Overall design and thoughts:

This project is called Nature Disconnect, so I wanted to use my layout to show the connection to nature that we are slowly regaining in our designs. A global example of this is the “Grow It Yourself Movement” and the increased awareness of how we influence our environment with our decisions as consumers. The colour scheme I choose shows the cliche that we as consumers often fall for, that if something looks and feels natural, it probably is. It is still a good indicator, however, sustainability is a quite complex topic, that often can´t be deciphered that easily.
The rope also opens the discussion of wheater or not we are actually disconnected to nature, or if we have simply changed nature into so many products, that technology and nature in many ways have become very entangled, Cause at this point, all nature is man-made, and that is neither good nor bad, but it means that we can never truly be disconnect, for we, us-selves are nature.

The boy at the end of the rope shows the goal for the next generation, that they will look at found objects and “trash” as resources and materials that can be reused and repurposed into something new and exciting with a story.

Manifesto board:

I made the first mood board, the manifesto board, as an intro to the project. It has three sections, Stating the issues, Examples of solutions and the target group I chose to have in common in all my projects.

I chose the city family dynamic for three reasons,
1. people who live in cities are often the ones who are also less connected to nature, due to the city environment and often the busy lives that stereotypically follow city life.
2. I chose the family dynamic because the influence children have on adults often gets understated. If the children become aware of their impact and lack of connection to nature, they will drag their parents out as well.
3.I chose a family setting with young children, because they have an amazing ability to put creativity and entertainment into everything they do, and appreciating the small things is in many ways what connecting to nature is about. Children are also the ones who benefit the most because they bring it into the rest of their lives.

Product Design Board:

With all of the above in mind, I created a concept I call Search Toys. It´s a way to get children engaged and aware of the resources around them. They get the mechanics of a toy or the structure of a toy, and then they have to search in nature or the families used packaging to finish making the toy. this not only gives them the feeling of accomplishment of building it themselves, and the awareness of the resources around them, they before called trash, but it also makes them fix it themselves when it brakes because it is made of something they can find and have made before. This is to make them go against the throwaway culture in our part of the world.

The board is made up of four sections, inspiration, materials, storyboard and prototypes.

Inspiration part shows the fashion artist Edgar Artis, who uses lots of different materials and cut-outs to use backgrounds as patterns. It also includes the 2012 Poland Student Design Winner Musicon by Kamil Laszuk, which is a complex and engaging toy that gave inspiration to my prototypes. The third inspiration is the outdoors, and specifically an improvised outdoor swing in my local park, it is a good example of how minimal effort makes it easy and fun to engage in nature.

The materials section show how both old packaging, leaves, flowers, branches and stones can be used in the toy designs.

Interior Board:

When it came to the interior design board I wanted to children and parents could stay in and experience the outdoors. Again I separated my board into four parts, Inspiration, First ideas, Storyboard and Prototypes.

All the inspiration pictures are “open” structures, they have great views to the outside, and they all emerge in the landscape more than disrupt them.
In my brainstorms, I played with lots of shapes, and angles, I had an Idea of making an installation with mirrors, zooms and microphone to encourage visitors to use all their senses to explore an area. I also looked at deconstructable materials like paper tubes, that architect Shigeru Ban, for example, has done lots of successful work with (http://www.shigerubanarchitects.com/works.html)

But I ended up with a final concept called Sky House, which is a packageable and portable treehouse, cause lets be honest, what kid doesn’t dream of a tree house? The idea consists of three parts, an adjustable net in the bottom, an equally adjustable plastic ceiling that you can look through to observe the night sky, and a waterproof cloth to put around the structure, like walls.

Interaction Board:

For my last board, the interior design, I had three ideas I was joggling between, Scavenger Hunt, Bug Buddy and Curious Cam.
Scavenger hunt is an app that allows you to scan any plant, fungus or tree to see what it can be used for.
It´s a way to get children and parents alike to get a closer relationship with the plant species around them. Ideally, it should be sponsored by universities, botanic gardens etc, so that they could get the location and count data on the plants, and in return, maybe the kids could collect enough points to get tickets to botanic gardens or research centres.

Bug Buddy, is an attempt to make children less scared of germs and insects. It would work as an app where you can scan the insect and get facts about it.

Curious Cam is a product idea to make parents more comfortable with letting their children out on their own. it works as a picture compass, it will suggest a road for you to go, if you choose so, and when you then want to go home, it will show you in the right direction. But the idea of it is that it takes a picture every once in a while so that when the child comes home, they can show the parent where they´ve been and what they´ve done, so that it can feel like they were out “together”.