All posts tagged research

  • December 4, 2013

    Product-Service Innovation research

    Seminar I // research notes

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    Our next project for Design Seminar is to do a product-service analysis and write about some potential areas of innovation in the product. The analysis will cover the second half of the semester’s reading including:

    • The affordances of the components
    • The patterns of interaction among target audiences
    • The flow of the use experience (and it’s qualities as a focal object)
    • Theembedded knowledge in the human habits, desires, and inadequacies
    • It’s (and the user’s) anticipation of breakdown
    • It’s co-ordination of promises

    The product-service I’ve chose to analyze is my lunch box:

    (photo via amazon)

    It’s definitely not the perfect lunch box. It was kind of impulse buy. I spent hours researching containers in search of the perfect bento box and gave up. Then I saw this on at the nearby convenient store weeks later and just bought it.

    Now that I’ve been working on this project, I spent a couple more hours pouring over lunch boxes looking for the perfect design. I’m convinced it doesn’t exist yet. Some or the right size, but don’t have the right functions, some have the right functions but aren’t the right size, many aren’t made of sustainable materials, etc, etc. It’s not the point of the assignment to find your dream product, don’t be mistaken there, but now I can’t help thinking about it.

    My requirements are:

    • non-plastic material
    • microwaveable
    • leak-proof
    • not-too big and/or have compartments

    This doesn’t seem like too much to ask for, does it? But it is really hard to find all these things! Plus, for the longest time I was looking for something really well designed, stackable bento boxes that would possibly also be thermal and come with cutlery.

    However, I did come across this product by Frego which I think is really neat. That silicon sleeve just seems like a magical innovation. You think that burning your hands is just part of microwaving stuff–but it isn’t!

    Frego from Chelsie Lopez on Vimeo.

    I forgot that was a think because my current lunch box obviously doesn’t have any problems with that either since it has a silicon base. However, the lid is still plastic and warped. So now the little thing that holds the cutlery doesn’t stay in. Which obviously makes me more unhappy.

    I’m really tempted to buy it, but I don’t know where it would fit into my life right now since I have a tolerable lunch box as it. But I can’t help pining and thought I’d share!

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  • October 23, 2013

    Abstract > Concrete project work

    studio-p3-ideation

    For our next project in studio we need to help explain and visualize abstract objects in a concrete way. The final form these explanations will take is a 1-3 minute video. I’m really excited to use this project as a way to explore a new design style and work on animation.

    My initial complex topics were:

    1. Fukushima. The brief history, the after math/clean up attempts and failures, and the future implications. Pretty big, I know.
    2. WordPress.org vs WordPress.com as you go to set up a website. This is something I have explained (or attempted to explain) several times when volunteering and when helping out other people. I feel like to first time website set-er-up-ers it’s a really hard system to grasp. I thought it would be helpful to make something remotely in my field.
    3. Patents. Specifically, the problems in our current patenting system when companies have broken away from the spirit of the system as a way to protect and encourage creativity (not just make a bunch of money).

    These topics were fine and dandy, but after reading some of the other student’s topics they were approaching and what I wanted to do with my own topic, I re-thought it a bit. I wanted to do something more light-hearted to try out a different illustration style (I naturally tend to make things clean, crisp, and simple). These topics aren’t necessarily best represented in a light-hearted manner.

    So I sat back down at my desk and pondered my dilemma, trying to think of topics that I knew at least something about and that I really enjoyed knowing about. Miraculously, I remembered a conversation I had with my friend Grant almost a year ago about New Zealand birds.

    Context: I also really love learning about science and animals and had stumbled across an article about kakapos in National Geographic which reminded me of this hilarious video of a kakapo I’d seen earlier. I told Grant about it because he has studied and is interested in birds and actually did a research project in New Zealand. He ended up explaining to me why the animals (birds and lizards primarily) of New Zealand are so unique. Basically it’s because the islands broke off earlier on leaving the birds with no natural predators. For more details, you’ll have to wait for my end project.

    In the meantime, please enjoy this recorded lecture by one of my favorite authors, Douglas Adams, in which he talks about his research with some unique island animals (including the kakapo, of course). Basically, I feel like the kakapos is one of the most delightful birds.

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