How to design a creative product not only meeting the green principles, but also invoking the user's awareness on green consumption? Design by Blending could be an answer.

1. A Metaphorical Design Method for
Sustainable Lifestyle
Hung-Hsiang Wang
Graduate Institute of Innovation & Design
National Taipei University of Technology
Taipei, Taiwan, ROC
1

2. Introduction
Towards A Sustainable Lifestyle?
2

3. Introduction
Sustainability is conventionally thought to
be conducted by a consumer who thinks
ahead and tempers his or her desires by
social awareness, and must occasionally
be prepared to sacrifice personal
pleasure to communal well-being.
(Gabriel and Lang, 1995)
3

4. Introduction
“There are professions more
harmful than industrial design,
but only a very few of them.…
Today, industrial design has put
murder on a mass-production
basis.”
Preface to “Design for the Real World”
by Victor Papanek 1963-1971
Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Victor_Papanek.jpg
4

5. Introduction
Victor Papanek’s Solution:
The tin can radio receiver for the Third World
Source: Victor Papanek, Design for the Real World. Academy Chicago Publishers, 2nd edition.
p. 225
5

6. Introduction
“I read this 1971 book in design
school and it convinced me that
design had a higher purpose
than simply creating the latest
consumer product.”
Book List by Tim Brown,
CEO of IDEO design consultancy
Source: http://www.designersandbooks.com/designer/booklist/tim-brown
Cover of first English edition of Design for the Real
World published by Pantheon Books, New
York, 1971. Photographer: Al Surrat. Source:
Fineder M , Geisler T J Design Hist 2010;23:99-
106
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7. Related Works
Design for Sustainable Lifestyle?
7

8. Related Works
Sustainable Consumption by Design
• minimizing natural resources
• consuming greener products
• rethinking the social and cultural function of
material consumption and affluence
(Black and Cherrier, 2010).
8

9. Related Works
Rethinking the social and cultural function
of material consumption is likely to be
overlooked.
(Wells, 1993)
9

10. Related Works
The role of the designer in developing a
sustainable society is not simply to create
sustainable products, but rather to
envision products, processes, and
services that encourage widespread
sustainable behavior.
(Stegall, 2006)
10

11. Related Works
Consumer behavior for sustainable
lifestyle does not require sacrificing
personal pleasure. …
Corporations should also focus on the
self-interested notions of
taste, durability, quality, value or positive
emotions.
(Black and Cherrier, 2010)
11

12. Design Example
How to Design Pleasurable Products for
Rethinking Material Consumption?
12

13. Design Example
A Design of LED Desk Lamp with a
Metaphor of Taiwanese Aboriginal Myths
13

14. Design Brief
Designing a table lamp with the following
features:
• Inspiring users’ reflections on material consumption
• Without sacrificing personal pleasure
• Representing sustainable ethics in Taiwan culture
• Energy-saving
14

15. Design Method
A metaphorical design based on
Conceptual Blending Theory
15

16. Design Method
Metaphorical Design is
• Introducing A (target) by relating A to B (source), or
Creating C by blending A and B in a certain way
• Useful for designing pleasurable products for evoking
users’ reflection
16

17. Design Method
Conceptual Blending is
• A dynamic process that occurs at the moment of
perception to create new meanings from existing
ways of thinking
• Composed of four mental spaces: two partially
matched input spaces, a generic space constituted
by structure common to the input spaces, and the
blended space
(Fauconnier and Turner, 2002)
17

18. Design Method
Four types of integration networks
• Simplex: input 1 consists of a frame and input 2
consists of specific elements (A frame is a conventional
and schematic organization of knowledge elements)
• Mirror: a common organizing frame is shared by both
spaces in the network
• Single-Scope: the organizing frames of the inputs are
different, and the blend inherits only one of those
frames
• Double-Scope: essential frame and identity properties
are brought in from both inputs
(Fauconnier and Turner, 1998)
18

19. INPUT 2
Element, Relation Element, Relation
Simplex: No R, R+E Mirror: R=R, E+E
E,R
INPUT 1
Single-Scope: R≠R, Double-Scope: R≠R,
R+E or R+E R+R, E+E
E,R

