Design Sojourn | Strategic Industrial Design Blog

It has been a good number of months since the I’ve last updated my readers on the status of this project. Firstly though I like to apologize to a few of this project’s supporters for this delay but I have not been idle and was working on it during my spare time. I really was waiting for this time to finally give you an update.

Most of you astute readers would have already noticed that The Un-p3 Project is currently being exhibited at the Dandelion Industrial Design Exhibition. Unfortunately due to the entry criteria, that exhibition is really only for “show”. Therefore I thought to continue and expand upon the “tell” part here at Design Sojourn. This will be a great opportunity for you to ask any additional questions or make comments of any kind. Also I get a chance to explain how I went from the Haptic concept, and came up with the Wave one.

The Un-p3 Haptic concept: For more information see links below

If you missed the original conceptual thinking of this project that I am self-developing in the role of a design producer do take a look at Part 1 and Part 2 first for some background information, especially on the above Haptic concept.

I have to admit that it has been difficult realizing this project and even at this stage we are not totally done. After speaking to more designers about the Haptic Concept, the deeper complexities of my objective of this product’s creation process became more evident. So I wondered, perhaps unsatisfied with the current use of wood, that perhaps I should open my thoughts to consider other forms of craft manufacturing type techniques? But there is this problem going the craft route.

You see the when we look at craft vs manufacturing scale below they are actually polar opposites of each other:

The Haptic concept tends to fall on the more craft end of things, and I would rate the Wave concept as in between the two.

Craft manufacturing tends to focus on one off products or small production runs often hand made, but as a result often suffers from tolerencing and perhaps reliability issues. Mass manufacturing strives on standardization and volume, thus the products will have good fit but you need to sell in the numbers. As the project’s experiment was about exploring the use of craft based manufacturing juxtaposed with an electronic product, we need both small volumes, attention to detail, but still have good part fit.

One day while speaking to some friends working on their design project, I had a “euraka” moment. Why not use a Rapid prototype machine? Not only does it allow me some freedom in design (well almost, the RP machine still has restrictions) but it also allows fairly good tolerancing and part fit that is perfect for building electronic products.

So as I got started and studied the creation process via the Rapid Prototyping Machine, I decided very quickly that I had to designed this concept so that it would be difficult to be reproduced via mass-manufacturing. Undercuts, flat edges, thin walls, narrow gaps, living hinges and surface texture were tricks that came into play below.

The Un-p3 Project: Wave Concept

So there you go, the Wave concept. I have to say though it was a very interesting experience as after more than 10 years working on Industrial Design programs, certain manufacturing “givens” like part line placement or designing for draft have been ingrained in my creative creation process. In creating this Wave concept, it required me to spend a few days re-thinking and re-framing what I know about design for manufacturing before I could even set my mind free. I hope you enjoy reading about this project as much as I did creating it.

So if you had a choice on which direction would appeal to you, if I made a limited edition run of 20 pieces which would it be? Perhaps I may do a 10-10 split? Regardless please do have your say and I look forward to all your comments.

A while back I started this non-profit social-entrepreneurship endeavour called IDAsia.org as a means to network, uncover and perhaps showcase Industrial Designers from Asia.

As a result of these efforts, my team of volunteers (py, ec, kk and dotty) and I have managed to organise an online Industrial Design exhibition called Dandelion. This exhibition will be hosted by IDAsia.org and hopefully will be able to highlight some of the best and most interesting Industrial Designers from Asia. You see, most of us work not on our own but hidden behind brands.

Even better, our exhibition has been selected and will run as an official partner of the Singapore Design Festival 2007. This means we will be part of all their world wide marketing and advertising exposure for this event.

Now the good news. You too can be part of this year’s Singapore Design Festival and you don’t even have to be in Singapore to participate. We still have slots for the exhibition open and I like to extend an invitation to exhibit to all my Design Sojourn readers. Here are the submission criteria:

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Submission Criteria:

1) 200 x 500 pixels (wide) banner of your product. This is to introduce your product. 500 pixels is the width optimised for most computer screens.

2) Two 500 x 500 pixels images of your product. One could be a beauty shot, and the other could be how its used or made or even an interesting detail.

3) Please include an approx 150 words description of your product.

4) Please include an approx 150 words description of the designer of the product, including any websites or contact email if you would like to be contacted.

5) Some of you have a collection of products or multiple entries. Please do send them all in and we will do our best to accommodate it in the exhibition.

