PSS assignment - Peer Commenting

Peer commenting

Chieh Min Lee - Rebat

Frankie Tsz Hin Ho - GPS bike system

Huan Xie - Trip Planner

Gu Yuliang - Dish vending machine

Siting lin - Baby cloths RVM

PSS project - G.E.R Glass Reverse Vending Machine

For this PSS assignment I’ve decided to design PSS that will be able to recycle glasses,

as I’ve been researching, I realize that there is actually a large percentage of glass bottles that are not being recycled but thrown into landfill, this shows that there is an actual need to get these glass packaging recycled.

The current reverse vending machines have problems, which I've researched on shows that these machines are currently really inconvenient; some people don't even know it exists. They do not offer attractive rewards, which motivates people to recycle and that the machine is really slow in processing, people have to put bottles in one by one.

With this glass reverse vending machine, all you have to do is press the start button and pour all the glass bottles into the machine at once instead of doing it one by one. Threes a sensor, which scans the bottles, if it does not match the requirement the item will be rejected and will be exit at the lower part of the machine. The glass bottles are crushed into cullets and filtered into three categories, which represents the three types of glasses, the brown, green and clear glass. These glass cullets are put into bags, which will be taken away by the staff of recycling facilities. But instead of transporting it to the recycling facility, it is brought over straight to the glass bottle manufactures. The advantages of this machine is that people will be able to see how the bottles are being filters from the middle part of the machine which will be something interesting to watch which will attract children. They will be able to pour all the bottles in at ones that save a lot of time. The reward is not just cash but also lotteries.

It's going to be located in multiple locations like outside supermarket, liquor stores and fuel stations. This makes it really convenient for people, they would not have to bring it over just to recycle but bring it out with them when they are about to buy groceries or alcohol.

Sustainable Product Service System Project assignment

Some research has been done on the reverse vending maching as it serves a similar service as my concept.

This reverse vending machine is produced by the company Envirobank and has been placed in several places around NSW. Unlike usual vending machine, this machine requires user to deposit water bottles and aluminium cans, then a price or refund would be given as a reward.

This machine allows loyalty users to store their reward credit on loyalty card, credits can be used as cash later on. Users without the card can get random rewards vouchers like movie tickets. 

The above photo shows the entry for plastic bottles and aluminium can. Inside the machine are some sensors that scans each bottle that is inserted to ensure it is a product that is recyclable.

The screen on this machine shows the steps of what the user should be doing next. It also tells the user at the end what price they got rewarded. 

Some instructions on the side for people to read when they need to use the machine. 

The exit for rejected items 

Envirobank is currently trying to increase the amount of reverse vending machines around NSW and have had placed machines throughout 7-11s around Melbourne and Sydney. This is one of the 7-11 which currently have the machine located in Kensington.

This reverse vending machine is placed outside the 7-11, very convenient for people who just finished their drinks to deposit it. 

For my concept, I would like to be able to make a machine that can recycle finished glass bottles, paying back refund and also moving a step forward for the recycling the bottles would be crushed and filtered inside the machine to allow easier and quicker recycling.

Who killed the electric car?

After watching this video, it seemed to have reminded me about the reality about this world, the people with larger power controlled a lot of things. Without thinking a lot about electric cars, people might think that it’s just technology that is holding back the entire product but in fact, the thing that is holding back the electric cars are actually some people who are selfish enough to hold back such beneficial products to the world for their own benefit.

When more people start to concern about issues that we have on earth and start to take actions in help resolving these issues, there are people who would do the opposite just to prevent their own business from falling. In this case when the electric car was brought in to solve the issue of fuel assumption, the large amount of fossil fuel being used. As such product if gets popular, there would be a big change in the economy and the profits of government and oil industries. Therefore these oil industry companies try their best to eliminate possibilities of causing a fall in profit and in this case the drop of fuel assumption will cause a big decline in their profit.

Throughout the video, a lot of interviews on the electric car do actually show the benefits and how the electric car would have really worked it’s way to benefiting us.

I believe that in the future, as the fuel price continue to increase and the increasing amount of people more concerned about global warming issues, there will probably be a bigger chance of beneficial products like the electric cars being created and pushed into the market, as people will not be willing to pay for such expensive fuel and probably an increase amount of investor in electric cars.

Though this video main focus was on the electric cars, it reminds us that there are actually a lot of products that has probably been created but due to the problem that it causes some industries; companies will have probably destroyed it.  Hopefully people will try to spread beneficial products more and faster, also have the government’s support will surely encourage more of these products to come out to the market. 

Cormack Project Peer Comments

Chieh Min Lee:
http://leechiehmin.blogspot.com.au/2012/09/2012-cormack-legs-eleven-packaging.html#comment-form

Patrick Luwia
http://pluwia.blogspot.com.au/2012/09/cormack-submission.html

Shenea Huang
http://whereisthecake.blogspot.com.au/2012/09/playtime-submarine.html

Anastasie  Panagopoulos
http://stasiep.blogspot.com.au/2012/09/final-week-packaging-project.html?showComment=1347284180258#c9126691098345384104

Andrew Bae
http://baejin.blogspot.com.au/2012/09/cormack-innovation-awards-normal-0.html?showComment=1347284600764#c7134984421819469982

2012 Cormack Leg Eleven Packaging Design - Squize Jelly Snack Pack

In this assignment, I chose to redesign for the jelly snacks packaging as I realize there are problems with the current packaging, they tend to be really hard to open. One, which has a thin sheet of plastic, which prevents the plastic from spilling out it’s glued onto the plastic container with just a little small tab for the consumer to grab and tear it off causing it really hard to get a good grip of, it requires a lot of strength to tear the thin plastic off, sometimes the plastic will split into two thin plastic while tearing causing it even harder to open. When the thin plastic comes off, the juice from the jelly always spills out.

