PEER COMMENTS

Julia Xiao
Emily Soares
Fiona Lee
Susanna Li
Wang fanru

Project 1 Designing for disaster

Disaster selected: 1998 China Yangtze River flood

Emergency phase: Recovery, Relief

Design solution: Collapsable water pasteurization bucket

Cost: RMB 20

Rationale

Problem discovery
After floods, water is always contaminated by flood water. Water-borne disease always happened after flood, because the lack of fresh water. The 1998 Yangtze river flood happened in both urban and rural areas of China. The urban areas have much stronger construction and the water supply after disaster was quickly supported by government. However, for rural areas that affected by floods, weak houses were destroyed by floods and people were displaced to higher places. Water was in needs and the supply of bottle water was huge. The transportation of water is also difficult because roads were destroyed by floods too.

Design solution
My solution to this problem is to design a collapsable water pasteurization bucket for these poor people. The collapsable bucket can save places for transportation and increase the efficiency of transportation of relief supplies. The filtration method chosen was solar power water pasteurization, which is easy to operate and durable. Solar rate is high within latitude 15-35, where Yangtze river areas is located in. The principle of water pasteurization is simple and the bucket is reusable and durable. So solar pasteurization is suitable for this emergency situation.

                                                     Basic water pasteurization set up

 The color chosen was green. The reason is that it can remind people of the shape of lotus leaf, which means peace and relief in Chines people's mind. Also, lotus leaf has the ability of holding water and the shape is beautiful, it is good for people after disaster to have this bucket, not only for its function of water pasteurization, but also for the aesthetic and the mind relief that mean to them.

For the culturally suitability, I also look into the way that people live in rural area lift water. Research found that they used to hold water on their shoulder, using a strong bamboo stick or by bamboo made basket. The reason is that they can hold more water and it is good for long way walking. So my design was to make the bucket lift on shoulder and culturally suitable for these people.

Material selected are environmental friendly and will not increase the burden of the areas. The support for the bucket is bamboo sheet, which can be locally produced. 

Benefits

The benefit of this design is that it can solve the problem of fresh water scarcity after disaster. People can support themselves by using the bucket. It can be easily transported than bottle water, and it is sustainable. After people go back to their home, they can still use this bucket to filter water, because water facility in rural area is still in lack and people have to walk a long way to fetch water. The bucket can also help them improve their living standard and reduce the risk of water-borne disease.

Reflection

This project was challenging and reminds me of the responsibility to the society as being a designer. Disaster is inevitable but the power of human can overcome the disaster. Disaster happened in rural areas usually have larger impact on the people there. It is important for us to design things for these poor people and improve their living standard. I think the best design only come after entering into the life of these people, you will know what they really need in front of you, but not by pictures. If I can go to the disaster stricken areas and help them, I will learn more about the situation and give a better design. 

I also learn from this project the importance of research. It is only after you have a good research of the situation then you can have a better understanding of what happened. A lack of research may result in low practicality of the products, which means that you did not solve the problem for these people. So if I can do this project again, I will do more research and refine my product to improve the practicality of my design. 

In this project, I also find my weakness of communication skills, which i will focus on in my next project. Moreover, sketch model is important of testing the design and help a lot in refining the design. So I will make more effort in these and improve my design skills.

Task 2b: Sustainable consumption

After watching the videos" The story of cosmetics" and "The story of bottled water", I had a strong feeling that consumers are cheated by manufacturers by various ways of marketing today.  Advertisements and sales people draw a beautiful picture for consumers and persuade them to buy more. However, the real quality and the fact behind the products are forgot by the consumers. 

In the system of sustainability, people, natural resources and money capital influence each other. Manufacturers use unrenewable sources to produce bottles and cosmetics packages, and then the cosmetics are toxic to people, finally most of the bottles and packages go to landfill and impose growing burden on the earth. This is a vicious cycle which is inefficient and harmful to human being. 

I think consumer's perception towards cosmetics is that using them will get better skin health, even though they know the truth that cosmetics are toxic to them. This is because people like young ladies don't want to have wrinkles when they get old, they can't live life as people in poorer areas, where cosmetics are rarely used. Getting beautiful is more valuable for them when they do not experience the disease bring by the toxic cosmetics. This is actually breaking the rule of nature as people are using cosmetics to slow down aging. There is conflict between urbanization and environment. People want higher standard of living, which means that the requirement of technology, materials are higher, but this living standard does not benefit the environment. It is said that carbon footprint is the lowest in the world's poorest areas. It is difficult to cut down the need for things when people's perception changed.

For designer, we should rethink the whole system and encourage people to use less or buy less. In the case of bottled water, a good design of portable water container could reduce people's buying bottled water, after they know the fact that bottled water is no difference to tap water. Water station can be provided. In the case of cosmetics, the standardization of cosmetics is important as well as reducing the impact bring by cosmetics packaging. We could design a reusable package or reduce the materials used in package. Various ways and solutions, and we are on the way to find out them, bearing in mind the pursue of sustainable living. 

Task 3 Ecoredesign - Kettle

Kettle before disassembly

Task 2a : Recycling

After watching all the videos about recycling, I find that sorting is the main problem in recycling. As it said in the last video " Recycling Plastic", 'Properly separate is hard for recycling'. The recycling process starts from sorting different  types of materials, and the further recycling procedures are classified according to different material properties. Some material like Paper, Tinplate are easier than others like plastic and glass to separate, because they are more easily to be recognized  by consumers. When consumers throw them, they know which rubbish bin to throw them in. However, as for plastic, the material family is too big and it is difficult for consumer to know what kind of plastic it is. As a result, they just throw them into one rubbish bin and leave the sorting job to machines. In my opinion, why not label the plastic and teach consumers to sort the plastic? It saves not only time but energy to sort the materials. In the 'Recycling Plastic' video, plastic wastes are sorted by films, bottles, extended polystyrene and mix plastic at  the first step. This can be easily achieved by consumers when they put them into rubbish bins. The videos reminds me of a way that cosmetics retailers encourage consumers to return back the package of cosmetics, which may directly go back to manufacturers and recycle. I think this way is applicable to diary like milk boxes, water bottles or other food packaging. Consumers can return them back to supermarkets or retailers, and the packaging can go directly to next run of production after some disinfection process.

Regarding to design, I think designer should look into the aspect of minimizing materials use and design products considering the disassembly process. Minimizing materials is certainly good for the energy saving in recycling process and sustainability  of the earth. Design that good for disassembly is helpful for consumers to separate the parts and also sort the materials, which shortens the recycling process. Consumers are not patient to pay hours and hours on disassembling the products that they are going to throw away, so minimizing small parts and label the materials will benefit the recycling. Design for sorting could be another main aspect of design.