Product Service Systems: Ground for Ground pt1

Reflection:

The task of designing a whole product service system rather than just a product was challenging to say the least. It was quite difficult to understand the concept of an actual product service system, I found it confusing to begin with because I understood it to be just a vending machine or kiosk. Once I understood what a PSS actually was it was difficult to begin brainstorming for original ideas that haven't been done before. Our original concepts were quite basic and didn't have much of a 'system' to them.

Industrial designers should definitely consider product service systems among their solutions as I found that it was a good experience to create a whole system, start to end rather than just one product. It's always good to know more than you need, being able to understand how a product service system works is an asset to an industrial designer. If an industrial designer is designing an interface for a product, it's important for them to understand the process from start to finish including the user interaction of the product, distribution, manufacturing, etc.

I liked the fact that there were basically endless possibilities when creating a product service system. The brief started off as relatively free until I realised what was actually involved. I think the fact that there were so many factors to consider was the most difficult part of the project. Once we figured out one part of the concept there was a myriad of other factors we had to consider. I greatly value the input we get from our tutors, but coming week to week with progress and having to change directions was also a really trying part of the project. With so many varying suggestions of what we should do, it really just made us confused on which direction to take. I would have liked to decide on a final concept well before it was due to work out any problems that occurred along the way, but this was difficult to do when even in our final week before presentation our idea was still changing.

An advantage of designing a product service system was the fact that it was so broad. We had no choice but to understand every little component that went into creating the system, from each individual product to the distribution factors, and user interaction. It definitely made us stronger designers for that.

I definitely think I learned a lot from this project, not only from our product service system, but from everyone else's as well. It was interesting to see everyone's solution to the project and considering we only had three categories to chose from everyone's projects were so different. This project also made me learn more about working in a team, although group work is often challenging I was fortunate enough to have a really solid group to work with. Everyone was always open to ideas and there were never any negative attitudes. We were able to play on everyone's strong points to ensure that everyone did an equal amount of work.