 Hi, welcome to Design at Home. I'm Emily, an educator at Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum. Today we're going to talk a little bit about the role of observation in design and practice doing our own observations, looking at things that we find outside near our homes or just by looking outside our windows. Observation is key to the practice not just of designers but also of scientists and artists. For scientists, observation begins the scientific process as what is observed can lead to developing a hypothesis which can then be tested and proved or disproved. For artists, observation helps to produce accurate and insightful work. And for designers, observation can be many things. It can provide a source of inspiration or it can help designers to notice problems that they would like to tackle and solve with their designs. Learning to practice close-looking and observation helps us to learn the skills needed in each of these disciplines and can help us to understand the process that designers, scientists and artists each go through as they do their work. Dating back hundreds of years, designers have been fascinated by observing the natural world around them, recording what they see with notes and illustrations. These records of observation have inspired countless designs from intricate pattern and textile designs to products made in the shape of things that were seen outside. Let's practice our own close-looking and observation skills as we look at one example of a model made by a designer looking to nature for inspiration. This model is an example of how designers in the past may have recorded the information that they gleaned from an observation like the one that we're going to do today. This botanical model made in the late 19th century by R. Brendel & Co. is a model of Rosa Canina or the dog rose. As we look at this model, we notice many details. We see the blush pink color of the petals and the small rouge-colored veins on the petals. We notice and can count the stamen, those pieces sticking out from the center with yellow tips, and can see the green bud-like carpal on the inside of the flower. We can see the spiked deep green leaves under the flower's petal coming from its stem. To the right of the flower is another smaller model, a flower bud, shown cut in half to reveal the interior of the plant. Models like these, made before image projection or microscopes were widely available, were not made to scale. The flower model is much larger than the flower itself would be in nature. The model is also immensely detailed, showing more than we would see from a casual glance. These details, gleaned from close observation done by makers, allowed these models to be used as objects for learning and scientific discovery, and let plants in one part of the world be shared in detail with people elsewhere. Observation also allows us to make comparisons between the historic and contemporary, as we look at records of what was observed in the past and compare it to what we see today. Prominent 19th century landscape painter, Frederick Edwin Church, completed a series of studies for a larger painting titled The Icebergs, on a trip in 1859 to the northeasternmost province of Canada, the islands of New Finland and Labrador. These sketches give us a view into how icebergs looked at that time. They serve not only as an artistic sketch, but also as a form of historical record, next to which we can look at icebergs in the area today. This means that observation has the potential to help us track long, large-scale changes and processes like that of climate change. Let's put observation into practice. Inspired by the quarantine or barium project led by Professor Elaine Ayers and also centuries of botanical records and observations made by botanists and other artists, designers and scientists, we are going to conduct our own natural observation, collecting specimens that we find outside of our house or looking outside our window for inspiration and recording many notes. I'll take you through this process. Before we begin, let's look at an example of a historic record which follows the same process. This example from the collection of the National Museum of Natural History shows a similar process used in a collection of a plant from French Polynesia collected in 1964. Pick up natural materials such as flowers, leaves and seeds near your home. This could be in a park or your backyard. Place the items in a bag to bring home safely. As you do this, you can take notes or photographs of things that you see that you can't collect. Note other things going on around you. What is the weather like? Do you hear or smell anything? Document the area where you are collecting your specimens and record the date and time. Record the temperature if you can. Is it sunny, overcast, rainy, snowing? These observations are key to the scientific process and will be helpful for future comparisons. If you aren't able to go outside for your observations, you can also observe things around your house or that you see outside your window. Rather than collecting specimens, you can sketch them to capture how they looked. Place your samples into a notebook or onto a piece of paper. Tape them down to secure the samples. Be gentle so that the objects don't break. If you'd like to, you can also press the pieces before doing this. Once your pieces are attached, record notes. These could be the observations about the weather or the smells and sounds that we talked about, or they could be observations about the shape or texture of your pieces or questions, as well as notes about where you found them. You can also make sketches or illustrations of what you found. Our observation practice and record is now complete. If you wish to continue with this process, you can check back in on your samples in a few days or a few weeks to see if they change as they dry if you did not press them. You can also repeat this process going back to the same area another month or in another time of the year or even next year to track how the ecology of the area is changing from season to season or year to year. You can now also use your observation as designers do for inspiration. Maybe you're inspired to design something that looks like a plant that you saw or collected, or maybe you've noticed a problem. Maybe there's too much of one type of plant which is invasive to your area and not enough of a native species. These types of observations are used by designers and scientists alike to make and find solutions to these problems. Returning to the botanical model of the dog rows and some of the other examples we looked at earlier in this video, we can see that we've performed much the same type of observation as these earlier designers and makers. Both scientists and designers working in research-based disciplines can make use of this observation and research, noticing problems or new developments, and gaining knowledge that can be applied to address problems. To understand what problems exist and what needs to be done to address them, the very first step is to observe closely and carefully to understand what is happening around us. This exercise is part of that process. You can also apply this technique of close-looking and observation without collecting samples. You can draw or take notes about the people around you and how they interact with spaces to understand how a designer might restructure that space. You can take notes about animals that you see or even what designed objects are the most useful to you. You can apply this technique to so many different design challenges. We would love to see what you've observed if you or an adult would like to share it with us on social media. To share what you've observed, please post on social media using the hashtag Smithsonian EDU. Thank you so much for tuning in. For more ways to experience design at home, please head over to our website or check out our page on the Smithsonian Learning Lab. Thank you, and we'll see you next time. Bye.