonal side to discover that it represent a month of the year and with the corner of our eyes, we can foresee that the rest of the pentagonal sides should also represent a month each. As we try to look for a certain month or even a date of a month, our attention is captured for longer periods of time as we try to simultaneously look for and absorb the bits of information that are presented.

With this color chart, our attention becomes biased to our visual and cognitive goals of wanting to see the month that we are interested in and finding the matching color/hue on the structure. We would rotate it around, passing the (right-now) unimportant sides/months, to achieve our goal of finding the right color and the right month.

MEANING: Interactions Between Three Levels.

"Bauhaus Chessmen"

Representational

Initial glance, it is quickly identified as the familiar, checkered board game and from its non-uniform pieces, that it is indeed the game of chess. The checkered pattern distinguishes each positional squares that may house one piece at a time. Each game piece is different in shape---cubes, spheres and combinations of simple shapes---to make one recognizable from the other. The board is simplified to its functionality, stripped down of its traditional decorative form. Its mere checkerboard pattern and well-known pieces denotes a game of strategy, even a hobby for most. Its minimal elements opens a wider gate for users to interpret its abstraction and symbolic elements.

Abstraction

If not for the checkered pattern of the board, the abstraction of its game pieces makes it difficult to recognize the game it represents. The small and plain cube pieces can be identified as the pawns, the weakest and common pieces of the game. Unlike traditional chess boards, this particular design utilizes each pieces' movements and replaces their original form to mimic their movement (ie. the bishop's cross form imitates its diagonal movement). The simplicity and abstraction that this version represents emphasizes utility and functionality of the game board. More importantly, its abstracted elements embodies the symbolic principles of the Bauhaus movement.

Symbolic

There is an irony with what this board stands for. It strips the game pieces from their usual symbolic representation. But at the same time, this abstraction signifies a different focus, one concerned with the intentions of Bauhaus aesthetic. By removing the pieces' traditional identities, they now represent utilitarianism and a redirected focus for the user's gameplay. Rather, the representation of this design and the lack of symbolic attachment to its pieces through use of abstraction, becomes a symbol in it of itself.

MEANING: The Representational, Abstract & Symbolic.

Representation.

It's a bridge. Look closely; it's THE Golden Gate Bridge. Yes---there's no denying its glorious red-orange tint with its body gracefully suspended afloat the bay. On a perfect day, at the right shade, the bridge looks exactly as the picture leads your eyes to see. It's an image not hard to appreciate, for even if one is not familiar with its name, they will still be able to experience the visual pleasure of beholding such magnificent structure.

Abstraction.

He is captured by error---better yet experimentation. Reduced to nothing more than blurs of differences in tone and color and devoid of detailed shapes. Still we identify. Is he stripped down to vulnerability? His composition off-centered (is he lost?). Getting swallowed by darkness (save him).

Symbolism.

Even in a language strange to you, this symbol speaks. Its message is reinforced throughout the world, choosing no age or nationality. We look past the unfamiliar characters under the golden arc and replace it with our own preconceived captions formed by experiences and global advertisement. "Food". "Happy Meal". "Supersize".

Testing, testing.

Testing.