20. Design Method
Simplex Mirror Single-Scope Double-Scope
20

21. Optimality Principles 1/3
 Integration: The scenario in the blended space
should be a well-integrated scene.
 Web: Tight connections between the blended
space and the input spaces should be maintained.
For example, the selective projection should
represent the relationship between an event in one
of the input spaces and a corresponding event in
the blended space.
 Unpacking: Given a blended space, it should be
easy for the interpreter to reconstruct the input
spaces and the network of connections.
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22. Optimality Principles 2/3
 Topology: Relations in the blended space should
match the relation of their counterparts in the inputs.
 Good Reason: If an element appears in the
blended space, it should have meaning; the
interpreter should create pressure to attribute
significance to elements in the blended space.
 Metonymic tightening: When metonymically
related relations are projected into the metaphorical
blend, the interpreter should create pressure to
compress the distance between them.
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23. Optimality Principles 3/3
 Distance: the target and source concepts need to
come from semantically distant semantic domains.
 Concreteness: the source concept compared to the
target is sufficiently concrete (rather than abstract)
to be understood and manipulated.
23

24. Design Method
Double-Scope blending can resolve clashes
between inputs that differ fundamentally in
content (elements) and topology (frame); this
is a powerful source of human creativity.
(Fauconnier and Turner, 1998)
24

25. Exemplar
Excalibur toilet brush, Source: An example of Excalibur, Source:
http://designmatcher.com/nl/images/obj http://media.listingstogo.com/users/Joh
ects/10856.jpg nDonohue549/Image/ExcaliburPhoto%
281%29.jpg 25

26. Exemplar
26

27. Sustainability in Taiwan Culture
Taiwanese aborigines myth of shooting the
sun:
• The topic of shooting the sun can be found in
most myths of Taiwanese indigenous tribes, such
as Amis, Atayal, Bunun, Rukai, Tsou, Saisiyat, and
Thao.
• These myths share the sustainable ethics of co-
existence with the great nature in a harmony
way, rather than in a conquering way
(Liu, 2004; Zhu, 2008)
27

28. Sustainability in Taiwan Culture
Thao tribe’s sun-shooting
myth Is highly distinctive
from the perspective of
sustainability.
A Thao hunter (Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Er_nd_3014_Thao.jpg
) 28

29. Sustainability in Taiwan Culture
In ancient times there was a huge sun in the sky
without the moon. The sunshine burned everything,
making people suffer from the prolonged drought.
A hero of the Thao tribe devoted himself to this
severe challenge. His solution was to shoot the sun
into two parts. The bigger part of the sun became a
milder sun rising in daytime, whereas the smaller
one became a feminine moon appearing at night.
Thus, the natural environment became much
friendlier and more energetic than ever before.
(Council of Indigenous Peoples, 2012)
29

30. Design Process
The design process is described as the
following:
• Representing the input and generic spaces
• Using Double-Scope blending to construct the
integration network
• Transform the scenario in the blended space into the
specification of the metaphorical design.
• Conceptualize and visualize the metaphorical design
• Evaluating the users’ reflections on sustainability when
seeing/using the design
30

31. Design Process
31

32. Results
」
弋燈 yii lamp
弋，為古代弓的甲骨文演化而來，意為狩獵之事。
以台灣原住民傳說:射日的神話為發想。將結合LED、光纖材
料與竹材作為燈具材料並以隱喻的手法設計一台灣文化精
品。太陽為光亮照明的代表，類比為燈光供給人類閱讀。
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33. Results
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34. Holding bow as a three-mode switch. String shining for the fir
Four strings as night light for the second mode. Main light as
the third mode.
Scenario
First draw for top lighting
Third Draw for the both
Second draw for
ambient lighting
Draw the String
34

35. Results
Evaluation by questionnaires with 36 participants
(the highest point=5)
• The average of comments on the lamp are largely high
in pleasure (4.1), metaphor (3.9), and sustainability (3.7)
• 24 (66.7%) participants thought it is the lighting control by
drawing the string of bow and the upper half bow shape
that makes the lamp pleasurable
• 24 (66.7%) participants expressed that the metaphor
quality of the lamp is rather high because of the metaphor
of the bamboo bow
• 21 (58.3%) participants considered the reflections on
sustainability when using the lamp is significant
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36. Summary
• Introduction of a metaphorical design method using
conceptual blending theory to developing products
that can inspire the sustainable lifestyle into the
users.
• A table lamp design is used as an example to test the
method, by double-scope blending of the frame of
bamboo bow in Thao’s sun-shooting myth and the
typical LED table lamp.
• The lamp designed is seen as a pleasurable
metaphorical product for the user’s reflections on
sustainability, though further formal assessment is
required.
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