Exhibition Notes:

1) This event is an official media partner of the Singapore Design Festival 2007. This means it will be part of the official marketing and advertising promotions material of the festival.

2) We recommend that your images are presented properly and you view them at 100%, 500pixles wide is not a lot! Thus it is encouraged that all your images of your product kept simple and as big as possible.

3) Don’t forget even though this is a virtual exhibition, it is the requirement that the images can be either actual functional prototypes, appearance models or even a non-functioning finished model. Basically we want models not renderings.

4) As spaces are limited please get your entries in ASAP. IDAsia.org management reserves the right to reject a design if we run out of space or if it does not fit the stated criteria. Please deliver your images by 31 OCT 2007 via email to dandelion [at] idasia.org.

5) The exhibition will run a week before and a week after the period of the Singapore Design Festival 2007. The SDF 07 runs from Nov 27, 2007 to Dec 08, 2007. After that is will be permanently hosted at www.dandelion.idasia.org

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It is pretty much targeted to designers who are interested to sell themselves or their products that this exhibition will be their means to an end. Therefore the big requirement is that product images must consist as either non-functioning and functioning prototypes or models. They can be anything, portfolio work, furniture, packaging or anything product related.

The internet is filled with beautifully rendered images that really are at the end of the day impossible to make or realise, often this becomes a circular discussion that goes back to the fact that the design is just not well resolved. Therefore we aim for this exhibition to only showcase fantastic designers that can not only dream but also make as well.

I’ve always considered myself resourceful and entrepreneurial even though I have always been an employee. I’ve always wondered about that? Why is that I don’t see the need to leave my day job to be an Entrepreneur? In reality this post is not about justifying my place in life, but the fact that what people consider as the traditional characteristics of an Entrepreneur is no longer relevant in today’s economy that has the Internet as a medium of information transfer.

Thinking carefully on this issue, I’ve realize that Entrepreneurship is really about a mindset more than anything else, and a successful entrepreneur is more about the definition of what success is. Honestly there is no difference between selling your company to Google for 100 Million and selling 100 pieces of your beautifully hand crafted mobile phone pouches.

Let us now consider my usual slightly deviant, “of the beaten path” view points on this matter.

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Edit: Re-formatted the layout of some text and images.

Yep. There is no point me blogging about doing good industrial design or design theory if at the end of the day I don’t walk the talk and produce something to show, right? Well after starting, stopping, re-starting, hacking and spin drying my ideas, I have finally succeeded in creating sample prototypes of my Un-p3 Mp3 player! Can you say that five times in your head?

Please do check it out after the jump and please leave me all your hard hitting ego killing feedback? No hang on, my ego is fragile so please be gentle? Heh-heh.

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Just kidding! I’m always a big fan of discussing the different methods you can use to monetize your webpage. However there is no use talking about Google Adsense or Affiliate programs if you can’t see the big picture of how things actually work.

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Or the article formally known as Industrial Design 104: Materials and Manufacturing

I did mention before last year and the beginning of this, I had given up on creating my own unique Mp3 (iPod Beater?) player because I could not create a design that was uniquely different than the tons of Mp3 player products in the market. However the idea of this product still floated in the back of my mind. Fortunately, with my recent exposure towards re-newable organic materials and its manufacturing processes, I have been inspired enough to restart this project!

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Jeannie Lit, a stay-at-home mom turned inventor, refused to give up after a failed business, and went on to develop this wonderful writing protector for left handers! If you are like me, suffered through pencil smudges with a lot of frustration, you might like to try this product out!

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I wrote a while back that I yet again took the steps in becoming an entrepreneur after failing twice before. What I was actually talking about was my setting up of a not for profit website that focused on incubating, promoting and networking the best Singaporean and Asian multi-disciplinary industrial design talents.

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What is it with funding that attracts entrepreneurs to it, like bees to honey? I’m not sure, but I know I went a little nutty when the “funding” ticket was waved in front of my face.
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Intrapreneurship or Internal Entrepreneurship is fast becoming a big buzz word as companies start to embrace design, innovation and creativity as a strategic competitive advantage. Using the viewpoint that “innovation begins with everybody” as a credo to beat the competition, companies like IBM, 3M and P&G all have their fair share of Internal Entrepreneurs or Mavericks creating value for their companies.

What about Intrapreneurship in Asia? Where Asian companies are notoriously very regimental and hierarchical and where decisions are often made by one person? I like to share my strategies and the path I took as a somewhat successful Intrapreneurer in a very Asian company.
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