W1-8
Exercises:
1. icon/index/symbol
Three objects: functional/emotional/"chicken ribs" everyday artifacts
different methods of classification
2. Reading objects 1: what is this object saying, to whom, and is that what we intend?
Japanese brands, its target market and products (Zhenliang Liu's speech)
- Choose one product that you have already owned or can easily access.
- Collect consumer feedbacks online (Bilibili, Taobao, Tiktok...); Understand the current challenges faced by brands; Discover the object and its context.
- Contextual change: denotation/connotation in transition
3. Reading objects 2:
- Grouping (2p/1g), swapping objects
- Reading, from designers' view (card game)
- Reading, from users' view (card game)
- Discussion
- Rearranging cards
- Card perliferation
Discussion:
- political concepts of everyday objects
- difference between artefacts in storage and artefacts in use
4. Routine/ritual drawing
Routine vs Ritual
Routine - Ritual
Intangible affordance vs tangible affordance
Routine/ritual graph
Object's identity affirmation
Discussion: vintage/second-hand objects
Project: Margin
Contexts shape objects and vice versa.Most design ends at the factory. A product is conceived, refined, manufactured, and delivered — and the designer's relationship with it ends there. What happens next, in the hands and lives of real people, is considered the user's problem.
Margin Design begins where most design ends. It is a philosophy that holds that a product is only half-made when it leaves the designer's hands. The other half is completed by the user — through imagination, through habit, routine and ritual, through the slow weaving of an object into the fabric of a life. Just as a reader fills the margins of a book with their own thoughts and meanings, a user fills the margins of a product with their own life.
The Full Logic:
Designer creates an open, imaginative framework
User completes it through their own imagination and context
Usage becomes personal and lifestyle-integrated
Personal integration means the product stays — it isn't discarded
Products that stay mean less waste, less environmental damage
Desire Lines/Paths: organic trails created by repeated foot or animal traffic that kills or compresses grass, creating a visible shortcut. These trails typically emerge along the most direct or easily navigated route between two points, resulting in worn soil.
3. Routines vs. Non-routines
Nakagin Capsule TowerNaoto Fukasawa: The Definition of Good DesignMargin Design begins where most design ends. It is a philosophy that holds that a product is only half-made when it leaves the designer's hands. The other half is completed by the user — through imagination, through habit, routine and ritual, through the slow weaving of an object into the fabric of a life. Just as a reader fills the margins of a book with their own thoughts and meanings, a user fills the margins of a product with their own life.
The Full Logic:
Designer creates an open, imaginative framework
User completes it through their own imagination and context
Usage becomes personal and lifestyle-integrated
Personal integration means the product stays — it isn't discarded
Products that stay mean less waste, less environmental damage
1. Select either one user or one object, document how users create new contexts related to objects.
2. Open-source thinking: – Instead of 'Who is our user?' ask 'What range of lives could this product enter?'
– Instead of 'What does this product do?' ask 'What can a user imagine doing with this?'
– Instead of 'Is this product finished?' ask 'Have we left enough margin for the user to inhabit?'
– Instead of 'Will this product sell?' ask 'Will this product stay?'
– Instead of 'What does this product do?' ask 'What can a user imagine doing with this?'
– Instead of 'Is this product finished?' ask 'Have we left enough margin for the user to inhabit?'
– Instead of 'Will this product sell?' ask 'Will this product stay?'
'Margin' can be understood as a declaration. It is through it that one truly owns the object.
3. Routines vs. Non-routines
drawing
Kansi words
SD scale
Radar chart
4. Conclusion
Reference:What Is Understanding? – Geoffrey Hinton | IASEAI 2025
Margin Design insists that the user's imagination matters equally — that the space between the object and the life it enters is not a gap to be closed, but a margin to be offered.
Write the text well. Leave the margin wide.
Write the text well. Leave the margin wide.
"在日本鄉下做設計"
Lecturer:
Liu Zhenliang
Graduated at School of Design, Jiangnan University. Now working as a designer in Japan
Time: 18:00-19:30pm
Date: Mar. 20, 2026
Tencent Meeting Number: 716857177
Reference:
D'ADDERIO, L. U. C. I. A. N. A. (2011). Artifacts at the centre of routines: Performing the material turn in routines theory. Journal of institutional economics, 7(2), 197-230.
K-means clustering
K-means clustering
Use Persona and Semantic Differential Method to Assist Undergraduate Students Learning Product Design
良品计画
IDEE
Everday Object
"每一件東西如果要去深挖，它都會很有趣."
"讓使用者賦予物件意義"
「它可以是橡皮擦」
NOT A HOTEL
良品计画
IDEE
Everday Object
"每一件東西如果要去深挖，它都會很有趣."
"讓使用者賦予物件意義"
「它可以是橡皮擦」
NOT A HOTEL
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