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.