When I was reading Why We Need Things, I can’t stop myself to think what the objects means to me. I Mihalyi Csikszentmihayi’s article, he mentioned three ways that artifacts can help us objectify the self to us. First, he thinks objects has the power to indicate owner’s power and the position in social hierarchy. Such like prey‘s bone used as necklace shows owner’s physical power and control position in hunting age; collection of luxury products, premier furniture shows owner’s wealth and high class position. That reminds me that we can tell a people’s life quality through one’s outlooking, daily supplies, especially soft outfit in their house. Second, mementos and old things from past can help people continue awareness of who they are in current life and know their direction in future life. I remembered that sometimes when I floundered in my life, feel empty and depressed, I always look at some old things, such like books that I read when I was in high school, pencils and sketch books that I always used to draw my mood, to calm myself down, and later I feel better. Third, he says objects can help people know their place in their social network and relationships. For instance the objects that got from friends or related to family members can make people know they have friends and a warm family. It’s symbol of cherished relationship. Here, he gave an example of a woman who said she only care about human relationship and doesn’t care objects at all. It turned out that this woman didn’t have family or friends. His conclusion that “if the home had few things that evoked meaning, its owner tended to be social isolated.” That makes me think maybe that’s the reason why I, as an international student here always feel lonely. In my room, all the furniture are second hand furniture and bought by myself, my stuff are almost new buying. There are little things that I brought from my hometown.

In the article, the author mention a term, psychic entropy. I did a little search about this term, it’s an mental status that indicate order or disorder level in psychology. All unknown things and chaos are highly disordered, can make people feel anxious, fret and fear, while highly organized things can make people feel more stable. When people involved in unstable things, their psychic entropy will rise up. For us, there are always new things in our life, life itself is disorder and unknown. While according to the author, objects can help people stabilize self in changing life. That’s the root why we need things. When I did the research, I also get to know that why the author mentioned musicians, artist and mathematicians can be more independent against objects, because arts, aesthetics and knowledge are highly-structural and highly-ordered things. I hope somedays, our designers can use our power to help people get more independent from objects rather than rely on it to keep ourselves stable.

When people talk about product design, many of them have a first impression of aesthetic pieces, useful products, resolutions to problems. While like Dunne and Raby said in Design Noir, if the current situation of product design is analogous to the Hollywood blockbuster, then an interesting place to explore more detail might be its opposite: Design Noir.

In my opinion, people all have a dark side and imperfections, that’s human, even though it’s hard for me to tell why some complex psychological behaviors happens. Then as a designer, we don’t have to fulfill the mainstream taste or follow the social norm to design. There are so many different needs of people, for me, it’s more thrill to design for unusual needs and  create disturbance or dilemma to stimulate some interesting psychological behaviors than follow mainstream. I like to see people break or hesitate around the boundary between their real needs and social norms. Then why don’t use technology as a media or interface to meet these “dark” needs? Won’t that be more interesting?

I like the Alibi CD and Japan love hotel examples pretty much. Like the author said, it uses technology to satisfy unacknowledged rather than genuine needs. People all lies. That makes me think about an by-product of Wechat in China. Since Wechat is so pervasive in Chinese daily life as a communication tool, the content of dialogue can be used as an evidence to gain trust. Then there is an application that can make a fake dialogue between two people. At first, some Wechat online retailers use that generate good feedbacks of their product and post it in social media to solicit customers. But before long, I heard that a female home wrecker use that app to scheme between my friend and his girlfriends. Then I asked some friends wether they will use that application, the truth is they already used that in some situations, lie to their co-workers, their partners or friends. Have to say, maybe someday I’ll use that too. I also believe that we should give some space to our real but insincere needs.