Blog M.A. in Creative Direction, HS Pforzheim

…raising awareness through design.

3-day workshop with Christian Schneider. Mr Schneider is a former design manager of Ideo, Studio De Lucchi, and co-founder of a NPO in Africa. He has been collaborating with various design and business schools as an academic consultant and tutor for design thinking.

Stegreif – Impromptu assignment: imagine products that help to cope with our burning issues, to raise awareness and to engage action

Group 1:

The Product is an irconic statement and by wearing it one believes in not being afraid and to unitedly fight for the cause. With our product we take the first step against reasonless fear, isolation and security obsession.

Group 2:

In the context of the Stegreif Project – „Grotesque Products for Grotesque Changes” we decided to develop a business model that has the fundamental element Air as a central theme. We intended to draw attention to its irreplaceable value. Our judgement, based on the motto that you don`t realize the real importance of something until you lose it, guided us in experimenting to the creation of a challenging, imaginary „fair” company, that introduces a whole new and unexpected concept to the market – the sale and distribution of a product normally free of charge, that people take for granted: air.

We cannot change the world, but we can learn from our mistakes, so we decided to produce and distribute a whole line of „grotesque”, innovative, but also necessary products, that all offer the same fundamental element – air.
They are meant to draw attention to the „grotesque” changes in our world and to forewarn as many people as possible about the true chance of losing the most vital element in our lives. And, after all, who could remain passive, when he or she sees in the supermarket something that he or she is used to have for free?

This first product, an “air seat” is designed for public or partially public places and it should be located in gardens, parks and other urban green areas. The utilization is intuitive and convenient. The seat invites to relax, offers the user the possibility of a fresh breath of air from the fair plantation, and also allowing him to notice the difference between what it is supposed to be clean air and what really is clean air.

Group 3:

For this project we were thinking about daily life problems more or less. As everybody knows, nowadays people are easily stressed – we all are always out of time and under pressure. This is one of the reasons why we loose more and more the awareness for the little things in life and we consume without thinking.

With our concept we are trying to bring back consciousness through complicating our daily life routine, which means the objects we have created are used in a way that you have to remind yourself where for instance the milk comes from. So to get milk you have to melk the bottle…

…to get eggs you have to press the eggs gently out of the latex shell.

To pour water you have to wait for the water to drip out slowly of the bottle while it passes through minerals sitting on top of the bottle.

The rice box is to be shaken to get the rice out like the principle of filtering the rice.

To sum it up, you have to work for your food. You have to take your time to get actual nutrition out of the objects. We hope this will make people reflect some more, and also make them more conscious about their actions.

Group 4:

Our goal is the protection of the user’s private space in public places.
Our solution: Different types of inflatable airtubes and airbags are used to create a private space around the user, especially around his head.
By using a “prAIRvate space”-product the user is able to separate himself from the stressful and fast moving live in large cities just by pulling a string.

For example the POWER PONCHO, a garment which is wearable but has the additional function to transform into a space around the person.
It is a fashionable poncho which can be used as over garment.

When the buzz around is too much, it’s time for the transformation!

The great thing is: the person who wears it can see through the product, but others can‘t see him/her. (During the rainy season the POWER PONCHO can close its upper open space and be used as an umbrella. It will transform into umbrella shape by pumping air inside by an electric pump system.)

Group 5:

Our idea for the »Stehgreifprojekt« adresses a world wide issue – hunger. We brought in our presentation »two worlds« face to face. Countries where people have difficulties to get something to eat and on the other side countries where people live in abundance.

Our society is way too selfish, nobody is helping the other. Our idea is a for a grotesque product is supposed make people who live in a plentiful world think about how life can be if you are facing starvation every day.

People have to work hand in hand to survive. So we created a spoon with a handle that is too long to eat with all by yourself, you need the help of another person.

Only if you work together it is possible to grab a bite.

Group 6:

In einer Welt zunehmender Reizüberflutung ist der Mensch auf eine selektive Reduktion der auf ihn einströmenden Eindrücke angewiesen.

Um den von visuellen (z.B. Werbung), akustischen (Verkehr) und olfaktorischen (Gerüche) Reizen gesättigten Alltag bewältigen zu können, müssen Teile dieser Sinneseindrücke herausgefiltert werden.

Entstanden ist eine Reduced Reality Maske. Die “R2 Maske” nutzt modernste Technologien der Augumented Reality, um das Individuum im urbanen Lebensraum zu entlasten.

Group 7:

Distribution of wealth on this earth is unbalanced. So in our favor. Sure, we know it’s wrong, however, quiet frankly, we don’t want to change a thing.

Which is why this approach doesn’t help. It simply concentrates our way of life in the shape of a product. Or better: a desire.

We use up resources to create a beautiful, high-gloss, shiny piece of landfill that has no purpose at all, but consuming electricity (which we also produce by using up resources). It has a toggle switch with ‘ON’ written on both ends and once all the electricity wasting heats the device up, we use up more electricity to cool it back down again.

End result was an advertising clip promoting our device, its cool useless features …

..and stating our slogan:
“iWaste, Get Blinded By The Surface.”

Group 8:

Most of the people don’t know how much the products they consume waste – resources of our nature. We want to let them know!

„Out of balance“ is based on a reflection about consumer ignorance. We show what’s behind a product, how much natural resources a product needs to be produced and how the customer can balance out the resources he used. We created a fun and interactive website that visualizes how much resources are needed for various products. First, the website user has to shop for products and weight them on a scale…

…after that, he gets the result of how much resources this product needs to be produced. Finally, the consumer has an option to equate his use of natural ressources.

Group 9:

The air pollution is one of the global problems the most—especially big—cities are dealing with. The air pollution is not visible. And that’s why people are not really sensitive for its impact on their health and the environment.

With the series of products we intend to increase awareness for the problem „Air Pollution“ and motivate people for a more sustainable lifestyle.
Here are some exemples for an invisible product range that turns the products visible when the air pollution is high.

Group 10:

The intention of our project was to make people realize what we are heading to, if we don’t care about our society and environment.
This is why we created the brand “SEEK” that designs critical and grotesque products.

“Seek” is not just a brand for stylish and trendy devices. It is more like a movement, that aims at everyone who is passioned in keeping our world alive and especially at those who are brave enough to comunicate this to disbeliefers.
The product line of “Seek” is modern, stylish and close to the current trends on the market, but eminently NOT necessary or rather not supposed to be necessary. It is the desire of the consumers to indicate the worlds problems with the products of “Seek”.
It is like saying: “You don´t see anything wrong here? Seek for it, before it finds you.”

example 1: oxygen mask

example 2: walking barefoot

example 3: sunshine when it rains