My
goal as a designer is to make people’s life better by providing both physical
benefits and positive emotions. During the field trip to Agra, India, I am more
convinced that design can and should bring people better living. The Taj Mahul is a famous
world heritage, which is so incredible beautiful that nothing but admiration
would come up in your mind when you look at it. Beside the aesthetical admiration,
the Taj Mahal also provoke my thinking. There
is an interesting fact that the landscape in front of Taj Mahal was transform
to geometric garden by the British colonists while in the 1600s the Mugal were
to have fruit trees planted in a garden 6 feet lower than the present one which
enabled the emperor to pick up fruits without much efforts. In this
perspective, the Mugal garden provides more interactive experience than the British garden. Also,
before the southern gate of Taj Mahul, there is a densely populated area called
Taj Ganj of which some parts are identified as slums. The residents inside are
living in unbelievable awful conditions-no access to pumping water, no toilet
and so on. The self-constructed community shows how the lack of design can lead
to a deteriorate living conditions. If the community is planned with municipal water
system and public basic facility, the residents can be suffer less even in
poverty. Design in the context of Agra become extreme and controversial, yet I believe that a good design is not only
valuable in terms of aesthetics but also emotion and physical catering to the
wellbeing of every human being.
As
is said by Pieter Desmet and Paul Hekkert “The three components( aesthetic
experience, experience of meaning and emotional experience) of product experience
interact with cognition and behavior, as well as with each other.” I do
believe the products of muji really excel themselves in terms of three components.
With the consistent style of simple, convenient yet pretty products, the
shopping experience such as light and delightful music and indoor design and
considerate without aggressive persuasion salesmen and saleswomen they successfully
create a sense of desirability to consumers.
The
Challenge 0 has considered less about experience but more about how to express
my own feeling which means it is less customer of viewer oriented. Yet the
three components of product experience can be embodied here. The theme of
winter in Cambridge is to trigger the consensus of audience. And the choice of
colors make the board more emotionally positive to create meaning in the
experience.
One
benefiting point from the reading should be conceptual clarity which I fight
for during my own design process for Challenge Half. The fish bowl is named as “fish
hotel” in Skymall yet lacking enough clarification, thus my just is to
provide more persuasive information for potential buyers.
In
terms of experience, the Challenge 1 poster is focusing more on the aesthetics,
emotion rather than meaning experience. In other words, the bomb threat theme
is not original and memorable which makes it less desirable.
Actually,
the reading provides a lot of ideas as how to improve the Challenge 2, for
which the coming project is to reveal these findings.
