The most common and difficult question for designers: What is a good design? We all design every day. But do we really know what good design is and how to do it? It might be a life-long question but some answers can be found from the design philosophy of Dieter Rams. Pebbo hosted an official screening event of Dieter Rams for the designer community in Taiwan to share the inspirations we have got from Dieter Rams with more designers.
Less but better: Good design is as little design as possible
Whatever you design, products, architecture or software, this design principle from Dieter Rams is an essential key to the good design. This is also what we are trying to achieve at Pebbo. Without a solid and deep understanding of the product, you can not make it happen because making something simple is all about getting into the core essence and key message of the product. In the event, we gave the audience a small design challenge to practice this principle by applying to one of their previous or current design works.
Panel talk: We need more inspirations, not just more knowledge and skills
For sure, it is important to have design knowledge and skills as those make us as designers. However, we do need fuel, inspiration to keep moving forward. Dieter Rams is extremely inspirational but you don’t have to be him to inspire someone else. Pebbo invited two guests for a panel discussion on where they get inspirations for their design.
There are many talented and passionate designers who are eager to develop themselves through self-studying. Reading normally is a personal experience, but we tried to make it more like a shared experience to maximize learning. Also, you get to really know what you read and learned from the books while preparing to present them to others. This was a regular activity that Pebbo hosted to empower individual designers to come, share and learn from each other.
The medium to connect people: Finding the like-minded ones
The best part of the book sharing activity was that everyone was so eager to share their favorite books and learning. It was the best way of getting to know each other even without introducing themselves. More interestingly, people didn’t want to leave even after the end of the event wanting to keep talking about the same interest. Also, they shared their contacts with each other to meet up again to discuss more topics together. We were so happy to achieve our goal by not only connecting people but also sustaining the learning opportunities for the individual designer’s growth.
Building a library: Of the designers, by the designers, for the designers
There was no fee to join the regular booking sharing program, with a condition of book donation. We were trying to build a library that designers can come anytime and get new learning from the books that were donated by other designers. Most of all, it was more meaningful because this program was for designers but also was built and sustained by designers. If you want to join the opportunity of learning and growing more with others, not on your own, please come and visit our space anytime! Or ask more questions to hello@pebbo.co
Meeting and talking to real people: we all need something real out of social media. Inspiration often comes from what we see and how we translate, but also from whom we talk to. The best way to connect people, as proven in human history, is FOOD! The event was started off with ‘pizza & network’ time. Also, it was a great opportunity for designers to present themselves to some hiring managers at the event while sharing good job opportunities with each other. We also got to know some talented individuals and potential partners. The power of pizza!
Common problems that designers face: tips from speakers’ experiences
How to work with global clients in this gig economy as a designer? How to find and keep your vision and motivation? How to design communication in an organization?
There were many insights and personal advice from the speakers’ experiences which can not be found in some design books or articles simply. The audience had a great interest and paid much attention leading to a long Q&A session which was even more exciting. Especially, we loved how sharp and challenging the questions from the audience were.
Designing for event experience: what we learned for the next event
For the audience, an event has to be simple to understand, interesting to keep the attention and impressive enough to remember. Well, much easier to say than done! The reality is that you don’t even know when most of the audience will arrive or even no-show.
We designed a welcoming moment with food and finishing moments with souvenirs that we designed and supported by Dribbble and Cakeresume. For the next event, however, we felt that we need to put more effort into post-event experience so that we can retain the previous audience for the next one and turn them into a long-term and regular audience of our events.
Last rainy weekend, PEBBO was honored to be invited by iLab to collaborate with them again, on planning its 2nd social enterprise growth program “Try It” training activity. During the process, we had a chance to meet many social enterprise entrepreneurs who are full of enthusiasm and truly hope to make the society and environment better, which made the wet and cold weather feel much warmer!
This year's participants focused on the topics around environmental protection, animal conservation, food farming, education, and vulnerable care. Since the entrepreneurs in the “Try It” stage are in their early stages of the journey, therefore the training focused on the hypothetical problem and research in the early stage. With PEBBO’s years of practical experience in human-centered design, we are hoping to help and inspire people to ask the right questions, find the right questions and solve the right problems in the early stage of entrepreneurship, and make fewer mistakes in the future journey.
Another challenge is that many social issues are not entirely or directly related to people, such as wildlife conservation. Or some issues are even caused by human-centered Design, such as the plastic reduction issue that has attracted great attention in recent years. We can say that plastic bags and other related functional products are human-centered Design products because they are cheap and durable and bring considerable "convenience" to both consumers and stores. However, because of its convenience and low cost, it brings damage to the environment. It might satisfy human needs in a short time but it is not only affecting the planet we lived in but our health.
