CR10

Overall, I enjoyed the Design 200 class this quarter very much. I thought that Gabe did a very good job trying to make what could have been a very plain, generic, and remedial class as fun and interesting as possible. For starters, I liked the blog format very much. Although I did not use it much for the purpose of reading and reviewing the work of my peers, I thought it was very convenient to have all of my work in the class located in one place, that I could access from anywhere with an internet connection. I also enjoyed how easy the blog format made it to submit assignments for the class. Simply publishing a post is much more convenient than printing out and turning in a hard copy. Regarding the in class activities and lectures, I thought that Gabe was very knowledgable of the material he was presenting, and accordingly was also aware of how dry and dull some of the topics could get so he made many attempts to present the material in as engaging and interesting a way as possible. The class was made much more enjoyable and bearable because of the positive and understanding attitude that Gabe brought to the table. One major way I feel that the experience could be improved would be to reduce the size of the class, but that is obviously something that the instructor has no control over and something that is a hard thing to do at a university like OSU.

J10

Links to my A05 teammates' blogs:

http://oliviajonesdsgn200.tumblr.com/

http://laurennkelley.blogspot.com/

http://kbranscum-dsgn200.blogspot.com/

Link to J08 and J09

Our team worked on creating a proposal to bring Coleman brand wallpaper that both reflects/replicates nature and that can also detect carbon monoxide. The most recent decision made were regarding who would work on developing which parts of the presentation. The team worked very well both organizationally and personally. As a group we did a good job because we all had different skills and talents which we brought to the project.

I personally fulfilled a few roles for this project. One of the main ones was identifying/finding the material that reacts to the presence of carbon monoxide. I also tried to help facilitate the conversation when we were working in the group setting to help make sure that work was being delegated properly and evenly across the group. When we were giving our presentation, I introduced and the project/product to try to break the ice and set the stage for my other group members because many of them were not overly comfortable speaking in front of a group. I feel that I could have done more to try to help my group members with the oral part of their presentations to both make them more comfortable and help with the material they were presenting.

J09

Lately our team has been working on developing our product/project as much as possible to have it prepared to present by the upcoming Monday (March 7) deadline. The decision has been made to pursue a Coleman line of indoor wall-paper, that reminds its users of the outdoors while they are forced to spend time indoors and also doubles as a carbon monoxide detector. The team has been working very well organizationally, each of us have different strengths and unique traits which we are bringing to the project. Thus far, in addition to the contributions noted in last week's post, I have tried to provide as many ideas as posible and help to facilitate and move our project forward during the in-class work sessions. Additionally, I did the research to find the material that detects and changes colors in the presence of carbon monoxide that we are using on our in our product. I have also typed the information regarding this aspect of our project and information regarding the client/user up for the power point presentation.

RR08

Chapter 10 of Heskett was one of the more interesting chapters in the book since it dealt with issues related to the future of design. One questions posed in chapter 10 I particularly enjoyed was regarding to the future of design/designers with regard to the commercial world. The book raised the question, "Will the future pattern of what is produced, and why, continue to be primarily determined by commercial companies, with designers identifying with their values; or by users, with designers and corporations serving their needs? There is much free-market ideology claiming the latter to be the case, but the realities of economic practice make it plain that in many respects the former still dominates." (131) While I believe I understand what this quote was trying to get at, questioning whether the decisions behind what type of goods are produced will continue to be developed primarily by companies rather than designers, I think this quote/question is mistaken in its assumption that the things produced by corporation aren't already determined by the needs of consumers/users. To this end, I also have questions about the excerpt in chapter 10 that says, "Idealistic claims by designers, however, that in some innate manner they represent the standpoint of users is clearly unsustainable, especially given the number of designers servicing the needs of conspicuous consumption in wealthy societies, while basic needs around the globe remain unsatisfied or not even addressed." While I can understand the author's frustration with this reality, I don't feel that it is fair of him to say that designers cannot say they represent the standpoint of users simply because they are simply they are choosing to represent the standpoint of the minority of users that best patronize them.

J08

Links to my A05 teammates' blogs:

http://oliviajonesdsgn200.tumblr.com/

http://laurennkelley.blogspot.com/

http://kbranscum-dsgn200.blogspot.com/

Although we do not currently have a lot to show for it, the state of the project as a whole for our group is good right now. We have been working on brainstorming the idea/product we want to bring in to the Coleman Home Goods line. Even though as of my writing this we have not decided on the actual concept we are going to work on, we have created and eliminated many good ideas, and come the next work session in class should be able to finally narrow it down and get the project moving along. We have decided to come back to class Monday with our thoughts on which/what object each of us thinks would be the best to work on. Out initial concept was for an indoor version of an outdoor grill, built onto a stove/oven. This idea, however, proved overly complicated and not very feasible which is why we are currently still in the ideation phase and do not know exactly what we are doing.

Everyone in our group has done a good job fulfilling multiple roles. Thus far in the project, I suggested a few of the ideas that our/were on our list for consideration, I have tried to help navigate and steer the conversation in a constructive direction, and have also done a (very) little sketching of some of our thoughts/concepts. I feel that I could try to help myself as well as the others in the group build on eachother's ideas more so that we are able to develop some of them further, but all-in-all I am happy with how we are progressing to date.

Some of our work so far:

CR07

The presentation by the 3 students who had been through the design program at OSU was enjoyable because it was nice to get a feel for what the program actually entailed, what sort of design skills it will help you develop, and what kind of work graduates of a design program can attempt to get involved with. Although I am only pursuing the design minor, it was still worth while to get get a feel for what people who are pursuing design full time are capable of and what their aspirations are. It seems that there are very few entry-level positions available for "Designers" out in workforce. Moreover, the positions that exist do not fall under one distinct umbrella category, which makes it difficult to compare the types of jobs that individuals with design skill sets actually get involved with. Design is a concept that is very mysterious and foreign to those individuals that do not have a direct interest in it, which would be the majority of the world/U.S. For individuals to truly learn what design is, what designers do, and what they are capable of requires them to have some exposure with someone from a design related field. It was nice to see how some recent design graduates were putting their skills and abilities in use around the Columbus area, and to see how they were attempting to market and describe their services to clients. It was also neat to see the kind of projects they worked on while in the program here, in part because it showed what some of the more technical and specific design skills individuals learn outside of the generic intro classes are, and then also because it gave the class a slight feel for how the presenters went about tackling a design problem.

RR07

Chapter 4 of Cradle to Cradle really seemed to get to the heart of some of the most important issues the book is attempting to convey. The idea that waste equals food is one of the central messages that sustainable design addresses. As put by the book, "Nature operates according to a system of nutrients and metabolisms in which there is no such thing as waste." (92) If industry and society were to operate in this same manner the world would likely be a much healthier and cleaner place, and we would not have to face any/many of the environmental challenges we face today.

One of the ideas within chapter 4 was regarding the societies in which the Industrial Revolution began. As it says in the book, people personify goods/products by projecting their own vitality and mortality onto them. The book then poses the question of, "What would have happened, we sometimes wonder, if the Industrial Revolution had taken place in societies that emphasize the community over the individual, and where people believed not in a cradle-to-grave life cycle but in reincarnation?" (103) I found this section of the book interesting because I had never really considered the origins of the Industrial Revolution in this way. To me the industrial revolution was an inevitable result of progress and population growth, but to stop and consider how much differently the revolution would have played out and how much differently the world would be today had its origins been in a more collectivist culture poses many interesting questions. To this end, the industrial revolution was not just some cataclysmic event with one possible outcome for the way in which it would change the world. The  means through which it did so were directly representative of the cultures from which it came.