Design Proposal First Draft

Will you forget where you park your car? Will you forget to do your assignments? Will you forget your password? I believe most people are kind of forgetful. Forgetfulness is an inevitable human trait. Especially in today’s society, tire, lacking of sleep, stress, and all types of negative factors enhance our forgetfulness. However, a study says it is also a tool of the brain to prevent us from being confused, by ignoring the most irrelevant and unimportant information. Really? It is interesting that we “forget” because we also “remember”. If we do not remember what we forget, we will never realize we forget something. What do people usually forget? How do they forget those things? What troubles does forgetfulness bring to them? As a very forgetful person, I am so curious about others’ experience. Yet, forgetfulness is a mental activity that is invisible. I am going to design an interesting visual expression to communicate forgetfulness.

At the beginning, I was going to design a device to prevent people from forgetting, or to increase short-term memory. However, there have been a lot of existing products on the same topic. People always try to find ways to cope with forgetfulness that is considered as absolutely bad. Nevertheless, I see it in a natural point of view; forgetfulness is just like a natural phenomenon in human. Instead of making it an enemy or a problem, I am going to show its interesting and humorous aspects.

Since aging is an unavoidable natural factor to cause forgetfulness, the target audience of this project must be age-dependent. I want a group that is relatively young and I am fairly familiar with, so I am going to target at the age group of sixteen to thirty who are the most active and have many things for them to forget.

There are a lot of scientific writings about forgetfulness including many surprising and innovative findings. In order to make the project have more personality, primary research such as survey is necessary. There are also some artworks and designs that I can study as reference. Critiques and feedbacks from the target audience, of course, are the most important tools to perfect the design. Through these researches, I am going to determine the most resonant content, the most interactive media, and the most imaginative graphic elements to carry my idea.

By interacting with the design, people are going to have a creative meditation, a new understanding, and a different attitude about forgetfulness.