Beyond Useless
March - June, 2020
Conceptual Design
Personal Graduate Project
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Within the modern world. mass production and high-tech enable people to have more access to products. We accumulate more stuff in our room that makes tremendous clutters. Is there another creative solution to deal with the clutters?
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Keywords: Design Research, Concept Evolution, Quarantine Project
Overview
People keep buying objects that often accumulate in their homes. Often these objects are left unused for long periods of time, occupying space, and generating clutter. A minimalist lifestyle, with only a small number of objects is difficult, yet rooms full of unused objects can also be uncomfortable. Perhaps there are other ways to interact with these objects, but they are either too hard or against people’s initial way of living. The following conceptual design project explored methodologies for understanding and organising the objects in our domestic environment.
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The project involved a 15-week personal experiment sited in the home. A series of design projects were undertaken, in which everyday objects were transformed into assemblages that recontextualised the use and function of the objects. These installations were carefully styled and photographed and used in an online campaign that invited people to participate in the project, by sharing the creative reordering of the excess and useless items in their own homes.
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The project explored ways to give people a different perspective with which to interact with the objects in their lives. By offering new ways to think about, organise and use these objects the project challenges people to rethink their relationship with their surrounding objects.
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The project ultimately aims to inspire people to rebuild their relationship with their surrounding objects by make everything useful and meaningful.
Obssession of Objects
Within the modern world. mass production and high-tech enable people to have more access to products. These products can all be useful in our life, but to some extent, they're not always useful.Â
We keep all these things in our room, but the chances of using them are not as frequent as we thought. Lacking space and living in clutter lower people's living standards, and also cause waste.
This project was also inspired by our situation of staying in our homes now during the COVID-19 lockdown and being even more conscious of our home environment.
Problem Statement
What is the best relationship between people and objects?
How might we inspire people to think of their own way of dealing with their useless objects?
How might we find usefulness in the useless objects at home through playful and inspiring ideas to reduce clutter and enhance our lives?
Analysis at Home
In order to have a clear idea how much things I have, I did an analysis at home. The result is, I have around 5000 objects in my room, and in which 4850 of them are irregularly used.
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Within the 150 regularly used objects, only 50 of them are unique, and the rest objects have same function as those 50 ones. That means if I really want to go for minimalist lifestyle, those 50 objects are the only things I really need to use everyday.
Reflective Interview
In order to understand how others think about the surrounding objects, I conducted interview with 20 people from different gender, age and occupation.
They all complained about the space the things occupied, and the useless things lowered their quality of life. They lack of methods to deal with these things, so they have to live a clutter life.
Questions I asked
-Did you ever realize that you have all this useless stuff in your room?
-Do you think the number of things you own is related to your degree of happiness?
-Why do you keep the useless things in your room?
-How do you deal with your useless stuff?
-What do you think is the proper amount of things to have in your life?
Some of the feedbacks
-It looks comfortable!
-It's a past present from my grandfather.
-I need it when I have guests, they don't visit that often though.
-It holds my memory.
-I'll use it later anyway.
-I have a plan but I don't have time to use it.
World Data Analysis
House Expanding
To understand this issue in a bigger context I did some more research. From the websites called becoming minimalist and The Minimalist, I found lots of data that indicates having too many things and can't deal with them is a global problem for every person.
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Margot(2006) written in a journal article on NPR indicates that the average American House tripled its size in the past 50 years, and still for now, 1 out of every 10 Americans rent offsite storage. Mary from LA Times(2014) also suggested that on average an American home has 300,000 items. And still, New York Times(2009) shows that 1 out of every 10 Americans rent offsite storage.
Time spent on looking for stuff
Another report from the daily mail(2012) indicates that on average a person will spend a total of 3680 hours searching for misplaced items in their life. And the research also found that we lose up to nine items every day, which will add up to 198,743 in a lifetime.
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All these data indicate that modern people started to own more and more stuff, and met more and more trouble caused by all this stuff.
My Design Philosophy
I grew up exploring my interests in art, engineering and design. After completing my academic studies, I opened my own industrial design studio in 2000 and have since been helping clients throughout San Francisco with their creative design challenges. My meticulous work ethic and attention to detail have become the hallmarks of my projects, and a major reason why my work receives the awards and recognition it does. Contact me to see what I can do for you.