Natural Sustainability Product
The Brief
The brief was very open and allowed me to use my imagination without needing to worry about the technicalities and practical problem solving. Essentially, we were asked to design a product to reconnect people back to nature OR to design something made using sustainable materials and processes. We would need to provide a final prototype of the product as well as an A2 advertising poster to go along side. As proof of development, we had to have a detailed sketchbook and a set of 6 main sketches which showed the steps leading to the final design. On top of this, there was also some written work to go along side and an instructions booklet to go with the product to explain how it works to a buyer. I really liked this brief and straight away had some exciting ideas.
Design Process Start
To begin with, many weren’t sure what to design and so we did some class exercises to get our brains warmed up. This included passing a sheet of paper round our tables and we would develop a set of very basic concepts into more complex ones. None of these had to be at all plausible but it was just to try and get a spark of imagination going. Below is the sheet from my tables with the various designs we all came up with. The ones that stood out for me were the fabric which generates electricity when its manipulated and the self warming cup. I enjoyed this exercise because of the freedom if it. You can see the design along the top which was an idea I had before this exercise and was something was that I continued with. It’s essentially a lamp with a bonsai tree/plant in it which also has a sprinkler system so it imitates the sound of rain.
Below you can see the very starting process of the design in my sketchbook. The first page was me exploring what nature was and what aspects of it I think would be best to work with. I feel like this was something that I could link quite well with because I grew up in the middle of nowhere and I know what the country side is like. The one thing that really stands out to me about the country side, is how peaceful it is, especially compared to a city. Therefore, this was the aspect that I wanted to focus on for this project. I decided that the best was to do this was to use water and try and recreate the effect if rain falling on leaves which is a very peaceful noise. Water can be a very peaceful and calming thing in the right situations but it can also be unsettling so I needed to get the balance right. My initial design was a footstool with a sprinkler system and water pool in the middle of it. There is a very small and simple diagram of how it could be interacted with in the top right of the middle image. I decided however, that this really wasn’t practical because there could be spillages and it would be very heavy etc. Therefore, I thought id take that same concept and apply it to something much smaller and I thought a lamp would be perfect. The bottom drawing in the top middle image is the first lamp design. I placed a bonsai tree in the middle of it because I think it adds an interesting dynamic to the design and further creates that natural connection. I was imagining at this point that the whole thing could be its own kind of environment with some small plants with light and rain etc. I think if you had this little arrangement sitting in the middle of a coffee table or something it would be very attractive and would be almost like taking a small section of nature and placing it within your home. I therefore wanted to keep experimenting with the lamp idea and so the rest of the images are various concepts along that same idea. I was aware that growing something could also cause problems because it could cause a mess and also it would eventually outgrow the wooden frame around it. There are various captions throughout the images which further go into all my thoughts whilst I was designing it.
Finally, I came to a set of designs that I was pretty happy with on the bottom right. They’re essentially spirals which would enclose the plant as well as having LEDs in built in them and a sprinkler system at the top. I especially liked the top one because of its simplicity. I had drawn a lot of the designs on OnShape which is an online CAD program. I didn’t go into great detail with them, just enough to display the concept of each of them. The spherical helix one was especially hard to get right because its quite an abstract shape and I didn’t get it right on this attempt but later on in the project, I gave it another go and got it right enough. Below are some of these CAD drawings.
I had spent quite a lot of time designing for the lamp enclosure concept so I wanted to play around with some other ones which you can see below.
Bamboo Lamp
The next design I wanted to experiment with was the result of another exercise we’d done in class were we had to come up with a basic concept and the change one aspect of it each step and you’d do this 5 times. So, by the end of it you had drastically changed your original design and had all the design steps in between in between, some of which were crap and some were usable. Below are some of these exercises I did. A lot of the designs really weren’t that impressive but the bamboo lamp one really jumped out at me.
The thing I really liked about the bamboo design is that not only its very sustainable because bamboo is a very fast growing and easy crop to produce but also because of its simplistic style with the various sections which fit together to make a complete shape. I just think its a very cool pattern which would look good as a piece of furniture. I wanted to develop this concept further
as you can see below.
As you can see above, there are some quite different designs which revolve around the same concept which started off with the two small sketches on the top left. I was kind of imagining that these would be wall or table lights and they would have LED disks between each section of bamboo. I really enjoyed drawing these and think that they look very effective aesthetically and could provide some decent practical usefulness as well. As you can see, I drew a star next to two of the designs to symbolise that they were buy favourite. I really liked these two especially because of their simplicity and also I think a lot of the angles and shapes that make them up really compliment each other well and it all in all, creates a very nice aesthetic. Again, these were lamps in my mind and I’m aware that there has been a lot of talk of lamps in this project but I think a lamp is the perfect way to reconnect people with nature in their home. I really wanted to see what these designs looked like in CAD and in real life so I set about trying to recreate my two favourites in OnShape and out of foam to give me a better grasp of what they would really look like in the real world. I started with CAD so I could refine the dimensions ready for the real foam modelling. Below is a selection of images from my CAD attempt.
