Being Colour Blind...

I happen to come across this clip while doing some research earlier. Perhaps in all our criticisms of our immediate northern neighbour here in Singapore, they still have a thing or two that we can learn from. In the midst of the brouhaha of their political scene, I am quite surprised that we don't have a similar video clip, not that we need it, but you know it is just one of those things that you just wonder, how come there isn't any? And NO, National Day patriotic music videos and the likes are not counted! Hmmmmm?

Digitizing Design: Collaborative Design through a Digital Media

One of my experiments this year is to look at enriching the various possibilities and increasing the arsenal of design tools that I can use to augment my teaching capacity. One of which is to look at what else the Alias SketchBook Pro can offer, besides the digital sketching function that it is designed for. The clip below do give me an idea, a possibility perhaps of what the software is capable of when more than one party is engaged in a design collaborative effort. But more importantly is that, what is the objective that I have in mind when I use the tool as part of my design awareness effort? I mean is there a significant amount of value-addedness IF I were to use the software tool when compared to the usual 'pen and paper', besides of course giving my young charges an awareness of digital tools that are available to them? Hmmmm...?

Redesigning Design Education: StoreBlox - The Modular Spice Dispenser

Continuing on with my experimentation from last year's design exposure programme to my young designers, today's post reminds me of the need to have a balance for both the technical as well as the user-defined expectations of a given set of problems. While the team have managed to be technically sound in their resolution of the defined problem, and have in fact come out with a good idea too, on the other hand, the practicality of the given solution do bring up a good number of feasibility issues. But hey, I do think that if my young designers can actually raise up these issues after just a mere 3 to 4 months of exposure to the basic rudiments of design, then i think I have definitely done my job to inspire them!

Additionally, this is the only group that have used the Google SketchUp software tool as part of their design process, as one can see from the pictures below. This is the only group too, I think, that have come out with an almost complete design and user-experiences of sort, in their final proposed model solution.









The videos below comes in 2 parts...yes, they have that much things to present. But more importantly, I do feel that this team have handled themselves well, in both their presentation, as well as their handling of the Q&A's. Well done to them!

Redesigning Design Education: The 'Nose' experiment

An introductory class on modeling and prototyping that I did last year. This is one of my major experiment last year, i.e. looking at an alternative media, i.e. the blue foam, as a means to teach my young charges the basic rudiments of design. The first group takes their cue from the shape of a nose to come out with a model of a multi-purpose storage unit. Here are the pictures of their model, and a video of their final model presentation:

The 'fetish' for things crooked

I just can't help but to take a dig at the whole Pedra Branca issue by showing this, courtesy of TalkingCock.com