Design Sojourn | Strategic Industrial Design Blog

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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.