Video Reflection - The 11th hour

The 11th hour is a pretty full on documentary, which investigates about the worlds environment. It goes over all the problems dealing with sustainability. There was quite a lot of information to take in especially how much detail it goes through. Two topics i've found interesting were about both amount consumers and society. More so that people are not willing to change how we think as if we are trapped inside some sort of box making us unable to move forward into something new. Below are the two points i've wanted to address after watching;

Consumers don't understand the issues us designers are trying to address. Reducing the amount of production is usually the number one priority in designing something new.
Many people i know think that when we design something new, its always in producing more and newer stuff thats much better than the old. They simply just dont get it. I have mentioned countless times when people ask me about design is that we are trying to reduce the amount of production in a product whilst increasing value in that product. This i find is what us designers face, the challenge of increasing value in the product.

Many people complain about society not having the technology to do this and that.
This point was raised saying that its not that we don't have the technology to do things, its because we don't have the people behind it. People don't want to change and risk losing their money in investing into something that could actually work. They like to stick with what they have and the conventional ways of doing things. Us designers must think outside the box and this is what i try to do in my own designs. Personally i try to look outside the box in my uni designs and proposals, even though some are quite far fetched but attempt to make them work. I think society really needs to look outside the box as we do have the technology to improve many things but people are not willing to try something new.

These two were the take home messages i thought were interesting. Things that us designers need to think about and see if we can find a solution to work around, especially when society will not change very easily. We designers need to push on and help society to move forward into the next era.