Project One: Kitchen Cans.
This is the first project for class Communication Design Fundamentals at CMU. In this project, we are identifying communication design in our daily life.
Over the summer, I went to my friend’s house and found his kitchen trash pretty stylish both on the look and its functionality. However, trash can is one of those objects that people would not look into its design but only its functionality. Thus, I want to talk about trash can as the primary object for this project so that you may realize how these daily under looked designs could improve your life quality significantly.
“D” : Effective design.
For the effective trash can design, I introduce SimpleHuman rectangular sensor can with voice and motion sensor, which is the one I saw in my friend’s house. This design is usually intended for the kitchen area in anyone’s house. I will talk about why I appreciate this design for several reasons below:
- Requiring less
The highlight of this trash can is that, when you say “open can”, the trash can will open itself and you can toss trash in a distance. The goal of this design it to free both of your hands and feet when throwing the trash away. Imagine you have a lot of trash in both of your hands, or have giant trash pieces that prevent you seeing the trash can, both cans require hand pressure to open and step cans would not be ideal. This can, indeed, requires less from the users.
- Offering more
The trash can lid has the same area as the real cans. This means as long as the trash could physically fit into the trash can, you will be able to put it in. Even though this idea sounds obvious, there are many trash cans around us whose lids are significantly smaller than the can size, making it hard to put trash in while the can is still empty. Thus, this can offers more space and less hassles.
- Space efficient
This trash can is rectangular shaped, meaning it can be fit in any corner or against the wall in the kitchen area.
This trash can has both a recycle bin and a general trash bin so that no additional trash can is required.
- Color options
This trash can has a lot of color options including black, white, silver and brown, which are colors that can be blended in with any furniture base colors.
“d” : Ineffective design.
For the ineffective design, the Stainless Steel Kitchen Trash Can is introduced for several reasons below.
- Requiring more
Unlike the voice sensor, or the motion sensor trash can from SimpleHuman, this can does not include any sensor technology but only mechanical designs. As it states on the can, when you want to throw away some trash, you need to push the lid. However, after using this can for a period of time, I would imagine that the lid will be dirty from the nature of a trash can. Would you still want to push the lid to use the can then?
- Offering less
Comparing to the trash can size, the lid is actually pretty small. Thus, if the trash pieces are bigger than the lid size, even though the trash can is empty, it will not be possible to fit that trash pieces in.
Taking a second look at this trash can, you will notice that the top half sphere is almost never possible to be used. Thus, the volume of this trash can is less than it physically takes.
- Space inefficient
This trash can is cylindrical shaped, meaning it will take a rectangular shape of space while only using the center part of it.
If you want to have recycle and general trash separated, an additional trash can like this is required, resulting in more wasted spaces.
