Category: Rapid Prototyping

Write a blog post about your learnings and understanding of Industrial design prototyping. Do some research on the future of prototyping and give examples of where you think prototyping will go in the future.

There are multiple roles that prototypes play, in between sketching, after sketching, and helping resketching.  Just as it says in the video, “the best prototypes move your design forward”, building a prototype can give you a brief understanding of how the design goes so far, and let you see the problems. While after the stretching, the prototype will show how your final design goes while interacting with real life and customers, thus giving you more ideas about how to improve it.

Here are some tips that I have learned from the video:

-Don’t be afraid to fail. In order to make an idea work, it is possible that we might have to make lots of prototypes.

-By making prototypes, you can test the feasibility of your idea, highlight problems, use them in focus groups for feedback, and refine your design.

-visual appearance model + prototype -> close to finished design.                           make prototypes before visual appearance models. 

-rapid prototyping is not always the best choice. When we are designing big things, it can be hard for us to prototype 1:1

-progress to prototyping as soon as possible.

Future of prototyping:

I think there’s a brand new way for rapid prototyping to go: 3D VR drawing

This drawing method can be used in rapid prototyping,

 

1. Multifunctional bathroom supplies storage rack

It always bothers me that there is no bathroom storage shelf that can actually meet customers’ needs. Take the bathroom in my house as an example, there are all kinds of shelves – towels shelves, toothbrushes shelves,  and shelves for dirty clothes. They are designed to save space, but because they all only have one single function, so together they don’t really work well for saving space.

So I want to design a shelf that has multi-functions containing all bathroom cleaning appliances, towels, and personal hygiene products.

Here are the models of the key components I made in fusion 360 

 

2. Water drinking reminder

When I am too focused on work, I always forget to drink enough water to stay hydrated.  I want to design a coaster that when the mug on it is empty for longer than ten minutes, will raise the alarm music to remind the user to refill the mug and drink more water.

Raw materials: wooden sticks, board, cardboard, and hot glue.

Whenever you put a mug on it, due to the seesaw structure, the “good job” will show to motivate you to drink water more frequently.

 

Device 2:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cardboard bike

It is mind-blowing for me that people can actually ride a bike that is made of cardboard. I was under the impression that cardboard was usually fragile and would be soluble in water. It is impressive that the designer used two strategies to reinforce the bike. First, the cardboard that was used to build the bike is actually folded cardboard, which is three-time stronger than regular cardboard. Second, the body of the bike adopts a diamond shape structure, which evenly distributes the weight of the person to the two wheels.

Nintendo Labo

I think it is a smart idea to use cardboard in children’s toys. Not only is it environmentally friendly, but it also inspires children’s curiosity during the assembly process. Also, cardboard feels different from plastic which is conducive to the development of children’s senses.

Chairigami

Can you imagine furniture made of cardboard? Well, this company called Chairigami makes it possible. They don’t just have basic tables and chairs, but more sophisticated ones like iPad consoles and one-piece tables and chairs. They are all both practical and aesthetic, opening up a new train of thought for household design.

More unconventional materials

Mushroom mycelium

The furniture shown above is designed by Sebastian Cox and Ninela Ivanova. Sebastian, the furniture designer, teamed up with the researcher Ninela to use mushroom mycelium in household design.

Wastewater

The Dutch Water Authorities developed a new technology to reclaim a new sustainable material from wastewater. Designer Nienke Hoogvilient uses this kind of special material to build containers for cremation ashes, named MOURN.

Blood

Designer Basse Stittgen used discarded cow blood to build items

 

My initial idea is to build a web structure bridge face to disperse the pressure.

           

this is the first version of my idea, and after testing it can hold 1.5 kg weight.

As one of the buildings which have the most iconic structure in Britain, the crystal Palace has its own way to survive for around 12p years before it got burned down in a fire.  Mainly used iron and glass, it has its own special design to hold the structure. 

ridge and furrow roof design

This roofing design system is unique, designed with a circular arch to dispersive pressure and hold the glass.

The frame structure of this roof is also very instructive.

this structure is very smart cause it uses the fact that triangles are the most stable structure, which inspires me to use it in the structure of my spaghetti bridge. Consider that using liquid glue will make it hard to build the triangular structure, like the picture shown below, but it’s still a good idea to do so.

But we can still apply the intersecting network structure to our own design, which will increase the toughness of our bridge.

 

 

 

Goal: Make a device only using paper and tape that allows you to drop an uncooked egg from a height of 3 meters.

Progress: 

Week 1: initial idea: The first idea that comes to my mind is to put the egg in a pyramid-shaped paper box. Then I have a crazy idea about changing the egg into a “sea urchin”.

Sketch: 

The original idea is to put the egg into two cones, but then I realize the paper pyramid is too weak to even stand up. So I decided to full it up with paper balls

These are the three models I tried to hold the egg and paper balls.

Week 2

First failure video

week 3: 

After the failure of protecting the egg last week, I improved my project. The lesson I  learned from last time is that the paper balls need to be evenly distributed in the triangular cone.

The quadrangular pyramid I made is as below

 

The success video