Successful Practise task: Why Design?

This is a picture of one of my favourite designed items, the Nintendo DS Lite.

Why is it that we want our belongings to do more for us than to function well?
With the constant evolution of technology, people are able to make previous tasks easier to do or perform new ones that may have been possible to do without the technology. As technology tends to offer hundreds of new possiblities for people, their expectations of what they want technology to enable them to do and their ambitions increase as well. Therefore as a consequence, the more technology evolves, the bigger our expectations become. Because technology can do so many different tasks for people, I believe people are beginning to accept the idea that technology is potenially capable of almost anything at least and therefore, with what it is able to do now is no longer enough, they want it to be able to do what they want, on top of what is already capable of.

With peoples' increasing demands of what technology must be able to do now, it surely must be fuelling the designers/inventors into designing new technology or upgrades for existing technology to meet these ever rising demands. Technology plays such an important role in peoples' lives these days, it is only natural people will start to expect more from it as they grow accustomed to it.

Why are we willing, as soon as we can afford it, to pay extra for things with appealing forms?

In response to the question, I believe it is down to the presence of three personality traits in people ,which are greed, pride and envy. As technology continues to evolve and newer, better versions of existing technology appear, I believe people will feel intimidated by the version of the product they own becoming outdated or even themselves looking inferior. This is because as other people upgrade to the newest product in the range, that person may appear to others as stuck in the past due to that they still own an older form of the product.

There are many examples out there of constant evolution of technology causing people to be left behind as it charges onwards. For example, if you look at the Microsoft Windows operating systems, there are still a lot of people who own the XP operating system or even an older version, but there is a new version of Windows on the market at the moment called Vista. As technology gets more advanced, it is inevitable that it is going to cost more upon retail, which is evident with the Windows series. Vista is not exactly the cheapest of products out there, and with people trying to save up money to afford it, it will become a problem for them when they upgrade to it finally only to find out Windows is already working on a new operating system.

Another solid example I can provide is related to the enclosed picture. The Nintendo DS Lite is the latest product in the handheld series of consoles by Nintendo. Nintendo originally started with a Gameboy, and over the years, newer versions of it appeared like the Gameboy Pocket and Gameboy Colour. Eventually, Nintendo produced a new handheld console to succeed the Gameboy series which was called Gameboy Advance. The Gameboy Advance was a fairly large step up from the original series, but as the years passed on, Nintendo brought out the Gameboy Advance SP which was a smaller, redesigned version of the original model and then eventually, they brought out the Gameboy Advance Micro which was a significantly smaller version of the original Gameboy Advance. There were no ground breaking updates from each generation of Gameboy Advance to the othe particularly the SP to the Micro, but people still bought them like they were in limited supply. The next big leap, would be the launch of a new handheld called the Nintendo DS. The Nintendo DS boasted much improved graphics, dual screens with one being a touch screen, a microphone and stylus as well as Wi-Fi capabilities amongst other features. The DS was a roaring success, and some time after it's released, Nintendo brought out the DS Lite which is pictured above. The DS Lite contains slighty bigger screens but a more compact design regardless, a new power switch and improved battery life and brightness settings. It was not a huge leap from it's predecessor, unlike the Gameboy Advance series to the original DS, but people are still buying it in the millions to this very day all over the world. But Nintendo hasn't stopped there, they are now developed a new DS model called the DSi, which contains new features such as o.3 Megapixel camera, several power lights instead of one, a new power switch, slighty larger screens and more advanced in-built software such an animation application. Yet again, it is not a revolutionising leap, but as shown through the past, people are more than happy to pay for a basic upgrade of an existing product that may only have been given a few extra bells and whistles and a new look. The fact whether the new features it offers are revolutionary and do justify paying the price for the upgrade, are basically just ignored by the millions of customers out there as apparently you only have to make a few small changes to the existing product and it will still sell phenomenally. This is also strongly evident in other forms of technology such as MP3 players and Ipods, games consoles and mobile phones.

I admittedly do not understand why people must continually shell out their hard earned money everytime a new version of their beloved products are released, as most of the time the upgrades made to the latest version definitely do not justify the increase in price from what the previous product's price was. It probably does come down to peoples' obessessions with being as ahead of others as much as possible, thus creating an ever growing hunger to get the latest and best technology available as soon as possible without caring how much they will need to spend. The greed, envy and pride personality traits definitely do have their roles here and I think due to them being present in everyone, it causes this arrogant, self centered need to be amongst the most modern people out there.