Design Centric

At centroid, various activities in giving exposure to design has been started.

Some of the activities done are, every week a few people take a particular design topic and explore about them and present. Along with this activity the professional work done in that week is also shared so every one understands what goes in a design based exercise.

Every member of the team work on very specific activities like concept design, engineering design, prototyping or analysis. But every individual needs to understand the full process of design and undergo the process personally to appreciate the design, and allow him to have a clear understanding.

To aid this understanding – a series of design projects are being taken.

The Methodology adopted to design is briefed as follows after identifying the product to be designed.

1. Brief Research

Understanding about the product, finding information related to similar products in market, cost, method of working, usage instructions, material and process of manufacturing. Visual feel and trends in that particular category is researched and information is documented as an acrobat format file.
The second stage in brief research is personllay using the product – during use Observe , document and analyse. Document the observations through photographs and videos and capture them as flash or powerpoint files.

2. Define problem statement

Define the problem statement in a framework. The problem statement can be in the form of improving the aesthetic appeal, improving the ergonomics, improving the function, design a futuristic product – etc. The more clearly the problem statement is defined the focussed the solutions will be.

3. Product Configuration

Product configuration is the arrangement of the different elements of the product based on a certain pattern, arrangement in space. The pattern may follow any story line based on funtion, aesthetics, human factors etc.,

Study the existing products and document the product end to end, so we know where we are starting from and this also opens up lots of areas for exploring and getting intimate with the product and involved with the design.

The documentation process consists of
a. Drawing the layout of the existing product – An orthographic view of the product is documented with the required dimensions, bill of materials, – the layout of both the external and the internal configuration is documented

b. Listing Interfaces – list all interfaces like visual , tactile etc., and give specifiations for the interface elements. like the weight of the product should be x gms, because it has to be easy to carry. The size of the letters on the product should be visible from a distance of 1 feet when being held on the hand.
- List all internal and external interfaces, the internal interfaces consists of the internal packaging items that define the skin of the product.

4. Concept Design – Idea Generation

Brainstroming and generating various themes for development of the idea is the first stage in concept design. Use softwares for mindmapping. Convert these verbal ideas to quick visual sketches, showing different concepts – atleast come up with 20 concepts to begin with, let your creativity flow at this stage. The concepts can be as a whole product or for elements of the product. But each idea should have a story why it has been designed in a certain way.

Make 3 final concepts as sketches and draw the full product in different views, and possible 3D views if possible, so as many details that could be shown to highlight the design elements in the product.

Make block models, concept foam models the validate the interface design idea as a physical form.

5. CAD models

Generate 3 dimensional data of the internal and the external components. Generate photorealistic images and add text and graphics to the product using photoshop software. Make concept presentation sheets, to showcase the design – every individual needs to present 3 concepts for an individual product they are designing.

6. Preliminary Engineering

The preliminary engineering phase and cad model goes hand in hand, during this phase have an excel sheet with Bill of materials of the components, the weight, material, cost and process of manufacturing.

7. Detailed Engineering

Based on the material of the product, the engineering is done and details of fitment, fastening are added. A typical plastic product will have details like thickness, lip detailing, ribs and bosses – no or less sidecores in design, snap fitments etc., A sheet metal design product which is manufactured in CNC pressbrakes are to be done as sheetmetal development drawings with requreid notches at the corners and the other fitment details of welding indicated.

8. Engineering Drawings

Detailed engineering drawings are drawn on the respective softwares itself where 3D modeling is done. The engineering drawings will contain part drawings, assembly drawings and exploded view drawings showing clearly the design intent, and these drawings should be suitable for manufacturing the product.

9. Design report, documentation and presentation

The final stage is documenting the full contents to form a report, the 3D models are converted as animations as rotation in 360 degrees and exploded views creation. The final report will be submitted as a 2D animation in Flash format for documentation purpose.

Mind mapping is an excellant tool for exploring our thought process
- organising them in an orderly way
- and aids in presenting them for better understanding.

Over the years there were many mindmapping softwares like Mindmanager, Mindmap etc.,

Recently found an online tool for mindmap www.mindomo.com, where you could create mindmaps and link them to websites and blogs.

I have created a simple mindmap for Brainstorming.

Enjoy MINDMAPPING.

