Week 1 Journal

The reading by Fallan and Jorgensen is essentially a curated compilation about design from various perspectives and different walks of life. One of the Major topics discussed is that design and designers can be blamed from causing environmental problems but may also be said to have ideas that could solve the problems. (Journal of design history, 2017) Design is a fundamental part of the world, where emerging concepts such as the Anthropocene challenge the difference between the artificial on the one side and what is not made by human hands, on the other. (Journal of design history, 2017) This special issue explores the common ground emerging at the intersection of these two fields, with the aim of establishing mutually beneficial understandings upon which to build a new interdisciplinary research agenda. (Journal of design history, 2017)Overconsumption of design is also a big worry to environmentalists, hence environmentalists have developed a new way of design: design based on looking at how people live and what they need, what they think and behave. Having that, How can design history engage with issues of environmental controversies and sustainable development and thereby move beyond its conventional societal significance?(Journal of design history, 2017)

Materiality VS Ideology

Environmental history is a study of the human interaction with the natural world over time and its approach can be divided into 2 different categories, design as a matter of ideology and as a matter of materiality. Environmental history has expanded into a field of remarkable breadth and depth, challenging between nature and culture as a false dichotomy. In this process, environmental history borrowed from and interacted with other disciplines(geography and the history of technology, ecology and the natural sciences). (Journal of design history, 2017) An example would be a 1992 artwork by Rachel Carsten. In this artwork, she looked into harmful elements that results in non-environmentally friendly object. Environmental object design is beginning to look less diverse, therefore not many want to follow the environmental movement. Another example is in Flight Maps. Jennifer Price points out that for Americans, ‘most everyday encounters with the natural world take place through mass-produced culture.Flight Maps is mainly concerned at the ideological level and with the connections between people and nature. Also, during the 1960s the plastic flamingo and the artifice that it represented, rapidly lost its lustre. As plastic changed its connotation, the artificial became unreal, fake, and less than natural. (Journal of design history, 2017)The pink plastic flamingo became a marker of bad taste and of being disconnected from nature.

Similarly, William Rollins(an environmental historian) reflects on how the SUV can tell us about postmodern environmental issues. In his view, the SUV is a pollution generating object that is dangerous to others, yet often marketed with nature imagery and as a means of getting away from the city and into nature. In the consumerist world, our lives are filled with things. Ideological relationships to nature mediated through consumer culture can be found anywhere, from stuffed animal toys to online pictures of cabins.(Journal of design history, 2017) All interactions with nature shape values and cultural understandings of nature.

Design VS Culture

As the public and scientific discourse about the Anthropocene gains momentum, we can no longer talk about design and culture without also talking about design and nature. In recent years environmental historians have turned their attention to the evolution of animals, and then in particular the purposeful shaping—the design—of other species. (Journal of design history, 2017)This should encourage us to pay close attention to design as a process and to stimulate methodological and historiographical exchanges between environmental history and design history. A quote by design futurist Tony Fry:  ‘design history . . . has unwittingly acted to conceal the historical significance and agency of the designed world’, and that ‘it constituted a history outside the epistemological issues, arguments, politics and debates over, in and about history.’(Journal of design history, 2017) At the same time Carolyn Barnes and Simon Jackson have claimed that ‘the increasing breakdown of disciplinary boundaries’ between design history and other fields concerned with the study of visual and material culture ‘is a barrier to perceiving and investigating design’s historical role in ecological degradation’, because this type of interdisciplinary scholarship perpetuates an alleged ‘emphasis on symbolic communication in the analysis of past design works that hides their material impact in the world’. Expanding the argument on the centrality of design, Ramia Mazé elaborates just how profoundly enmeshed design is in all aspects of sustainability and unsustainability, not merely by way of bringing forth products, but by conditioning life practices and shaping society. When design is so fundamental to any conception of sustainable development, it follows that the question of sustainability should form a core concern for design history. (Journal of design history, 2017)

