Psychology

- Ability, Thinking, Cognition

- Needs, wants, desires - Motivation, conscious and otherwise

- The psychology of communication

Lots of different types of psychology need to be considered depending on the project but these points are common in all.

Psychologically we have been taught to think 'inside the box'. Especially in the Uk where we are taught to think and do things in a particular way.

Can you connect all the dots in 4 straight lines without removing your pen from the paper?

Many people in other countries would have no problem solving this as they can think 'outside the box' but for most people living in the UK this would be really hard to solve as the thought to draw lines outside of the 'walls' of the dots is impossible.

This psychology is used a lot within design as small details can be used to make a product seem more desirable.

A fridge full of food is more desirable than an empty fridge when creating advertisements for the selling of a fridge.

Ethics

- Virtue based ethics (what is good / bad?)

- Duty based ethics (what should I do?)

- Utilitarianism and its variants (what harms?)

- Pragmatism (what can I do?)

- Environmental ethics

Everyone will have their own different ethics and it will be important to think about this during the design of a product. Religious ethics and cultural ethics will play a big role in the design process as what is ethical to some of the target audience may not be ethical to others.

- Are some forms of creative practice unethical? Why?

- It will depend on my personal beliefs and those of the people around me.

- Is it the creative practitioner who is at fault or are they just trying to earn a

living and the people who pay them are to blame?

Designing vapes / cigarette packaging - making them look fun and a new craze that everyone should get on board with, even though they are not good for you. Contains misinformation or doesn't make it clear what the risks and side effects are. (Cigarette packaging now has rules to stop it from being appealing.)

Designing something used to cause harm such as guns, bombs, shrapnel, gases where the aim is to cause as much harm as possible.

Semiotics

- signs, symbols, icons

- Indexes etc.

- emphasis on communication

- shape, size, colour, form, materials

- visual languages

There is a hidden language in the way specific things are used in design to influence people. The designs may be telling us things subconsciously such as the full fridge mentioned earlier.

looking at what designs tell us and how they tell us these things will help me to look at how I can use a more clever language to enhance my designs.

Designs take influence from what is going on in the world around us. One example of this is the cars produced in America in the 1960s, these featured very streamlined designs with rocket-shaped features. This was because this was the age of the space race and everyone was so influenced by the shapes and designs of rockets that car companies jumped on this to design a new futuristic vehicle.

- What message do they carry?

- What visual language is being used (if any)?

- What does this tell us about the individual who produced

them and the people who 'read' them

Anthropology

- The study of human societies and cultures and their development

- How are objects produced differently in different societies?

- Are they consumed or used differently?

- Do they show the cultural values of a particular society?

Histories and theories

- Materialist histories

- Feminist histories

- Philosophical histories

- sociological approaches

How history is formulated and how this has been affected by / with creative practice. This will depend on the viewpoint and perspective of the witness account to the histories and theories.

We can group contextual problems around 3 points - people, objects and society, but in reality, these boundaries are more fluid.