Design Thinking

Design Technology major project

Here is a post showing the journey of me solving a design problem with interaction with a client.

Design goal

I planed to design and make a desk lamp that is adjustable in both directions of light and intensity of light. With built-in USB3 charging slots to help charge electronic devices and organise cables. the lamp will have an adjustable spotlight and adjustable brightness. It will be designed in a way that maximises the light produced, It will be a free-standing light to go on a desk but it can be moved and put on any table. As it is lightweight and relatively small. There will be coloured LED lights under the base to help illuminate the USB slots.

 

What was the problem?

When doing work at a desk it can be very dark and the light isn’t great for doing work making it hard to see the work clearly. Also, there could be no form of light near the desk to light up the desk or to illuminate or to give direct light to work or a specific area on the desk. Also, there aren’t any spare plugs around the desk to charge a phone so that’s why I chose to add USB slots. There could also be a cable management problem under or around the desk.

 

Empathy and Research 

Meeting with clients to discuss the problem and a suitable solution and gaining a deeper understanding of the problem helps a lot when in the design process. It is very important to have an empathetic study when designing a product as well as a good relationship with the client. Research is also important when designing a product, throughout the process I conducted primary research through interviews and interaction with my client and secondary research through websites and online research. Through research aspects such as aesthetics and colour schemes.

 

Success criteria 

To measure the success of the product we would simply see whether it met all of the intended needs specified by the client. The needs specified were it must be small/ medium-sized as the was limited available space on the desk, It must have an adjustable spotlight and it also must have USB charging slots.

 

How was it solved? 

I planed to design and make a desk lamp that is adjustable in both directions of light and intensity of light. With built-in USB3 charging slots to help charge electronic devices and organise cables.  the lamp will have an adjustable spotlight and adjustable brightness. It will be designed in a way that maximises the light produced, It will be a free-standing light to go on a desk but it can be moved and put on any table. As it is lightweight and relatively small. There will be coloured LED lights under the base to help illuminate the USB slots. This was concluded after discussions with my client and after an iterative process, it helped me come up with a solution intended for my client.

 

Creativity

Creativity is part of the Design Process. … Studies have shown that creative individuals are more spontaneous, expressive, and less controlled or inhibited. They also tend to trust their own judgement and ideas and they are not afraid of trying something new. During the design process, we used creativity when planning out our products and sketching prototypes. We had to come up with many different ideas that still fit the design criteria as well as making them different and unique. Below are shown a few of the ideas that I sketched.

( This photo shows that measurements and finishing were taken into consideration when displaying the ideas) 

 

Innovation

Innovation by design is the utilization of a designer’s methods and sensibility to address the needs and design specifications of the consumer. Along with this design-driven approach, strong business strategy and technological feasibility are used to create both market opportunity and customer value to the product. The next steps were to begin the refining stage to ensure the product is the best it can be, we used visual techniques such as prototyping and CAD drawing in order to develop the idea and refine it further as well as to help us get a better idea of what the final project will look like.

Prototyping is used to visualise the initial product and allows us to make decisions on the further development of the product.

CAD Drawings allows us to visualise and edit the developments made towards the product.

 

Planning for production

This stage of the Design Thinking Process is where we need to communicate the parts, assembly and technical details using the correct type of drawing of the final proposal. The type of drawings selected here is crucial for the third party in all design and engineering fields to be able to interpret the details in order to produce your product. It is important to use the correct one for the correct job and we used CAD (Fusion 360) to communicate three major aspects of the design being, orthographic drawing to show dimensions or the product, drawings of the individual parts and exploded view drawing to show the assembly of the product.

The two images above show an orthographic drawing and an exploded view.

 

Realisation

The next stage in the design processes was to present how each individual part of the lamp was made this was called the production process. The production process is important as it shows the steps made to make each part of the lamp as well as the tools used and the safety equipment (PPE) used. In addition, Photographic evidence showing the order of sequence of all the stages of production of the final product and high light justifications made throughout. The tables below show the production process for the lamp.

 

Testing and Evaluation

The process of testing and evaluation was to ensure that the product fitted the design goal and also to ensure that the customer was happy with the product in its design and function. We tested the product in its intended environment which is very important as it can give us an idea of how it looks in the intended environment and allows the customer to make any changes if necessary to the appearance of the product, as well as collaborating with the customer and gaining as much feedback on the product as possible through verbal conversations and also some emails if we were unable to arrange a meeting, communication is a very important part of the process as it gives the producer live feedback on the product allowing them to make it the best it can be.

Photo showing the product being tested in the intended environment. Once testing we used evaluation methods displayed below to evaluate the product against 4 design goals.

After the testing and evaluation of the product, there were some slight modifications made in order to fine-tune the product and improve the overall functionality. Below shows the modifications that were made or could have been made after conversation and review of the product with the client.

Overall the whole design process was a success. I think it really helps me further developed and improve my project management skills as well as my self-management skills when making sure I kept on track with my project timelines and managing time between designing and making the product as well as managing the course and paperwork.

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