Prototype Interview With Chip

I met Chip out infront of Budig hall with my prototype made of brown paper towel, masking tape, chipboard, and drinking straw. 

 The prototype contained the elements of retractable prongs, a pencil sharpener, and a bottle opener.  

 

This is the interview that I conducted. 

(link to YouTube)

Things I learned from the interview:

• smaller: a little skinnier and a little shorter
• smaller prongs: thinner, but not necessarily shorter. 
• define thumb rest: make it so when a person is using it for digging that it supports the thumb better so it will not slide. 
• Clip: create a clip so it would be able to clip to the back of a hat, or the bill, much like current magnetic ball markers. 

Personal Ideas:

• add a magnetic ball marker
• work with the foam that is used as make makeup triangles for gripping, but only use a little.

Golf Divot Tool Interview with Chip, 1

linked to www.youtube.com

Interview for the Golf Divot Tool

So I interview Chip Blaser about his use of the divot tool when he is playing golf, and I ended up with a lot more information than I thought that I would, which is awesome!

He ended up having many divot tools and I talked to him about his likes and dislikes for each one.

He showed me one he liked a lot that curved to the fit of the hand and had a thumb rest.

Then he showed me one where he liked the prongs, but they would be better if they were at a slight angle.

We also ventured to the golf course (it was dark...) and he showed me how to use it. I dont play golf, so I didn't really understand how it was used.  While we were out there, he also pointed out that after using the divot tool, you had to step on it to make the ground flat.  I thought that this would be a good opportunity for another aspect of the divot tool.  Maybe an add on or something.  While we were out there, we tried out a few tools, and I noticed that he held them all the same way.  I started to wonder if everyone held them the same way, and if they did, then my group would be able to design a really form fitting (with foam) grip that would make it easier to use.  

I also noticed that while he was using the ones without the thumb grip, his hand would slip slightly when he pushed it into the ground, so the thumb rest is actually more helpful than it appears to be.  It is also important that the back of it would should not sharp or have corners because the palm of the hand presses into it.









Overall, I learned a lot from the interview :)

Dieter Rams and Don Norman Responses

I think that the Dieter Rams article and the Don Norman video together make an outline for what design should be based on.  

Dieter Rams gives us 10 main principles to follow with design; is innovative, useful, aesthetic, understandable, unobtrusive, honest, long lasting, thorough, environmentally-friendly, and has as little design as possible.   I think that these are good points, and can be applied to most design, but not all.  For example, in fashion design it would be difficult to meet all these requirements.  Some fashion has to be obtrusive, over designed, and non understandable to be fashion, where as with product or package design, these principles would fit very well. 

The Don Norman video stressed that if products are beautiful and make the person happy, then they are more likely to buy them.  He gave many examples that looked great, but did work very well or serve their purpose to the highest level.  Some of these were the gold plated orange juicer, the mini cooper, and the waterfall shower.  There were fun and nice to look at, but they were not the most functional items ever created.  Then he mentioned some well designed objects such as the Google logo and the tea pot.  There were well design because they were unobtrusive and fully served there purpose without creating more obstacles than the product it was based off of.  

I think that the article and video create excellent points that can assist designers in designing better and more useful products. 

Objectified Response

Response to Objectified:

I enjoyed watching this movie during lecture on Monday night.  It was a while ago, but the thing I remember the most and that related most to my major was when it talked about things being recyclable.  On the screen, they were showing all the old computer, television, and other casings that had to be scrapped and thrown away because they were not recyclable.  I thought about this a lot, and it true; really everything has to be recyclable or it isn’t a very good product anymore.  Even some big companies have gone from using styrofoam to paper products so they can be recycled.  This shows a change is design because designers have to change the way they thought about the material of the product in order to fit the society standard of recycling.  So I would just have to try to use earth friendly printers and such. 

Another interesting point I thought that the video made was that designers have to design for the extreme cases, like with the example of the potato peeler, how they have to design for someone with arthritis and everyone else in between can just have it fall into place.  I don’t know how that would specifically go with graphic design or illustration, but its interesting to think about... I guess the only real was that it would go with my majors would be making the typeface large enough so a variety of people could read it despite their sight.  And another way is that if designing a sign for a door or something that there is room for braille. 

Overall I thought that it was a very interesting movie and I learned a lot from it.  If there was a squeal, I would defiantly watch it.