Pencil Case (80s)

Which type of pencil case that we use always become a topic during our school days, don't you agree?

Pencil case is the best tool that we use daily to keep our stationery and collectibles and of course to show off  among classmates.

In my home country and during 1980s, most of the pencil case used during primary is made of metal. Normally you will get cartoon characters such as Transformer, Doraemon as surface design. When you open the lid, you will see the multiplication formulas table.

Let's look at one of the example which I manage to get from Internet:

The pencil box was build up from few component where you can "play" around ejecting these compartment to keep your things.

A: using magnetic to keep the pencil case lid close
B: a transparent space to keep your time table (behind the time table is the multiplication table)
C: 2 layers platform which allow us to place more stationery
D: smaller component with a spring plate where you press to eject the cover
E: same concept as D and normally is a space to keep eraser/rubber
F: build in sharpener with eject function.

I guess this design is much influenced by Transformer cartoon during those years. All these mechanism build to attract student interest which now we no longer see it in the market.

When I was using this pencil case, I always found it very troublesome. I cant fit in all my pencils and my eraser is far too big to keep in underneath in the compartment. I kept my ruler together with my time table pocket. Now with jumbo size pencil design, if one is still using this pencil case to keep that pencil, he/she has to remove the top layer to allow more spacing. Luckily now this design no longer available.

Dish Rack Planter

Some one shared this picture in Facebook when I first saw this design. No doubt it is a good intention design but I am not too sure how friendly this can be. After Google search, I found this design was from  DesignLibero. You can click here to read more about the original design ideas.

Here are my thought:

If you help in kitchen after your meal to clean up your plates and cutlery, I bet you know very well that this design is far beyond to compromise the space that you need to dry your plates and cutlery.

For those who are using dish washer at home, this might become a decoration for your kitchen. For people like me staying at equator, washing our cookery manually and drying it using cloths or just leave them on the drying tray, this is of course not enough. If I am single... hm.. maybe it helps, but what about the space for cutlery?

Perhaps should consider to merge this design with following picture:

With this design, now at least the user can have space for cutlery and glass or cups.

Some times simplicity does not mean user friendly and realistic.So as a designer, please put your end user into your design consideration, else you are wasting your effort, resources and user might need to spend extra money to buy another "friendlier" tray and this will defeat the purpose of being environmental friendly.

Cup of Java Script by Hyuh-Jin Lee

Saw this cup in my Pinterest board today and let's look at this cup design idea.

The first impression given to me is this cup is a normal drinking cup where can be heated via a "saucer" connected (or maybe wireless) to a computer or laptop. It is not too friendly as it is difficult to "hold" the cup.

I could not get further details from the website where this picture was posted, and then decide to enlarge the picture for further information. Now I see that this idea came out in year 2008 by Hyuh Jin Lee, so I decided to Google it!

From Google search, I found this creator's name and I found out he shared this idea in Yanko Design - From Beyond Function.

Now I realised this cup design is a simulation for information transferring and not for my hi-tea! :D

After going through the description here, I kind of like his idea of pouring the information to a Java script board and play around the information like how we do with our smart phones now of days during meetings.

However, to me it still serve as an information collector like a normal pen drive, just the outlook are more visual-able and friendly. but how friendly to use? Hm.. that is another issue...

Welcome to Ideas in ID

Welcome to the world of ID review.

Instructional design

Here I would like to share things that I saw, I like, I love etc...

Feel free to interrupt when you want and let's share our experiences to make things better.

There is no special content group tentatively. I shall slowly build it and have some grouping when there are more sharing.

Note: I will share lot's of pictures which I fetch from Internet and the copy right are falls under each owner. Please write to me if you would like your photos, pictures to be taken down from my blog. pat0801 @ gmail dot com.