Photographs and stories of endless battlefields marred by charred woodlands, torn-up fields and toxic air have contributed to a broader understanding of how modern, industrialized warfare relates to nature. These illustrates how industrialized warfare exploits and damages natural resources in a manner that only intensifies the environmental effects of civilian industrialized society. More broadly, what the example of World War I demonstrates is that environmental histories of design need to address not only the (destructive) agency of designed artefacts, but must also consider the extensive ecological entanglements of the vast and complex networks of resources, processes and knowledge that underpin the world of objects. (Journal of design history, 2017)

Design VS Science

Environmental history can be said to have emerged partly from the environmentalist movement, but has subsequently become less overtly activist in tone. design history may be said to be heading the opposite direction—at least in the sense that scholars are taking an increasing interest in design activism and the socio-political ramifications of design. (Journal of design history, 2017) A quote by environmental historian Libby Robin states that ‘the question is how people can take responsibility for and respond to their changed world?’ And the answer is not simply scientific and technological, but also social, cultural, political and ecological’. (Journal of design history, 2017)

Bauhaus also becomes an example of design and nature when examined from the perspectives of environmental history and the history of science. An example of existing environmental histories of design is the work of Peder Anker on the little-known relations between modernist design ideology, epitomized by the legacy from Bauhaus, and epistemological developments in the life sciences(biology and ecology). Focusing on the London interlude of key Bauhaus émigrés, including Walter Gropius, László Moholy-Nagy and Marcel Breuer, Anker paints a very different and highly intriguing picture of the theoretical and ideological underpinnings of interwar modernism. (Journal of design history, 2017)The designers and the biologists shared the conviction that mathematically-described geometric figures were the basic building blocks of nature, and thus should also form the basis of the built environment. Environmental histories of design are not bound by any given time frame. With a nod to Karl Marx’s notion of the gendering of nature and Claude Lévi-Strauss’s binary categories of the raw and the cooked, Rezende questions how values are ascribed to nature through design. Her contribution thus provokes much-needed reflections on what constitutes design as well as how design relates to the environment.

The Anthropocene is the human-made world, yet can we say it is designed? One of the most prevalent narratives about nature in the Anthropocene is one of unintended consequences leading to environmental decline. (Journal of design history, 2017) The world is constantly falling apart, but it is also constantly being repaired, reinvented, reconfigured, and reassembled. In thinking about design and environment, we should embrace such perspectives. Scott Knowles similarly encourages us to consider the timescales of disaster, drawing special attention to the way slow disasters happen at the rate of which our technological systems decay. Design extends beyond individual objects, in time and space, entangling both ideology and materials into the Anthropocene. It is up to us to try to untangle this web of design is comparison to the environment, sciences, culture, materiality and Olden Ideologies.(Journal of design history, 2017)

Bibliography:

Journal of design history. (2017). 1st ed. Oxford: Oxford university, p.all.

https://www.learn.ed.ac.uk/bbcswebdav/pid-3419771-dt-content-rid-6710531_1/xid-6710531_1

How sustainable is an electric car? The common conception of driving an electric car is that people think to be using an eco-friendly vehicle, however, this is not entirely true after our research. The main problem with this misconception is due to a lack of information given, the battery and energy source to run the car's production are very polluting. A Swedish study proved that the manufacturing of an entirely electric car's battery is as polluting as driving a fueled car for about 8 years. Additionally to the production pollution, if the car is charged with non-renewable energy, the production of it produces CO2 emissions into the air. The interfaces we designed are to make people conscious about energy production and the car production's pollution. Our product consists of 3 parts: the dashboard, an interface for the charging station and the car. The dashboard has a design showing how much the car has been driven in correlation to the 8 years of production pollution. Secondly, we also designed an interface for the charging station. These interfaces shows a graph with the different energy sources and a precise percentage of the energy that are available at the station. This allows the users to know the provenience and the sustainability of the energy and having the choice of making a conscious decision. Finally, the car interface is an expansion of the charging station interface and the dashboard showing the two, recording each history and having an explanation for each part.

Moving on to the design sketches, I made a variety of designs that I think interests me and suits the specifications of making it gender neutral, so that both male and female could use it. One factor that I noticed in a female oriented hair dryer is the fact that there are more curvy lines than straight lines, so I try to emphasize on the straighter, a more balanced forms of the hairdryer. I rendered those which I found interesting and can pursue to be developed further. More of the forms are explored here rather than the functions and how everything is going to fit inside factor.