It may not be so easy to make such convenient and "short-term" products disappear, but at least we can try to find the balance between human-centered Design and environment-centered Design. PEBBO is a team that advocates human-centered design. We hope to exert our influence in this seemingly impossible task. We will launch a series of related programs and activities, stay tuned! If you have any ideas, interests, feelings or ideas about our project, please contact us!
WISE 外食” is a social design project initiated by PEBBO. Through a people-oriented research perspective, we re-examine the relationship between people, food and the environment, and consider the possibility of achieving a balance between the convenience of daily food and environmental sustainability.
In order to really improve the zero waste dining experience, we held a series of co-creation sessions and hope that we can use Design Thinking to gather friends with different backgrounds, specialties, and viewpoints to co-create together!
PEBBO invited five guests to share their experiences in the zero waste dining cycle:
海琪 shared how the 好日子agoodday started and their product development process. Many of their consumers uses their product, Pocket in so many different ways that they didn’t even think of when designing the product, which brought them many inspiration to improve their product.
孟宣 told us the reason why she decided to start Unpackeaged. U was really simple that she doesn’t like to waste anything. The Unpackeaged. U was not intentionally built to be a package-free store, it was during the process of setting up the shop and realize how wasteful retail packaging can be, so it gradually developed into the current package free business model today.
In addition to serving delicious meals, 雲記便當 Cloud Fast Food also provides a delivery and recycling service of a bento box. They shared their operation system, as well as the problems of communicating with customers and recycling. The audience also suggests the possibilities of online ordering and automatic cleaning solutions to 雲記便當 Cloud Fast Food.
宜臻 from 好盒器 goodtogo shared two interesting points from her own experiences. They found out that the rate of returning containers in the rental system is the same, whether it is a “deposit recovery system” or “trust system”. In addition, the vendors are more than willing to share information about the service with their neighbors, mainly because of the zero waste trend which can be one of the inducements to attract the vendors.
In the end, 維貞 how she has started to practice zero waste, as well as the challenges and difficulties she came across when she is trying to be zero waste at night market. As a zero-waste practitioner, many people often asked her the actual results of practicing zero waste lifestyle. These topics resonate with the audience, and some questions became the subject of continuous discussion in the workshop.
After listening to the wonderful sharing of so many speakers, together with the actual experience of zero waste lunch, everyone started to discuss all the problems that may affect the zero waste dining from their own perspectives and tried to find out the correlation between them. After the integration and in-depth discussion, the definition of the problem became the basis for the next team to develop solutions.
In different social cultures, the toilet has different meanings and influences on people's daily life, it evolves and changes with the needs throughout time. What comes to mind when you think of a public toilet? Are there other possible experiences we can bring to it?
With an open-minded perspective, we studied the relationships between humans, toilet, and life and further explore possible future experiences that are more in line with the needs of the toilet.
Public toilets meet people's needs for private space and time in public space.
Is a public toilet just a place to go to the bathroom? We learned about people's behavior through online surveys, Guerrilla interviews, and in-depth interviews to further analyze research perspectives.
"Working in advertising company, there are too much pressure, too little time, when I want to calm down for a bit, adjust the mood, or don't want to be found by other people, I will go to the toilet. The reason why I don’t go to the company's coffee shop or other space, is because there are usually meetings or people passing by, I don't want people to see me taking break, and I’m also just too busy, don’t really have the time to go."
We summarized several different types of demands for public toilets:
Physiological needs: On the toilet peeing or pooping, fart, vomit, rest, nap
Specific resource/object requirements: Looking at oneself in the mirror, grooming, brushing teeth, throwing garbage
Psychological/emotional needs: Adjust mood, release pressure, think, avoid awkwardness in the party, avoid things, space out
Personal time needs: Spend time on the phone, take a break, read comics, walk around
Social needs: Gossip, Check on social media, check your phone for important information
We went on to analyze the main role that public toilet plays in people's daily life. The toilet is the most accessible private space in a public space, temporarily hidden from the pressures of social groups. It is also a temporary departure from reality, creating the best cover for personal time, to be able to change the environment, get undisturbed buffer moment.
In addition, we found that groups have varying degrees of influence on individual toilet experience.
“'I was standing outside of the door and I heard a series of loud farts, and my pretty colleague walks out from the door, very embarrassing.”
The most basic and core function of the toilet is to solve everyone's physiological needs. With respect to individual privacy, there is a certain separation between the toilet and the public space, as well as a certain private space inside. But when someone else is in the bathroom, whether with a companion or someone you know, the bathroom experience is filled with tension and awkwardness under social pressure to worry about the eyes of others. No longer dare to defecate or fart in public toilets, deliberately shorten the urination time, and even extended disease.
