Wearable Technology in Sport – Part 3
Performance Analysis In this third post on wearable technology in sport I am going to be looking at how wearables are being used for performance analysis, and the affect this has been having on the players and the sports themselves. As sport has become more professional over the last 30 years or so, the level…
Wearable Technology in Sport – Part 2
Player Welfare and Injury Management In this second blog on wearable technology in sport, I am going to be summarising my research into how the technology can be used for player welfare. Arguably the most successful athletes in their disciplines are the ones that are able to look after their bodies, stay injury free, and…
Open Source Ventilators
This blog post on great design is going to be a little different, but I am writing this in isolation amid the Coronavirus outbreak, so I feel that it is very relevant. This post will be focused on the open source ventilator project that has brought together over 300 medical professionals, engineers, designers and researchers…
Design Out Of Africa
At the end of a recent Design and Technology lecture, we spoke about the lack of knowledge about African designers. We looked at the randomly allocated designers that we had researched for our Pichi Kichi presentations, and discovered that the vast majority were from Europe, and none were from Africa. I have set about finding some…
D&T9: Pichi Kichi Presentations
In preparation for our end of term Pecha Kucha presentations, this week in our Design and Technology lecture, we each gave a “Pichi Kichi” presentation. A Pecha Kucha is a presentation style that takes the form of 20 slides each appearing for 20 seconds. A “Pichi Kichi” is a shortened version of this consisting of…
Wearable Technology in Sport – Part 1
As part of the Design and Technology course at the GSA, we have each selected a particular topic of interest to research and present on at the end of the semester. I have chosen a topic that relates directly to my internship that I am juggling with university work this term, which is wearable technology…
Beauty in Imperfection
In the recent lecture from Kaitlyn Debiasse on designing for disability, she mentioned Wabi Sabi. Wabi Sabi is a Japanese philosophy focused on ‘accepting the imperfect and transient nature of life.’ It captures the freeing mentality that nothing is perfect or complete, and that there is a certain beauty in this more authentic attitude to…
D&T8: Alastair Macdonald – Counter Cultures and the Ethics of Design Practice
Alastair Macdonald, Craig Whittet’s predecessor as the head of PDE at the GSA, ran a lecture on Thursday this week concerning the current planetary crisis, and how as designers we might act ethically in an attempt to curb these environmental issues. Alastair spoke of counter-cultures, and how people have been pushing for climate change action…
D&T7: Kaitlyn Debiasse – Designing for Disability
“I spend most of the time being angry,” was the opening line of Kaitlyn Debiasse’s lecture on Friday afternoon. Kaitlyn is a design tutor here at the GSA and here she was referring to the lack of accessible design in the world, specifically the fact that the vast majority of things are designed for the…
D&T6: Ben Craven – Approximate Calculations
Ben Craven is the PDE first year tutor at the GSA. He has an incredibly technical mind, is very skilled and has a lot of experience in making things. In first year, we were given a project to design and build a cardboard vehicle capable of a number of tasks. From my vague memory these…
CTC 3D printer – Restoration Project
During the last few months I have been balancing an internship alongside my studies. I was lucky enough to be given a 3D printer to help with prototyping and developmental work. The problem however was that this printer was not functional when it was given over to me. It was missing a few essential parts…
D&T5: Stuart Bailey – Alternate Perspectives
This week Stuart Bailey (PDE MSc tutor) gave an overview on services, products and human-centred design. It was a whistle-stop tour and covered a lot of ground very quickly. There were a few aspects of the talk that stood out to me. There was a lot of emphasis put on how designing a service, in…
D&T4: Rachael Sleight – What Design Practice Means To Me
Rachael Sleight is a lecturer of Sustainable Materials and Processes here at the GSA’s School of Innovation, and she spoke to us about her views on design practice, accompanied by examples of her own work. Alongside working at the GSA, she has been working for Stylus, an innovation research and trend firm, she has set up a…
Nature and Design
I recently came across an article in The Times which outlined how the French National Centre for Scientific Research had teamed up with the University of Liverpool in order to carry out a ground breaking study into maritime vessels that are attempting to evade authorities, to gain insight into illegal fishing hotspots. They fitted Albatrosses,…
D&T3: Forkes over Knives
This week we watched a documentary called ‘Forkes over Knives’. It is essentially an advert for going vegan, or a ‘wholemeal plant-based diet’. After stating the problem, which is that 40% of Americans are obese, and over half take daily prescriptions, the documentary outlines the health benefits of cutting animal-based products out of your lives. The…
D&T2: Eames – The Architect and the Painter
This week we watched the 2011 documentary about the careers of the famous husband and wife design duo, Charles and Ray Eames. Despite neither being an outright designer, the Eameses have had a huge impact on modern day design and are regarded still as some of the most influential designers of the 20th century.
D&T1: Craig Whittet – The Demise of Skilled Manufacturing
Craig Whittet, the head of Product Design Engineering at the Glasgow School of Art, gave a lecture on ‘the Demise of Skilled Manufacturing’. Craig outlined the current challenges facing manufacturers, especially those who use processes that require a huge amount of skill. The products created in this manner are generally of a much higher quality…
Good design can be something you don’t notice
I have often thought that a person is much more likely to write a review for a product or a service if it is bad feedback. Maybe it is me being a cynic, but I also think people are more likely to complain about something than congratulate that something for performing its duty. In the…
How Sensory Experience can Alter your Perception of a Product
In this blog post I am going to talk briefly about sensory properties of products, and how they can alter your perception of the quality of the product. We have all picked up a cheap and badly designed item and noticed how badly designed it was. This might be because something rattles, a part doesn’t…
London Trip – Part 2
Diana Memorial Fountain In this second blog about our course trip to London, I will discuss some further examples of great design that we witnessed. The first of which is the Diana Memorial Fountain in Hyde Park, designed by Gustafson Porter. I frustratingly cannot find any of the photos that I took at the fountain,…
PDE course trip to London – Part 1
Every September the 4th year of Product Design Engineering in Glasgow visit London for the London Design Festival. As well as it being a bit of an excuse to go on a trip to London, the coinciding Design Festival meant that we were able to browse some examples of pretty interesting design, and gain some…
A little about this blog and me
Over the coming academic year, this blog will set out to be a personal description of what I believe to be “great design”. At this moment in time, I’m not entirely certain what form this will take. I hope to keep it varied, so as not to bore whoever might be reading it, and also…
tom scotcher 