With this new packaging, it resolves the problem of getting access to the jelly. By just easily twisting or bending the cap and the bottom, it will split apart easily allowing the consumer to consume the product. If the consumer cannot finish it all at once, he/she can just put the cap back on.

The whole packaging is made with polypropylene, the body and cap are made separately, jelly is then injected into the body, and afterwards the mouth of the body and the cap are combined by heating the edge of both parts, this ensures that the jelly won’t be able to spill out and that it will not be contaminated.

A recycling logo is printed at the bottom of the bottle making it easier for recycling.

To use this packaging, just need to simply snap the cap off from the body and squeeze the body to get access to the jelly, cap can then be put back on. This ease of use in this design allows the target market to easily figure out how to use to after purchasing.

This size of the this packaging is designed so that it has a considerate amount of jelly snacks inside together and that it is at a size that allows the target audience to have the most comfortable grip of.

With the small hole at the top of the packaging, allows it to be hung in retail shop racks.

With different flavour of jelly comes in different colour and graphics body.  Giving a more similar colour to what the jelly flavour it is. 

Disassembly exercise - Toaster

In todays exercise, we were given a product to disassemble, for our group we have received a toaster. It is really interesting to disassemble something especially products, which we often use but do not have too much of an idea how the product works, in this case we had the toaster and we realize that there is actually a lot of parts in it. At first we were planning to disassemble it in a way that it can be easily get assembled back afterwards but we realize some parts inside the toaster has to be cut off to get it totally disassembled. 

This toaster actually has a lot of parts, aluminium, steel, ceramic and plastics like PF, it's really interesting to see how many fasteners are used in this product too.

We were then told to redesign the toaster in a way that it's more eco-friendly, from the last photo shows one of our ideas which we have came up with. 

This was a really fun exercise as we don't really get to disassemble products at home often. It is also a good experience to get to see whats inside products like these.

The 11th Hour

After watching this one and a half hour video, I feel like I'm once again being reminded about what is happening around the world.

The start of the video shows some video clips of all the harms and disasters that has been happening with the narrator emphasizing with phrases what is going on in the video. I think got my attention right away with the problems that are happening around the world yet I haven't been really been caring much about.  

From what of the professionals interview, he mentioned that from outer space we see lights that are coming from the earth during night time. But in another way of looking at it, it also looks like it's forming some kind of infection crust. When I tried to imagine it, it does actually look like it's being harmed by all these infections.

During a lot of the professionals interview, I got a lot of thinking going around my head and from what another professional said, we have been focusing and caring so much about the economy that we forgot about the nature, we forgot how we are treating the nature and how much of a price we will have to pay for it. What he said actually made me start realizing that people now-a-days are so attached to so many things like economy, spending...etc that they forgot about the nature. "They concentrate so much about their own wealth that they forgot how the rest of the world live." said another professional. And I think it's really important for people to be realize and be reminded all the time about the situation that we are in.

Half way through the video there are some short video clips of different animals and different environments, like really pretty mountains and shots of animals, I think these shots reminded me of how pretty things in this world is and that we should seriously try out best in anyways to help improve on this situation.  

Some of the statistics that they used really shocks me, one of the most memorable one would be how much money do we need to spend to replicate and to do what the nature does for us for free in one year and that is 38 trillion dollars where as for the past year the whole world only manage to generate 18 trillion. This makes me realize how much the nature is actually doing for us.

And because we are messing up things in the earth because we had totally forgotten about the nature, we are actually causing more uncertainties that can happen.

They started mentioning about sustainable designs. Ideas that have been generated, with some photos shown in the video made me realize how important it is now for designers to design sustainable products. We are one of the main group of people who will be trying to create products that will allow a better habitat for our future and also influencing more people to think in mind about the rest of the world more than being greedily thinking about their own, treating the nature better.  

With technology now -a-days we can use it in a new different way that will benefit us in creating a better place together with the culture, creating a better livable nature. 

Video reflection for How it's made and Giving packaging a new life

How it’s made

After watching the few videos about how various packaging are being made, I find the tetra pak and cardboard more interesting as I have less knowledge about how it’s being made. The use of machining in producing these packages and the level of details that are needed to be considered in each step of manufacturing packaging is really quite interesting. The amazing amount of cardboard boxes that can be manufactured in an hour and the quality of printing that it can be done. I realized that packaging these days can easily be manufactured with high quality printing, like the tetra pak for example uses a 6 layer printing, which allows sharp and accurate colour prints. The use of materials in packaging now-a-days is mostly recyclable like glass bottles which can be recycle endlessly. A lot of packaging manufacturers are able to recycle the materials in order to minimize waste produced, like the aluminium where circles are stamped out for the can and the cut outs are all being recycled.

Giving packaging a new life

Giving packaging a new life is about how each type of materials are being recycled. I am quite amazed by how a lot of packaging is being recycled and how these recycled materials are being reused as a raw material just like the brand new raw materials. I find it really interesting how plastics now have a lot of machining which will be able to sense which plastic is which instead of having to have workers doing it manually. This decreases a huge amount of time that will be needed to filter and group plastics together. I think technology now-a-days has helped a lot in helping recycling. The most amazing part I would say is the Sorting Innovations video which mentioned about this huge place that has all the machines sorting out the rubbish, grouping appropriate plastics together and metals in their own group. I think having a lot of these places will increases the recycle rate around the world. One thing I also find really interesting is that how materials like plastics can be recycled in a way that it can be cleaned and reused again just like a new plastic. Same as the glass bottles how they are being recycled and used the same way they were being used as its previous life. 

I think as an industrial designer now, we have to really consider how we design products and carefully choose materials that are more eco-friendly.