Project Assignment:
Capstone project -
MS. in Packaging Design
Pratt Institute
(Spring 2020)
Discipline:
Research study
Structural packaging
Tools:
Woodworking
Wax molding
Rhinoceros
Adobe Illustrator
Emotionally Sustainable Design
Emotionally sustainable design aims at developing an emotional attachment to our possessions to reduce waste and promote a more sustainable lifestyle. The problem with our current sustainable solutions is that they mostly focus on recycling. As a result, consumers use recycling as an excuse to waste more. As designers, opting for eco-friendly and recyclable materials is not enough to break the never-ending cycle of purchasing and discarding possessions that are still perfectly functional.
These sketches are an exploration of different ways of opening a box. The goal is to maintain an intuitive user experience that provides maximum friction to allow the wax to be stripped off over time.
The pattern is inspired by shapes resulting from different cutting techniques such as slicing, dicing, cubing, or julienne. It varies in height to allow for a progressive exposure of the pattern.
The core of this problem lies in the consumers' behaviors and their bad habits. We constantly want to buy "new and shiny" things and find joy in the novelty they provide. We discover these objects, understand how they work, and use them a few times until we no longer find them exciting. This leads to boredom and the eventual discarding of these once prized possessions.
This project is an experiment that tests the effects of empathy on the consumer. The product possesses all the fundamental characteristics that unconsciously incite the end-user to sustain an emotional attachment towards it: it evolves over time with user interaction enabling a user-object bond. The focus of this experiment is on the package rather than the product to discourage the user to discard it after purchasing, which consequently prolongs its life cycle.
This experiment is conducted with a knife and its package. It was important to test the evolution and establishment of an emotional attachment to a product that users don't usually feel a connection to (excluding cooking amateurs and professional chefs). As humans, we often favor objects about which we have a story to tell, such as wedding rings and family heirlooms. A home appliance such as a chef's knife is an adequately plain object to base this experiment on and could be a measuring ground for future explorations of emotionally sustainable solutions in fields such as fashion, furniture, or technology.
