A designer is someone who finds clues in life, defines trends in the industry, gains insights from people through mindful observations and figures out “solutions” and suitable “points of view” to make them relevant for people in the present by balancing the past experience and the future vision.
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Objects are invented by human beings to help create a better life. For example, we need a new chair because it can make people sit more comfortably. Once we achieve the functional aspect of the object, people are prone to take things for granted as we tolerate ourselves by ignoring details and we easily choose to forget why we create the object and for whom. Besides the comfort brought by its design, we hadn’t asked further questions: How could the chair design help people to sit in the right posture? Do we use the eco-friendly materials to manufacture chairs? Do we really care about the overall user experience?
People easily get used to staying in a bubble of personal adaptive habits without knowing how we can better improve our life through baby steps. The intention of the project “Small Things with Big Heart” is to remind us that people actually deserve a life with better quality. The premise is that everyone needs to be constantly aware of our own behaviors intentionally and unintentionally. As a designer, I want to start from small and achievable things through close and mindful observations. Taking the daily life items, I try to “revisit” products that surround us. Adopting the humanity-centered method, I have reviewed 12 objects beyond purely focusing on their functional aspects.
