Ideas Development 3

 In the previous 2 blog posts, I developed my ideas and went through a rollercoaster of emotions. I first rejected a design and then came up with a brand new feature which is more useful and suitable. 

As the blog posts might have been slightly confusing, I decided to recap on what I will be designing by drawing only the final designs digitally. 

I decided to create these digitally as I wanted them to be neat and accurate. In my initial ideas, I created rough sketches which were misleading and resulted to me miscalculating the functions of some designs. I really liked the digital designs as they helped me visualise how everything will exist in real life. 

Each number corresponds to one feature/ design of my project and they all add up to 6 which is what the brief needs.

The first design will be a rectangular cupboard. This cupboard will be rectangular as it will be easier to unfold the table if it shapes a square once unfolded. This cupboard will be used for storing purposes. I decided to add 2 doors that will be opening as including only one door made the design look like a fridge. It also adds to the pattern of cubism and will look good with the De Stijl pattern. The shape was inspired by Frank Lloyd's design 'Stacking cabinets'. 

The second function is inspired by Philippe Starck's 'Gelly' (1999) designs as he included cubic shapes for cabinets. That sparked this idea which will be very convenient to use. Each individual cube will be able to be removed at any time and placed in various parts of the apartment or even hung up on the wall. They can be used for storage outside the cabinet, for a stool or even to display and decorate items. This allows the user to utilise this design in any way they want which makes it more personal. They are able to increase the storage and use small compact compartments to place around the apartment. I was also inspired by amazons 'ideal storage organizer cube closet' which was research a while back.

The third function includes the table. At the top of the cupboard, a folded plank with folded legs will be placed. The user will be able to lift that up and pull it downwards to create a table for everyday use. I decided that I will include the legs in that way so they can act as borders to prevent items from falling off the edge of the design. This feature was inspired by the De Stijl shapes and by Gerrit-Thomas Rietveld's design 'Red blue chair' (1918).

The fourth function includes the stairs on the chair. I decided to add stairs to the chair as I noticed that many apartments do not have stairs which can be beneficial. This was the new added function of the project.

The fifth function is the chair which is inspired by Gerrit-Thomas Rietveld's 'Zig Zag' chair and Frank Lloyd Wright's 'Plywood chairs'. Both of these chairs do not have arms which I considered strange at first. After carrying out research and testing, I realised that no armed chairs allow free movement of the body and being more relaxed without boundaries on the sides.

I will be adding padding to make sure that I maximise comfort. I will be looking into what type of padding later in my materials post. 

On the chair, I will add a layer of cushion which will be able to unfold once the stool is there.

The last function is the stool. I decided to make the chair hollow and store underneath it one stool that will be easy to take in and out of the designs. As it will be placed underneath the chair, the height of the chair and the stool will differ slightly. The purpose of the unfolding pattern is to cover up that difference and make them the same height.

The bottom of this stool will be open as users will have the opportunity to use this as a storage too if they do not want to have a stool in their apartment. 

I am very happy with the items I created. I cannot wait to see how these will look once they have pattern, colour and are made on software. Research was crucial in this project as it really helped me develop some features in my own unique way. I am really satisfied by the end result. 

Now that I have my final designs complete, I will proceed on researching materials, components, how the colour combinations will be added. I will be testing and analysis the measurements of these designs and make sure they are all proportional. I will also look into the angle of the chair and how tilted the stairs will be in order to make it more technical. I need to ensure that the angle of the chair is right in order to avoid any back problems or bad posture.

Hopefully by the beginning of next week I will start designing these items on SketchUp. 

Feedback:

I decided to ask 5 people to give me feedback on my designs. All these people are university students as I want to ensure that my products fit the market. 

Person #1: To be completely honest, I was not expecting the designs to turn out this good. I am glad you chose to proceed with this stair design as I feel like the other one would be unstable. I would purchase this bundle in a heartbeat as it includes all necessities in an apartment. At first I had my doubts with this idea, but you proved me wrong. Great work!

Person #2: Even though I like the outcomes, I would love to see them with colour and the pattern. I think that colour will completely transform your design and make it even better. The research was definitely useful as it allowed you to take elements from various designs and combine it into one.

Person #3: What stands out to me the most is the chair. That is a really clever way of implementing a transformative design in a project. I like how you considered the difference in height and added one cushion to reduce it. Additionally, I like how you got inspiration from Frank Lloyd Wright for the chair and made something unique. I am really fascinated by the way you combined so much research in order to achieve a unique result. 

Person #4: I think that the cubism in all the designs makes them look and work really nicely together. I feel like the shapes used will definitely attract more people to buy them. I was really impressed by the function of the table. I think that it was a great addition and I like how you used the legs of the table as boarders in the design in order to prevent items from falling off the cupboard. That is an ongoing issue for me so I'm glad you took this into consideration.

Person #5: I believe that many people will be attracted to this design. I want to see the final product with the colours on it before I fully form my opinion, however, I think you did a great job as these look really nice. I like how you considered carefully the technical details and ensured that this will be fully functional.

I am very happy by the amount of positive comments received. This is really encouraging to proceed to the next step of the design.