Industrial Design Student Work: Ümithan Üçok's Sneaker Packaging Doubles as Shoe Ramp by Rain Noe

This package design for sneakers was designed by Ümithan Üçok, an Industrial Design student at Turkey's Atilim University.

"RamPack shoe packaging was developed to prevent throwing away shoeboxes immediately after purchasing. It functions as a shoe carrier and also a storage box, thus extending the life of the shoe packaging."

"RamPack has paper rope handles for carrying so it can be transported without the need for an additional carrier bag. The handles are connected to the lid of the box and a recess in the lid prevents them from getting in the way during stacking. The green cover is removed in order to try on the shoes.

"After the RamPack is purchased, the box turns into a shoe ramp by tearing away the green coloured parts. This allows the shoes to be stored more efficiently at home."

I'm not sure how well this would do on a pallet...

...but I think it wouldn't be difficult for Üçok to re-work the concept within a more rectilinear, pallet-friendly form. Either way, I like the concept.

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Designing for Strength Training in 3 Dimensions by Stuart Constantine

New York based Proteus Motion is reinventing strength training through their new resistance training machine, which measures strength in 3 dimensions. The Proteus System creates an equal amount of resistance in all directions of motion, creating the sensation of moving through water. This low-impact exercise benefits users ranging from post-op rehab to peak performance athletes. The system also collects feedback and maps it across any movement pattern, providing tools for coaches and doctors to evaluate consistency of movement and track progress.

The company partnered with Anvil Studios to help define the user's physical experience and industrial design for the new system. With diverse experience in industries ranging from consumer electronics, high-end audio, medical and life sciences, housewares and cycling, Anvil Studios was well equipped to help bring the product to life.

The design objectives began with the need to support a "light touch" user experience, requiring the system to operate as a stand-alone, fully autonomous product requiring zero set-up. Compared against traditional Selectorizer strength equipment, the Proteus System users only need to touch the hand-grip on a single machine in order to run through 17 different exercises in 4.5 minutes for a full body strength assessment.

Additional design requirements included the need to create intuitive and non-intimidating outer housings that are cost-effective to manufacture and durable enough to withstand public use. The design team strove to create aesthetics that balance strength and muscularity with the feelings of ease and approachability. The designers sculpted forms with crisp surfacing details to convey internal muscular strength.

To reduce the visual mass, the robust outer enclosures needed to be minimal and efficient. Adopting a "shrink wrapped" philosophy, the compact, asymmetric shrouds cover only the mechanical components in order to expose as much of the core structure as possible. The torso and linear arm covers include translucent windows that showcase the moving mechanic elements within. This final design is a bold gesture that embodies the system's dynamic nature while welcoming professional athletes and novice users alike.

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Smart Design's Light Collaboration with Gantri is a Commendable Feat in 3D Printing by Allison Fonder

For many of us, our homes now operate as offices, and our products at home are doing twice the work they used to do. Within these new constraints, the New York-based Smart Design found their lightbulb moment—quite literally—for a four-piece transitional lighting collection they just released with 3D printed lighting manufacturer Gantri.

The Aim Collection Floor Light

Smart Design Industrial Design Director Dan Grossman said the idea for their new Aim Collection began with the challenges of fitting office space into a compact home environment. Grossman says for the New York-based team, "we're living in small spaces, and space is really precious. So now we're having to retrofit our homes—where I used to eat dinner is now my desk. So how do you outfit your desk? And how do you turn your dining room table into your new workspace?"

The Aim Table Light is a lantern that can be either directional or ambient, and easy to transport to different workspaces.

The genesis of this challenge resulted in four different lights for every potential work-from-home use case: there's a floor lamp, a directional task light, a lantern, as well as a clamp light (launching Spring 2022). The collection's ultimate strong suit is adaptability, and each light tackles these challenges in a simple yet ingenious way. The Aim Task Light, for example, can easily switch from directional task light to ambient light through an effortless shifting of the light's arm.