Every individual when starting a design exercise, questions himself if he is capable of doing a creative act.

Find the 10 myths to be removed from your head when you are asked to be creative

1. I’am not Creative
2. That is a stupid idea
3. Creative people always have great ideas
4. Constrive criticism will help my colleague improve the idea
5. Need new marketing ideas – call marketing people ( assuming and considering people in that field as experts)
6. Innovation strategy – we need a review process for screening ideas and determining which one to implement.
7. That’s a good idea – lets run with it.
8. Drug’s help creativity
9. If it works well, dont tamper with it
10. I dont require a note book, I remember ideas

Centroid participated in the work station design competition conducted by IKEN – Australia www.iken.com.au

IKEN – Work Station of the Future – Design Entry

Description of the Design Category: Sustainable
The future office environments are moving towards flexible work spaces, which are to be configured based on individual taste. The Nest workstation revolve around this theme and is designed as a modular system of units, which could be configured based on the layout, and the individual needs and functions.

Every unit in the NEST workstation serves multiple functionalities with respect to design.
Single Strut – Serves as a unit to hold the table, as a book rack, magazine shelf and configured for two and three seat and also be used for partitions
Center Strut – Used for three configuration unit, used as a display rack, center table with extensions
Table – Designed for stacking, and ease of packing and mobility.
Rack Shelves – The rack shelves can be inserted both on the sides and on the front of the struts, they serve as a rack for display, for keeping books and when inserted on vertical face will act as a direction indicator with letters on them.
Center table – Center table used for three seat configuration, gets locked to the tables with pegs in them, design for stacking design, and will also act as a center table along with the single and center strut.

The groove detailing enables, easy assembly and disassembly of the components. Since the whole units are divided in to simpler units, they are easy for carrying, dismantling and transporting.

The work place is easy to configure based on the individual taste, if he requires a transparent partition, then a perplex will be used, otherwise a opaque partition is used. The shelves can be configured based on the individual needs and if he requires a slant magazine shelf or a straight rack can be kept. On the bottom, the two struts can also be connected by a small bottom shelf.

The NEST is very airy, and provides itself sufficient breathing space between the panels, and is ease for cleaning.

The NEST – workstations are the perfect solutions for the future office environments, with every unit designed for long life and revolving around the theme recycle and reuse.

The Design Flaws inputs gathered as photgraphs can be discussed and categoried as

1. Aesthetics

• • Trends
  • Style
  • Relationships
  • ProportionsColour / texture
  • Positive and Negative space

2. Humanfactors

• • Ergonomics
  • Human Interface
  • Comfort zones
  • Fatigue factors

3. Configuration

• • Relationship between internal elements
  • Posistioning of them with respect to each other

4. Manufacturing

• • Design for manufacturability – shrikage marks
  • Design for assembly
  • Design for Serviceability
  • Design for installation / packaging and transport

5. Functional Flaws

• • Every product is designed to cater to some basic funtion – if it does not do it

1. Lierature Search
- Find out similar information available / associations which are for bad design
- Typical cases of design flaws gets reported in civil / consumer courts or grevences cell.
- to find the strength of the idea to do ground work and find reality on ground
- the literature should also allow us to define the scope of the project and the feasiblity of doing this on web.

2. Website registration
- Find out names and block names
- Design it like a portal
- This should be a scalable model

When registering the site, the idea of when there is a flaw there should also be flaw-less came in to picture.
So thought of a forum where the flawless designs need also to be captured.

www. design-flaws.com

and

www.design-flawless.com

3. Website Layout preparation
- Form an ideal layout where all information can be properly presented
- Create a data base for retrival of information

4. Photos/ Inputs – Populating the site
- need to identify a team which is sensitised to this issue
- Photos of typical problems to be taken and documented
- Form a system for documenting the photographs
- Highlight through these photos/ videos the possible problems.
- The problems should be clear and easy to understand
- Use sites like Utube and Flickr to update videos and photographs

5. Solutions to Problems
- As design sketches and 3D models uploaded
- These can be by the general public and by the team also.
- Have the solutions very interactive and attractive

6. Customer Interation Areas
- Hear the customer is the person who is coming to the site to upload the problems
- The login and password to be provided to identify him when he comes.
- Create a discussion board for him to find solutions for his problems