Course Reflection 02

My favorite lecture by far has been the one surrounding environmental design. I have always been very involved in giving back to the community and I think its great when people use their talents and knowledge in order to help people that are less fortunate than themselves. I enjoyed the video with Jane Chen where she explains her and her designers new product to help keep premature babies incubated for an affordable price for people who live in poverty. It looked like a  tiny sleeping bag and used a hot pack to insulate the blanket. This is an ingenious idea that will help save millions of lives and all it took was for a group of people to really care about the cause. Similarly the video with Michael Pritchard was incredible. The fact that all you need to do it pump a water bottle full of water several times could bring millions of people clean water everyday is miraculous. He was so adamant about the cause and helping to save lives and that is what was really touching.

I really liked doing the scavenger hunt. It gave me further insight about the history of Ohio State as well as what important designs are all around campus. It is so much more memorable to walk around campus and find the designs then just talking about them in class.

I am glad we did the lecture on accessibility because it opened my mind to obstacles that I pass daily but never put any thought to because it doesn't directly affect me. However, becoming aware of how the littlest things can affect such a wide range of people really made me realize that this is a very important issue in society today and needs to be addressed as readily as possible.

Although the design process lecture was kind of dry I still feel like it is information that is very important to know in order to understand what design actually is and what goes into designing a product or an idea. It definitely involved a lot more steps than I realized. Even though I think that every step is vital to the process. I think that the evaluation step is key because designers will never truly know how the public with respond to their product. Once the product is released if the public responds positively and it benefits the users then its a job well done. However, if there is a negative reaction. It is pertinent for designers to figure out what went wrong, what people didn't like, etc. in order to fix the product and turn it into a good product. The worst thing that can happen to a company/designer is a bad reputation for their products. So they need to be ready to react in case something doesn't go as planned to get the products back in a positive light.