Howdy,
Today was my first tutorial of the project with Professor Steve Thompson.
I discussed my weaponry idea with Steve, who thought it had potential. It was nice to have some feedback as I have been feeling a little uncertain about this whole project. Steve thinks I am definitely heading in the right direction and has told me to keep pushing the boundaries of what is ethical in product design. He thinks that the ethics stance is excellent, especially with regard to product design as it could create some real innovation.
Steve was adamant that everything has become so ethically sound now, that most products have become boring giving the example that his phone has to auto focus and go through multiple pieces of software just to take a picture, when in fact he misses the old camera phone images which were blurred and bad quality. I must admit, I did contest with Steve with the idea that this project could actually create a legitimately useful piece of design, however we decided to agree to disagree on the matter, as he maintained his stance that surprise will lead to innovation.
We also discussed the idea of a product that had no use, or that was deliberately dangerous to use. This created an interesting discussion about having a phone that exploded if answered to quickly to stop people being so obsessive with checking their phones and alson having a glass that had razor sharp sides forcing the user to have to wear special gloves to drink out of it…
Steve and I fianlly came to a conclusion of where I should focus my energy researching and what I should do next. We decided that I should investigate further into the current paradigms of product design and to continue researching the ethics of product design. Steve did however feel that a simple gun idea might be boring and uninteresting, especially if the market was in America, where it would barely be seen as unethical at all due to the gun laws in place there.
After this tutorial, I feel a little bit more confident about where my project will go. I am going to explore these paradigms and find out what effect they could have on my project.