The first project within the practising product designer module was the Breffo live project. We worked in teams for the majority of the project, until the end where we worked solo to refine and develop a final solution. We began by learning about user testing within product design, where Bethan Gordon discussed with us the intricacies of user testing, from why it is important, recruiting the participants, methods for testing, how to record the data and finally how to analyse the data we recorded. We were then introduced to Breffo – a company that creates mobile phone accessories, mainly the spider podium which is an 8 legged phone holder for use in a variety of situations, most notable of which was on vehicle dashboards. Breffo introduced the brief, which was to design a new mobile phone accessory following the Breffo brand. The main constraint was the fact that the project […]

The third project of the practising product designer module was a live project with a furniture company called orange box. The project began with a talk from one of Orange box’s lead designers presenting his company to us, explaining what their company was and what they stand for. We were then treated to a factory visit field trip, where we saw the manufacturing side of the company in the South Wales valleys. The field trip was an excellent insight into the manufacturing processes involved with making furniture products and I feel that it has definitely improved my design work, especially designs related to design for manufacture. Our project brief was then set out that we should isolate a specific area of seating within a modern office space, which we would create a furniture product to solve an existing problem. We began small scale research for the project in groups, where […]

The final project for the first term of the practising product designer module was the design for manufacture project. Paul Wilgeroth introduced us to the project, which entailed the adaptation of one of our previous products to create a design which had a highly detailed scheme for manufacture. We were set the brief of creating a product that was efficient for manufacture with sensible manufacturing methods depending on the the product type and quantity that was to be created. I decided to continue my work on my Sedna LED lighting panel designs, as I believe it had a good potential for sales and that it would be suited to be in a range of panel products. I began by outlining my ideas for the development of the idea, concluding that I would add another flat display to the panel range, allowing the range to be far more versatile. My next […]