Rants and ravings: The Lightbulb Conspiracy

It's pretty amazing to see how the printer failed and how it could be fixed. Something so small causing so many problems. It just seems so stupid for stuff like that to still happen now when we know so much.

We see how planned obsolescence started with the lightbulb, and how these international cartels were deliberately making products last shorter than they could to make more money. To me it just seems illogical to hinder progress like that when you know you can do better.

However it makes sense to why people back then could act like that. They had lots of resources and had set up large factories. They needed to create jobs and get the money flowing. The concept of sustainability wasnt important, at least not in places like the USA. They believed they had abundant resources. Fair enough. They probably had good intentions, like create wealth, jobs, allow people to have easier lives.

Now it just seems dumb, and yet it still happens. We know all the problems yet we let it continue. Why has change not been forced already? Is it greed? Is it because change means a lot of unhappy people? Will people lose positions of power? 

Three things help fuel this crazy over consumption of products, advertising, planned obsolescence and credit. Consumers have to take some blame. They are influenced by advertising and credit makes purchases easy. But this is stuff that consumers can easily ignore if they used some bloody willpower or thought. The bit that you cant really do much about is planned obsolescence...or can you? The video showed the iPod case, with the battery not lasting very long and not being replaceable. Maybe more companies can get taken to court for creating this waste. Or maybe governments should be harsher, but they wont do much if the people dont say anything.

Now back to the topic of planned obsolesence. The video talked about Nylon stockings and the film 'The man with the white suit'. It talked about how progress is halted due to economic reasons. Companies are afraid theyll lose money, and workers are afraid of losing their jobs. People get comfortable and get scared of change even if it is for the good of the world. Pathetic and selfish. I could go on to what if scenarios and what not, but then Id just be dragging on.

I guess planned obsolescence would work if they could figure out how to make the process 100% renewable. The video talked about cradle to cradle, so if designers could work that into products then it should be fine. 

Peer review for project 1

Nicholas Baroni
Gabriel Ly
Ella Setiamiharja
Henry Treloar
Harry Xie

Get some

Yumoo, all the nutrition of sugar and purple, and triple the funsies of ordinary powdered milk flavouring. Plus moo cow!

Project 1 - Cormack Packaging

The idea behind my design was inspired by sugar dispensers which portion control. They are quite common at cafés and restaurants, but have also become more popular in households.

This idea was applied to powdered milk flavouring. With current milk flavouring, it is all pretty much the same. It comes in a container, usually a metal cylindrical tin, and you spoon the contents out into a cup then mix.

With my concept, you don’t need a spoon to get the contents out. You merely tip the container over like you are pouring, and the equivalent of one teaspoon will come out. One teaspoon is a good amount since that is what most people use when getting powdered flavouring out of a can.

Children tend to make a real mess when it comes to using these current tins. They open it messily, they get powder everywhere, they mix a wet spoon with the dry contents and they put way too much powder into their milk, or whatever fluid they are using.

The square shape was done because first of all, it made the alignment of the cup and funnel easier. The reason the funnel is on the side, rather than the middle, is that it allows more efficient use of the content inside, as it must be poured from that one side, and so it will gather around the cup effectively. Next it made it easier to hold on to, which is important for this package.  The square shape also means better use of materials, and more content in the package, which is good for the sustainability side, as well costs. It also helps with storage and transport, which is also very important to the previous mentioned things. The shape also helps with labelling, making it easier to read due to the flat surfaces. And finally it differentiates from the rest of the market. When kids see the different shape, they’ll be drawn to it, and parents will probably get it.

The package is made entirely of polypropylene. This means less sorting when the time comes for recycling; it also has good properties for the intended uses, it is good for food, it is tough, it can come in many colours saving on labelling, and it is recyclable. The product can also be re-used if it need be.

The disadvantages with this package are that it is a bit more complicated than current packages, and will probably cost more to manufacture. It is also restricted to how much it can hold, since a very large version will lose its effectiveness in pouring.

Issues with posters and how to fix em.

• Show the usage of the product. Be more clear. Use user instructions, more images, diagrams.
• Use more colour and graphics. Show its a kids product. Both with the product and the layout of the boards.
• More information: research, how it works, go in-depth on points, show images
• Put names on posters (ID number whatever)
• Manufacturing: Show steps, more information.
• Show proof it works. How it works effectively.
• Make sure the posters show all the info they need to without a mock up or me to back up.

ifixit

I like this site. They teardown a bunch of products. People can send in their own tear downs. Its set out nicely, and can satiate your curiousity about how the insides of your thingy come together in a neat little package.
The gave the new MacBook Pro a 1/10 for repairability. You cant upgrade the memory or the HD. The monitor is a clusternut of assembleness. The battery is glued to the computer (lol what?) And you need special screwdrivers to remove screws. Have fun!
Even though Apple seem to have gone backwards in the repairability side of things, its still impressive how they fit everything together so nicely. Too bad they make it impossible for noobs like me to fix em.

Class exercise: product disassembly

In class we took apart some products. Our group did a toaster. It took like 50 minutes to take apart, although we had to break a bunch of stuff to do so, so trying to assemble it from the original parts would be pretty damn hard.

Using a drill to make a hole bigger to remove a screw. What? You never had to that? Well really you should only need the one screwdriver. All the holes and screws should be the same. Get on to that Breville!

ACTION SHOT!!! also the removal of the outer Al shell from the insides

Removing the heating element sub assy and the PCB's.

Welp, that was fun!

After taking it apart we looked at the different materials used in the product.

Two bad screws. Note they require different tools to remove, one is a Phillips the other is just lame.

Aluminium

PP

Nylon

Real Steel

I dunno

ABS

Mica, for the heat protections man!

