In my opinion, the understanding of personality archetypes and Gestalt psychology and theory are important skills that will help one understand how certain products and their appearance and function will be perceived and interpreted by potential users.

At the broad overarching level, according to certains schools of psychological thoughts, there are 5 aspects to a person’s consciousness, namely the Ego, Persona, Shadow, Anima/Animus and the Self. In my opinion, thses aspects can somewhat influence one’s inclination towards certain products. For example, the Persona may influence how one will acquire certain products or brands to ’strategically’ project or portray a certain image.

Traditionally, there are 12 Personality Archetypes. Personality Archetypes are sometimes used during market and target group research to gain better understandings of the attributes and character profile of users and/or buyers.

Quite often, ideas for products are enthusiastically conceived. However, without a corresponding match of product to its intended user’s perception, there will be few buyers. Products (and their interface) must match the Users (or Target Market User’s) perceived interpretation of them.

Products and artifacts are rarely just tools to users and owners. Human Being tend to attached emotional labels to objects that they desire or own. To illustrate how certain people tend to like certain products, we can look into existing brands and products. For example, Niche products are aimed at the Hero archetype. Harley Davidson appeals to the Rebel/Outlaw personality archetypes.

To sum up, a Designers role is not just in prettifying things… again this is a public perception. On a
different level of exploration, there are benefits in gaining understanding and insights into the psyche and mindset of audience and potential users.

I am just wondering, how can Open Source applications such as Blender help in raising the interest in digital media stuffs. For one, commercial high end 3D animation packages cost thousands of dollars. Not many people who want to ‘test the water’ will be willing to fork out that amount of money. It certainly does not make good economic sense to buy some expensive and complex 3D application only to discover that 3D and digital media is not one’s cup of tea.

Open source application programs such as Blender 3D is freely available for download and use. This certainly makes it easier for some one to test the water. However, like all feature-rich 3D application, Blender is without exception not easy to learn. Learning a 3D application is not like learning something such as a Wordprocessor. It is much more intensive and can take months and even years to become really proficient.

Now, most of the feature found on high-end commercial 3D applications are available on Blender. The basic principles of modelling are the same regardless of software program. The only main difference that I see is that Blender’s interface is slightly more unconventional, but not in anyway less intuitive or inefficient.

Having taught Blender in schools, colleges and to individuals, I find that once the initial challenge with the interface is overcomed, Blender becomes enjoyable to use.

So, is Blender a good platform for learning 3D? In my opinion, unless you have several thousand bucks to splash on a similarly featured software, it is very suitable for such a role.

The emphasis between a design student and a practicing designer do not necessarily overlap nicely. It must be stressed that nice ideas,  visuals and renderings do not equate to production feasibility. In fact, the ability to create nice visuals may gloss over the need for a more rigorous and often rather dry process. The actual process of translating a good idea into a workable and feasible product entails a lot more work. Ideation, innovation and visual sensitivity are the fortes of industrial design. Nevertheless, the ability to communicate and realise ideas into physical products is a different ballgame from just creating nice visuals, although the latter is certainly an essential starting point.

One does not need take to into consideration issues such as CAD file integrity, costing, tooling and production issues in order to produce nice product concept renderings and visuals.

Also student projects tends to be more individual-centric. In the industry, the projects are more group-centric. In fact, more often than not, one will be working in teams that comprised of people from different professions and disciplines.

Additionally, from my experience, there is also a fair bit of work difference between a Designer who work in a Consultancy as opposed to another who works as an In-house Designer within an organisation that produce products. As least for me, the in-house design experience exposes one more fully to the entire process from ideation, to visualisation, to tooling, testing, production and assembly. On the other hand, consultancy-type environments expose a Designer to more varied types of projects. In that sense, he or she need to be very versatile and resourceful in assimilating and handling projects of varied natures. However, he or she does not necessarily get to see the product through the entire process all the way to the market. The emphasis, feel and work nature are clearly different for both types of environment.

This post merely reflects my personal opinion though. It is certainly not meant to be definitive.

Finance and economy are aspects of life peculiar to human beings. Because of that we tend to assume that economy is not related to things of the natural world. This is far from the truth. Bad ecology will affect the economy.

Why is that so? This is because we require natural resources in order to strive. What we eat, consume and use all directly or indirectly come from natural resources. Natural resource is the ecology.

Human desires are varied and complex. The services and goods that individuals, organisations and countries acquire are wide and varied. However, things that drives the economy can all be traced back to their sources within the ecology. The things you buy, be it perishable or otherwise need raw material to create. The raw materials are extracted indirectly from the ecology.

Looking at how the financial statistics and figures fair will not solve the problems of the economy. If the general base condition is bad, no matter how hard one tries to extract some goodness out of it, it wouldn’t work. Likewise, if the natural resources and conditions are waning, one simply can’t squeeze what is required out of thin air.

Perhaps, the prevailing bad economy and the ecological changes are not that un-related after all.

When certain parts of a whole go into unbalanced excess or deficit, a new equilibrium will be put forth in motion. How this new equilibrium will come about and how human lives will be affected in the process are what we are about to experience in the coming unfoldings.

1. True Global Illumination. As of this writing, Blender’s Internal Renderer cannot handle true global illumination. When ray tracing was first included in Blender, it was a very welcoming inclusion. Later, stuffs such as Ambient Occlusion was also included. Although features such as HDR and Ambient Occlusions are useful, they are not real hardcore Global Illumination systems. In the current version, Blender cannot handle effects such as Caustics and true colour bleeding. There may be hope that future versions of Blender will be GI-enabled. Someone appears to be developing Photon Mapping for Blender! Check out this link for a better idea.

2. Ability to work with advanced NURBS curves and surfaces.  As an Industrial Designer, NURBS is the rice-bowl tool for engineering and prototyping ready modelling. How great will Blender be if it has tools simliar to those of Rhinoceros or Alias Studio. Only when Blender sports  advanced NURBS manipulation tools for projecting curves-on-surfaces, trimming and blending of surfaces, will it be a serious contender for Computer Aided Industrial Design.

3. The ability to import IGES and/or STEP files. This one is related to the previous wish. IGES and STEP are the de-facto export format for accurate surface-based 3D models. Currently, I use Rhinoceros 3D as the intermediate tool for controllable tessellations of NURBS models that were created in Mechanical Engineering CAD programs. If Blender can directly import these formats (especially IGES), it will integrate better with more engineering and 3D CAD programs.

4. Easy-to-use and pre-included Material Library. Most, if not all major commercial 3D applications have the ability to create and save materials in a library. Blender can do that, but it is not as user-friendly as the other programs in this aspect.

Hmm, I hope somebody from the developer’s team is reading this.