Good Design, Bad Design.

Yesterday we had a lecture on Good Design and Bad Design which I feel continued on a bit from one of our previous lectures 'Think Big!'. I'm quite enjoying all these lectures, inspiring us all to do something meaningful with our degrees rather than just the obvious and expected. I'm glad our degrees are being taught the way they are, for example the last few briefs we have been given have had a sustainable and eco-friendly factor to them, almost forcing us to learn all of these new factors we will need in the future. It's also opening my eyes up a lot to how much you really have to think about things. For example we were told about the OLPC scheme (One Laptop Per Child). I personally had never heard about it and at first thought it was quite a good idea, the laptops are wound up to charge and have word processor etc., allowing children to work with them in school. But then as Jonathan explained, the children were only using them to play with and use the web cam. This doesn't really help them at all and the money used on the laptops could really be put to better use, catering to their basic human needs before allowing them to take pictures. Of course education is important in order to get these children out of poverty but surely there are cheaper and more effective ways to do this? There are many problems out there that we can help solve, we just have to think big and make some good design!