MS2-Object-Project-Dice
Before I moving on to design I was majoring in psychology in college. I never being trained by any professionals in design or ever work in a design agency. I never know what a design process is. I learned by watching other designers product, trying to mimic their aesthetic approach, and trying to catch the sense of those brilliant ideas behind. At the time I start doing my own design works there were ridiculous amounts of barriers I met during the process. Not to speak of the lack of experience in all design tools, I got stuck in the project because of running out of the idea, have little or no visions of what the next step should be. I did not have any tutor or predecessor to consult with, but can only browse other people’s works on portfolio websites such as Dribbble and Behance again and again. Instead of the sense of achievement, I felt more pain and struggle during the design process and I heavily relied on my intuition and my design always ended up with a lot of unexpected elements and randomness in it.
(My partner Nick made a super cool cover page for the slides. For me, it looks a little bit too “confident” compared with the origin of the idea :D)
Those barriers are not appearing as many as before since I am getting a hand of design these years. It still exists but bothers me way less than before. Not until I got into Parsons I finally accept a fact that even a pro designer cannot produce ideas and solutions like an assembly line in the factory. I am totally OK with it. And thinking about myself in 4 years ago as a rookie designer, I can envisage that confusion and pain I had, and start laughing at it. It might sound cheesy but the dice is my very own objectification of this short journey of the heart.
This is also why I would like to categorize the dice as a “ritual object” instead of something else. And it is not a toy or a magic 8 ball, the context is way more specific that it is looking for designers, at least those who are still struggling with the design process and trying to echo with their anxieties.
Tips on the dice (example):
Duplicate (That you duplicate the current object for like 100 of times)
Scale (When something is mediocre, make it 100 times bigger)
Flip Upside Down (You never know what it looks like on the other way)
Delete (Just get rid of this stupid thing)
Transparent (Because it looks cool)
Go Get a Coffee (If you can’t afford one I am so sorry for you)
These are the tricks that pushed my design a step forward every time I got stuck. And I would like to clarify that they are NOT like specific instructions how you should use the software. You don’t have to scale up the oval you are working on right now when you get the result “Scale”. Instead, it gives a direction you might have lost sight of, that you might want to think about if scaling can make a change in your current design. If I am working on graphic design, is everything in a meaningful size? would changing the size make such design in vain?
Using my major studio 1 final project “Singularity” as an example. It is a puzzle solving game featuring weird level design. I spend tons amount of time designing the level, thinking about questions such as what should I put in this scene? What would I want the player experience in this scene? How should the player proceed to next scene?
In this scene, I SCALE up the supercomputer to make the player looks weak and tiny and create a solemn and mysterious feeling.
In this scene, I DUPLICATE the player to give a hint that he is not the first one who is traveling through the maze. Also, I FLIP the wall in the previous level so the player can walk on it to proceed to the next level.
Here I FLIP the direction upside down where the tree grows so it can lead the player to the next level.
At the final stages designing “Singularity”, I drew a roulette on the paper with all these tricks I can think of to fast generate ideas during the level design. I would like to say that was the first prototype of the designer’s dice, although it is not a “dice” it worked, and it worked pretty well.
I and Nick later made 2 paper prototype during the class. We lost one of them and I hoped it is because someone found out they have same issues as we do and sneakily took it home.
Somehow I felt regret a little to bring the dice idea to the object project. As the class moving on we were asked to push this idea forward by adding more features and interpretations on the dice. In my opinion, the dice would be just fit in this minimal form of a cube since the idea is very simple and it is meant to be simple. We even decided to wipe one of the six faces because we believe the user should do his/her own introspection and put their personal symbol on it. I don’t blame my professors that have the wishes it could go up to the next level as an “object”. It is just a dice, with 2 young designers’ frustrations on its 6 faces, and it might not fit the required depth and complexity well of the “Object Project”.
Still, I and nick are effortlessly iterating this product from our own understanding of it. On the 2nd iteration, we 3D printed it and build a mobile app that you can toss the dice on your phone by shaking it. On the 3rd iteration, we tried making a laser cut version and even tried to apply AR technology on the dice (so the app can explain the meaning for the user) but fail, since the symbols are not optimized for camera recognition. All these enrichment we tried to endow with the dice feels really extra right now, but it worth a try.
inspirations & precedents:
The idea of EDC(every day carry) https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Everyday_carry
The “Totems” in the movie Inception http://inception.wikia.com/wiki/Totem
A cube that has all kinds of button
https://thefidgetcube.co/
Magic 8 ball
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mFOracFClBg
