Friday, 3 December 2010

Electives - Week 3

The feedback from last week's presentation was that our question was too broad.
We needed to refine it by defining who the individual is and what about society we decided needed to change/ who society is.

Therefore we began this week refining our question. 
(Society can change individuals. Can individuals change society?) 
We decided the individuals are designers since we are all designers. As well as we had to consider the design implications of the question this week. We also decided the thing about society we wanted to change is people needs because we looked at what influenced people
and how have they influenced people. One example we dicussed were mobile phones because at first it was a luxury/want. Now we consider them needs because we can't live without them.

Therefore we decided to change our question to:

How does design change our society's perception of needs?

We each looked at examples of how wants now have turned into needs, this included aeroplanes, cars, hygiene, mobile phone and packaging.
I looked into packaging:
  • People didn't really need packaging - because they hunted and cooked their kill. If they wanted to preserve their food, they used leaves, woven baskets and animal skins.
  • During the industrial revolution, packaging really took off and a range of different food became available to people. 
  • As well as the invention of cardboard boxes meant transporting food became easier.
  • Tin cans meant people could preserve food for longer.
  • Now people hardly hunt because of the convenience of buying food at supermarkets.
The positive points about packaging is it helps protect your food from being damaged or contaminated. However it does make you question where does your food come from and how was it treated.