Honestly think I could've improved on a lot of things for this project. First, my time management kinda sucks and for some reason it's really difficult for me to find an idea that I like -- or just any ideas. Even after several weeks of studio consultation I'm still not confident with my idea and the concept that I presented. I tried doing research but somehow I couldn’t think of anything out of the box. I could probably overcome that by reading more design books and reading more articles about designers and how they find their inspirations.
Other than time management, I also have to improve a lot on my modelmaking skills. Somehow I always make things more complicated than it is. Even though I’ve made several things using bluefoam, somehow I’m never satisfied with the end products. When everyone else’s is so smooth, mine always ended up abit lumpy and everytime I try fixing it, it becames worse. Another disappointment is my planning skill. If only I’d planned this better, maybe I wouldn’t have to use blue foam and just use MDF or something which is faster to make, and probably will end up looking better than a blue foam model.
By doing this project I’ve learned a lot, especially after listening to the lectures about the environmental and social concerns that designers have to take into account while designing products. One thing that sticks in my mind is that to conserve the environment, we as designers have to think of products after the end of the product life cycle. Before the lecture, I’d never actually think about making something that can be used for something else after the end of their lifecycle, but the video for the blog and the lecture completely changed my mind.
Also what I learned from the experience of doing this project is that being a designer is not as easy as it looks or sounds. You can’t just be thinking about one aspect of product (e.g: form). Some of the important things you have to keep in mind is that the product has to be able to work and you have to design something that people would actually buy. Something I also got from watching a documentary about an industrial designer is that a good design is something that looks like it’s not designed. So instead of trying to hard to add a lot of things into our products, we could just keep it simple as long as it serves its purpose and that people find it useful.
Okay, one more thing that is definitely something I learned when doing this project is … NEVER sand bluefoam in your house. It doubles your workload, now after a long day of studio, I have to go home and completely clean my toilet (where I was sanding) and vacuum the carpet. Sigh…
