Comparing with the projects I have done before, this project is harder and more complicated. We are not only asked to design a pure product to solve a particular problem, but a product within a service system. We spent much more time on research to understand how the current system running in our design area and how can we improve the system. This means we are not only need to understand the customers, our target market, but also the manufacturer. In other words, we need to understand the whole product life cycle and every institution involved in this cycle. And we cannot design any PSS and a product to fit this PSS, we also need to pay attention to sustainability and the design areas are arrowed to food, mobility, health.
Luckily, it is not a project for individual, we are asked to work as a group. I am satisfied with my group, everyone in our group put much effort to this project and we separate the equal workload to everyone. We sometimes have different opinion, but we can all agree to one point of view after our discussion. Most groups have three people, but we have four, so we thought we should find a challenging design area and do more work than other groups. This is why we chose to do mobility at the very first. We did many researches on it, and tried to understand its environmental, social, economic areas. We got many concepts, but all infeasible. This lead to us came to our final PSS until week 3. Anyhow, we finished this project, we feel so relaxed after the final presentation. Maybe the result is not very well, but we do tried our best and I really enjoy the process to work with my group members.
As an industrial designer, I do think we need to consider PSS among our solution finding strategies. This is because the product itself is not independently exists and users are not the only part involved in the system. After watched the film of ‘The 11th Hour’, I know that with the production of one truck of products, it can leads to 32 trucks of waste. It is true that one design might solve a problem, the designed product might match a specific customers’ need, but we don’t want to create more problems after that. If we use the design of cars as an example, we may find that cars really make our transportation much more convenient. Cars really bring us higher quality of life. Cars accelerate the development of the economy. But did the designers consider the environmental issues created by cars? Did they consider the end life of cars? Did they consider every worker involved in this system? It is true that we designers are asked to solve problems, but we are not asked to create more problems. This why I think PSS is so important.