As you can see, it didn’t go quite to plan. The first design was fine but trying to get all the sections to join up into a perfect circle was very challenging and no matter which way I did it, it always seemed to have a problem generating the mechanics of the drawing. However, I still learnt a lot from doing the CAD and it allowed.me to get some fairly accurate measurements so I could start to build the foam one.
Above is the foam model for the bamboo lamp concept. This wasn’t too hard to make it was just fiddly but I was relatively happy with how it turned out and think it portrays the concept quite well which allowed me to come to the conclusion that I didn’t like it as much as I thought I did. However, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing as it just further narrows down my options as to what my final design will be.
Sprial Lamp
I then went back to my spiral lamp design and decided to try and make that out of foam to see if I liked it still. I was getting a bit more familiar with the foam wire cutter so I reckoned I could try and tackle this complex shape and see how it went. Below is the step process of me making a very small version of the spherical helix lamp.
At first, I sketched out how I could make it so I didn’t just jump into it blindly. I guessed foam was probably my best bet of getting it accurate so that’s what I started with, not setting my expectations very high because of the shapes awkwardness. You can see the various steps I took from turning the block of foam into a rough sphere and then on to the spiral. It was quite difficult in places and I knew that one wrong cut would ruin the whole piece. However, despite the tension, the final piece turned out pretty well and I was very impressed with it.
After cleaning up the model a bit with some sand paper, I inspected it to see if I really did like it as much as I’d anticipated and unlike the bamboo design, I did. The whole thing just sat really well in my hand and it allowed me to really appreciate the shape which I think the drawings didn’t really do. This was at this point the strongest candidate for becoming the final design. However, on to another design.
Ivy Wall Hanger
This next design is for an Ivy wall hanger which can sit in office spaces. Most walls are very plain and pictures are pretty generic so this design is a way to enhance a room in a subtle and natural way. I’m not sure if the ivy would be real or artificial but I guess artificial would be more practical due to the rate at which ivy grows and the mess it makes. Below are some drawings for the initial design.
I was pretty happy with this design and felt like it was ready to develop into a model. I could picture it hanging up behind an office desk with some ambient lighting in it and it would just create a very peaceful and atmospheric scene. I wasn’t quite sure how to make this model but I reckoned paper was the best way. It would be far too delicate for foam. So, I got some paper, some wire and some tools and started to plan how I was going to make it. Below is a set of images of me making the model.
I cut out a set of ivy leaves from card and them creased all the veins into it with my fingers. This took quite a while and my hands cramped up a wee bit but after a while I think I turned out about 14 leaves. I attached a length of wire down the spine of each leaf and hot glued it onto a main stem. The final result was pretty good although the hot glue had trouble sticking to the wire. I wasn’t going to bother with making a CAD model with this because I think the real model gave me enough insight into how it looks and works.
Choosing a Design
I now had a selection of designs which I had to choose from so I could narrow down and find which one I wanted to finalise on. So far I had the ivy leaf, the spiral lamp, the bamboo circle, the wall hanging bamboo lamp and finally the box enclosure. I’m aware this is a lot of lamps but like I said earlier, I think they are a great and practical way to introduce natural atmosphere into a home in a subtle way. Below are some evaluations I did on each other the designs in comparison to each other so I could hopefully find a final.
Final Conclusion
I think all the annotations are readable but essentially I judged all the designs in an equal way against a criteria which I though was appropriate and the used to that to grade each one. I was left with having to decide between the round bamboo lamp and the spiral one. The criteria that I used to judge them included their accordance to the brief, their sustainability, their aesthetics and how natural they were. They were marked out of 10 by a number of people that I asked and then that allowed me to get an overall average grade out of 10. At last, I decided to stick with the spiral helix lamp. This is by far the one I have liked the most through out this whole process and it has also gotten a lot of positive attention from other people. Therefore, I would need to take this design to the next level so I could design a proper prototype. The beginnings of this process start below.
Spiral Lamp Refinement
I was overall very happy that this was my final design and I was looking forward to developing it into a proper design. I was going to start this by getting a good CAD representation of it because I think this is an important step. I was going to use OnShape again for this despite having a tutorial in Solidworks. OnShape is a very capable program which I have gotten very used to using. This whole process took a lot of attempts to get right. Below is a step display of my CAD design process.