PCB's having a good time

After that we looked at ways we could improves its disassembly, repair and durability. We said that the electronic components could be put together, then they could be easily accessed for repair, upgrade, disassembly. The steel parts on the Al shell could be made from the Al shell so less parts. Using the same screws for the whole thing. Make the heating elements easy to remove for cleaning and repair.

Improving product life cycle

These sheets are from the adobe sustainability site. They talk about how to make a product more sustainable. This can be through making it easier to disassemble, repair, upgrade, recycle and dispose of. Its about closing the loop to eliminate waste, or at least reduce it significantly.

The 11th hour. Reflection, review, blabberings.

The 11^th hour is a documentary which goes in depth into the problems with the worlds environment. The documentary itself is quite dry and boring, and I can understand why so many people can’t take the sustainability issue seriously. There is a lot to understand, it isn’t a simple issue, and this documentary is not going to appeal to those who don’t care about the environment since they repeat the same thing over and over and it just drags on. Also some of the people being interviewed don’t help when they over exaggerate, which will get the denialists scoffing.

However if you are passionate about this topic and don’t have ADD, you should learn a lot from this, and hopefully it should get you to research more about certain topics and learn more about the complexity of ecological and social sustainability,

The most important thing that I’ve always taken from sustainability documentaries/lectures/articles is that the whole capital system we have is wrong. We treat economic capital as the number one thing, with social and environmental below it. It should environmental at the top, social next then finally economic capital.

Consumerism is another topic talked about in the film. The way we consume and just want more. As industrial designers we know this, and we know the problems. But this ties into changing the way that we live. Putting the environment and society ahead of the dollar.

The film also talks about how technology isn’t an issue. It is a people issue. People don’t want to change, and there is too much money for them to lose if they do change. On one hand it says it’s the politicians fault and the leaders of the companies, but then also goes on to say that we as people can change it by the way we live and ‘vote’ by purchasing goods that help the sustainability cause. The governments of the world can definitely help change the way things are done (putting a price on carbon for instance), but at the end it is up to local communities and everyday folk like you and me to change. Don’t blame the government and become apathetic, do something about it.

Industrial designers have a role here. We know the technology is there, and we design the products, these products become waste, and they use up energy and resources. We can try to put more sustainable things into our products, maybe design it so it can be repairable, use less parts, use energy efficient parts. Also try to use our influence to get others to change their ways, instead of just sitting back, doing a job and getting paid.

Amazingly, as in depth as the documentary was, there is still much more to learn about the topic of sustainability. It really is a complex issue, and it can seem overwhelming to try to understand it. But just try learning a bit here and there and it makes perfect sense. You start to see why things are the way they are, and it'll make you sad and angry and frustrated, but also try to focus on the positives and do what you can to change the way things are.

How to go faster and influence people

Awesome documentary on Gordon Murray, the guy did the McLaren F1, and a bunch of other stuff.

GPANL and How its made videos. Reflection.

I made some playlists for the videos just for easynesses sake.
Giving packaging a new life
How its made

Reflection time

The biggest thing I took from the videos was the complexity of recycling and in making packaging that can be recycled but still function effectively. It was pretty amazing seeing how all the different materials are separated using several techniques. There were magnets, spinning things, centrifuges I think, people manually sorting with just their eyes and hands. I wonder how effective it is in doing the sorting though. Surely plenty of pieces would get through and end up contaminating the wrong material. The point though is that recycling is bloody tough and a lot of energy goes into it, and sometimes it just leads to ‘downcycling’, where the original product can’t be used for its original purpose and it becomes an inferior material. Eventually the material will get to a point where it was no use and must be disposed.

So people, remember recyclability is not the be all and end all of sustainability. It’s energy intensive. Rather look for ways to make the products last longer, or just dispose them so they turn into plant food (see cradle to cradle). Also remember that making packaging that can be recycled effectively but still be functional is exceptionally difficult. I was thinking of the tetra-pak, the paper gets recycled into waste paper, the plastic and aluminium go into concrete production, so the plastic and aluminium don’t actually get turned back into plastic and aluminium.

Also imagine these recycling machines in poorer countries, it just wouldn’t happen any time soon. You first need an effective garbage disposal network, then you need the power and water to go into the machines as well as the machines themselves. Also the people would need the education of sorting what can be recycled and what cant, people in Australia don’t even know that let alone in less developed nations. Sometimes I wonder about why we have a trash bin and recycling bin. People put wrong stuff in the recycling bin anyway and it has to be sorted, so why not just pour everything into it, that way stuff in the trash bin that could be recycled will be recycled instead of going into the trash. Im guilty of throwing away stuff that can be recycled in the trash bin, purely due to laziness. Maybe here it is too expensive to have a machine that can handle that? I dunno.

It was good to see that Aluminium cans, Tin cans, glass bottles and PET can all be properly recycled so that they don’t end up becoming inferior products. But for other products there needs to be a better way. Bio polymers could become an important part of packaging. They could be thrown away after use and decompose in landfills, which can then capture gas for electricity production. The bio-polymers are made from renewable sources, so throwing them out wouldn’t be so bad. Its actually exciting for me when I see bio-polymers used in real life, Ive been interested in them for a while, so to see them used in real-life is kinda cool.

Dodge Dart

New ad goes through the development of a car, rather than focussing on the car itself.

Im back blog! Did ya miss me?

Today was the firstest day of uni for the year 2012 semester 2. It was a studio class, studio 3b to be exact. We learned stuff, and some guy from Cormack packaging came over to talk about packaging, and how designers should look into packaging as a field to work in. Mar and Giles gave lectures on stuff as well. Then we did an activity on decoding packaging, it was pretty good. Our group did Tic Tac's and some toilet training thingy, good times.