So my alternative was this dyson battery. After calculating, it will be possible to use with resistors in use to lower down the amount of current flowing through but with the same amount of power output a usual hair dryer can do.

Before I decided to use the dyson battery, this was the calculation I did with the power bank. My inspiration to use the powerbank comes from the fan which could operate by plugging into the powerbank. After the calculation I did, it was clearly impossible to operate a hair dryer with this power source as it provides too little battery life in comparison to the power output of a hairdryer. I also considered an apple iphone charger and a mac charger but the voltage is too low, hence takes longer to charge.

This is a cordless, rechargeable, EMF free hair dryer which can run for 15 min after each charge. I would consider this as one of the competitions to the product I am about to make. The problem with this hairdryer is that it is sold on ebay and amazon with only one picture shown, always mistaken for an electric toothbrush which can be seen in the comments section, and the color and shiny silver and purple color is not too appealing. I plan to improve these specifications for my product.

I made a sketch of the components inside to compare the 2 hairdryers I had taken off. I also identified the components, materials and joining processes they go through.

I made a user journey to show how frequent people(male and female) wash their hair in a week and how long they use it for. I also made sure to show the steps people go through from before using it to when they are done using it. After asking people about when they used their hairdryer, I concluded and made an approximation of the time people use it during the morning and night time.

Other than the battery, I also wanted to add on by adding a thermistor for safety and precautions purposes and a wifi/ bluetooth chip which is used to connect to the smartphone for it to be able to operate.

I also did my research on the different kinds of hair dryer available in the market, and the ionic advantages. I concluded that I didn’t want to use the ionic technology as critics say it doesn’t work, and from my own experience, the ionic technology maked my hair dry and damage it in a faster pace than the normal hairdryer.

To be cordless, you need to put a battery inside. The battery I have chosen is the ones from dyson vacuum cleaner as it can be used for the longest period of time with a relatively similar usage in energy. I calculated the wattage a power bank produced and it is not enough to operate a hairdryer. I concluded that the best rechargeable battery technology to use would be the ones used by dyson.

I did a market research in waverley station regarding travellers and I also interviewed a few people regarding their preference in hairdryers and if they were to improve the function of hairdryers, what will they improve. Their answers vary but I feel that a travel hairdryer would be something that they have and would bring when they are travelling mainly because of the size and the weight. Also, surprisingly male also uses hairdryer to dry their short hair which is something I didn’t expect. So with that in mind, I decided to design a cordless hairdryer and it should incorporate the usage of a smartphone as well.

This is another example of the hairdryer. This time, its a travel hairdryer where you can fold the handle of the hairdryer. Everything was the same as the last one except that they didn’t use exclusive screws to assemble this. Since its more compact, the fan is also reshaped into something smaller in size. I also learnt how the foldable handle works. And in this hairdryer, a mica sheet was places as well to insulate the heat from the heating coil.

I proceed to open up a hairdryer to see how it works. I feel that the process of opening this hairdryer was easy except for the screw on the surface of the hairdryer. The shape of the screw was very different, hence I had to find a screw driver just for that screw drivers. I think that a hairdryer is not a very complicated item to make as the main components include a heating coil and a electric motor powered fan. To control the settings, there are 3 buttons: the cool button which allows the hairdryer to give off cool air, the heat settings button where you can adjust the heat temperature, and the air strength control. The tools I used are laid out pictures. The joining process of the hair dryer is using screws of different shapes, the material used are injection molded ABS plastic. This is evident due to the seam lines and gate marks which shows where the polymer flows from in the injection molding process. For ABS, there is no need to use any finishing processes, but pad printing is used to stamp on the name and labels. Overall, from this autopsy, I think I know how a hair dryer works vividly.

This is an example of a normal shaped hairdryer. I feel that when you ask people what a hairdryer should look like, they are stuck up on this shape in the pictures.

For my object autopsy course, I decided to base my project about hair dryers. This is because I feel that hairdryers can be improved further and since most hairdryers look similar to one another, I wanted to change the appearance of hairdryers.

In class, we learnt about manufacturing processes, and these are an example of blow molding and metal spinning.