Sunday, May 30, 2010

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Sunday, May 23, 2010

A reflection on 'The Story of Cap ''N' Trade' by Annie Leonard


Industrial designers can design products and systems that will help us reduce our carbon emissions. For example, teach people who do not already know how, to ride a bicycle. Currently, adults who do not know how, are embarrassed that they cannot. Others feel unsafe when cycling on the roads, alongside cars, buses and other vehicles, because these have not been designed to help watch out for cyclists.

The solution of putting a cap on factories and businesses on yearly carbon emissions is clever, as are the permits given out to pollute. It is like highlighting that all that they release into the atmosphere is a bad thing for the environment, and they would more likely take notice of this issue. I also like how they are charging companies their carbon pollution "points", so ultimately, they would strive towards minimal pollution. Industrial designers could design products that would help these large corporations to minimize their pollution, such as the machines that release these emissions, or reducing the number of parts in a product, hence reducing the amount of energy needed to create these parts. There needs to be a system implemented that could measure the offsets and emissions that corporations emit, so that they can be charged accordingly.

Systems and products already existing that encourage the reduction of carbon pollution in the general public sphere, would be the shared bicycle system in Europe. Now, we need more products in the industrial world to encourage the reduction of carbon polluting. The industrial sector has many opportunities to make them use less energy and emit less carbon dioxide. Products should be designed so that they use less material, and have longer life spans by being stronger and to manufacture goods that consume less energy when used. This way, we can also reduce "consumerism", in peoples constant buying compulsion.

Monday, May 17, 2010

from a to zi


This is an awesome, insightful, inspiring blog from Zi Xin Wong and Amelia - two melbournites, one is an architecture graduate and the other a photographer. I think they really like typography.

Saturday, May 15, 2010

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

NO MORE SLABS OF TEXT

My blog is turning into massive slabs of TEXT...ughhh...boring....so just to change stuff up...this is the result of long long lectures:



Reflection on the Stamo

Jessica Tong

Some things that were unresolved were the U clamp on the vertical pole. Not enough research was done with this, and I assumed it would work, without even thinking of trying it. Probably because there was too much stuff to think about at the same time, that I missed one very important aspect of my design.

I did not think enough about the height of the room, so the issue with how long the poles were, may have been a problem. If I were to concentrate less on the afterlife of the product, I would have replaced the centre poles with ropes, just to reduce the amount of material/product needed, and figured out how to keep them from toppling. Although, then I would still need an extension of some sort to allow them to be used as vertical IV stands in hospitals after the Tsunami response.

I am happy with my posters and my model however, because I usually am unable to finish everything on time. So in that respect, I had better time management for this assignment. I learnt that we should confirm our concept earlier on in the process, and just stick with it, because if we were to constantly criticize, we would be here all day. If we stick with it, and carry it through, we are more likely to find small problems that can be dealt with later on. For example, I am usually in the ‘concept’ stage until the last week of when assignments are due, because there are so many alternatives to resolve a problem. For this, I tried to finalise my concept as early as possible. The quality of my posters, I am happy with, although maybe more detail and information about the positioning of the patients would be useful, as my ‘in context’ renderings are too vague. The balancing of the actual product has been proven and I am sure that it would not topple if produced, which is important.

I have learnt from this project that existing products that are already on the market can be utilized in my design in order to save money and materials, which I didn’t take into consideration in previous designs. In terms of model making, I am unsure why I always end up choosing the difficult way out. I should have used foam core slices stacked together, or wooden planks cut to size, sanded on the sander in the workshop and stacked together. Then primed and spray-painted from there. This would be more practical than using blue foam cutting, sanding, pollyfilla-ing, more sanding, z-poxying, more sanding, more polly-filla-ing, more sanding, more z-poxying and more sanding, then priming a few times and spraying paint. That was really painful, unnecessary, EXTREMELY costly, and just made me sick with all that blue foam in the air. But at least it turned out alright. Every assignment, I tell myself to design something compact, and simple and small to make, something easy to taken on the bus and train, but it turned out to be quite the opposite.

Monday, May 3, 2010

The Stamo



Rationale for the Stamo

Existing problems

- Not enough drip stands at hospital.

- Overcrowded - little to no space to walk around

- Standard IV stands potentially dangerous by being knocked over in the crowded area.

- Fire departments team to patient ratio was about 10:1, but nurse to patient would have been 50:1 or worse. -- Gregory Watson from Tsunami Response Team in Banda Aceh 2004

Existing makeshift design

- Snag hazard

- Some rooms may not have exposed beams at the ceiling to hang IV drips from

My Design – The Stamo

This consists of the bases, the Euroklamp and the U-bolt hooks, which would be brought in to the disaster area, from Australia, and then supplied with standard poles from the neighboring cities in which the tsunami occurred. The local NGOs help with this.

Addressing problems through my proposed design:

- Utilises minimal material while being safe and functional

- For more patients, more poles added to extend space for IV bags

- Users can adjust how much space is given to each patient

According to Bodyspace, I would recommend a minimum of 4 people to 3 poles. Each pole being 1.2metres. Also taken into consideration is the space that the patient has to move around.

- Minimized space by allowing users to position patients head to head on the same poles

- Weight bases resistant to toppling

The Stamo

- The stand

- Basically, it is a structure that IV drips can be suspended from, to supply liquid medicine to patients on the floor

- The entire design is modular, meaning that most features can be adjusted or changed. The length of the poles are recommended to be 1.2meters, but even if a pole that is too long is used instead, the Euroklamp can be adjusted to a lower height. Also, more poles can be added on to the system, when more patients arrive.

- There are weights on either side of the frame, in the bases to prevent toppling or movement.

- If one bag is removed, or if patient’s bags sway, there will be minimal impact on other patients due to sturdy rods holding everything up.

- The parts of the entire Stamo sytem mostly consist of pre-existing products. The reason for this is because there is no use in redesigning something that already exists. Only the base which is filled with water or sand for weight and the flat piece in the U bolt was redesigned. This would save money in manufacturing and materials.

Supply the Stamo

Non-government organisations from Australia, eg. the Fire Brigade, would bring in the Stamo: the water bases, U bolt and Euroklamps. Locals would supply the poles, possibly local NGOs and bring the poles in from neighborring towns/cities. Local NGO’s in Indonesia that helped out included: Project Concern Indonesia (PCI), Mercy Corps Indonesia, Matahari Foundation (local NGO), Palang Merah Indonesia – PMI, who helped to bring equipment in.

Afterlife

In order to make full use of the product, eliminate wastage, I have designed them so that they can be used post-tsunami disaster response for hospital use. Horizontal pole is re-attached to vertical pole to act as permanent IV pole in the hospitals.