The Aim Task Light in task and ambient mode

"Our mood and lighting are just so intertwined. And task lighting is traditionally designed so specifically for creating, for building, for doing. We started to wonder, can we look at that as an opportunity? Can we reimagine task lighting, as a way to almost soften the blow and enable this new behavior which emerged from this unfortunate situation we were all in?" says Grossman.

The pieces appear quite simple and intuitive, so it may surprise you to discover these pieces were no easy manufacturing feat for Smart Design manufacturing partner Gantri. Before Smart Design approached them, Gantri had never produced a 3D-printed light before with moving parts.

Prototypes for the Aim Task Light

But the opportunity to work with Smart Design was also a chance for Gantri to collaborate with a design team equipped with engineers. Both teams worked together to achieve a number of engineering feats that made a complicated construction look simple and effortless. One challenge, for example, with the Aim Task Light, was the fact that the cord for the light had to wind through and be hidden away in the movable arm. To tackle this, Smart designed internal hardware with round pivots and tension screws to ensure the least amount of friction on the electronic components inside, and prevent the cord from falling. Grossman said Gantri had "never done this level of complexity with articulation of joints and pivots. Although it seems simple, with 3D printing it's actually a pretty big challenge. There was a ton of consideration and a lot of prototyping and testing to figure out the material constraints, tolerances, as well as weight and balance."

Prototypes for the Smart Design x Gantri Clamp Light

The Clamp Light was another example of a piece that required the production of several moving pieces. For Smart Design, after some consumer research, it felt like a particularly relevant addition to the collection due to our current work-from-home habits. "Aside from looking at our own homes, we approached our friends and family and sent out some surveys asking people to take a picture of their home desk setup. What we realized was work is happening in unexpected places. So can we make something a little bit more transient, a little bit more flexible? The Clamp Light is this idea where if you have a shelf, a table edge, anything, you can just clip this thing on and now you have a desk," Grossman told us. The Clamp Light was designed with a hinge that allows the user to easily adjust the light according to their needs, and a clamp that's easy to attach to any surface.

The Smart Design x Gantri Clamp Light will come in black, white, and sage green

Despite the excitement of these lights being produced using 3D printing, Grossman emphasizes the production process is simply a highly efficient means to an end. "The fact that these objects are 3D printed shouldn't change the fact of how people own them, right? Whether it's made of metal injection-molded plastic or 3D printed, we want them to have that same significance and value for the customer. We wanted someone to walk up to it and know exactly how to use it from the moment they see it." True to Smart Design's ongoing philosophy, the Aim Collection is first and foremost about function and highlighting the beauty of simplicity.

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Fantastic Industrial Design Student Work: Sophie Williamson's Beta Guard for Vineyard Protection by Rain Noe

In New Zealand's Awatere Valley, vineyard owners regularly lose thousands of dollars in crops to an insect pest known as the weta. Pesticides are not an option, not only for reasons of health, but because the weta pest is endangered and protected. Thus the prevailing solution is a mechanical one: The bottoms of vines are wrapped in plastic sheeting, which is too slippery for the bug to crawl on, and secured with staples.

The problem is that installation, spread over hundreds or thousands of vines, is time-consuming. And the plastic, being non-UV-resistant, doesn't last more than a season.

Sophie Williamson, a Product Design student at New Zealand's University of Canterbury, studied the problem with the Bragato Research Institute. Her resultant solution, done as her final year student project, is the Beta Guard:

The housing is made from recycled ABS plastic and treated for UV resistance. The foam insert, also treated for UV resistance, conforms to the vine for a tight fit, while also ensuring drainage. Most significantly, the molded-in snap-fit closure provides for easy, fast and tool-free installation--a major consideration when considering thousands of vines need protection.

Each scrap of plastic used in the incumbent method costs (NZD) 8 cents, while Williamson's Beta Guards cost up to 29 cents to produce. You might think that would rule Williamson's design out, but she's thinking big picture, and has done the math. Four Beta Guards can be installed in the time it takes a worker (who must carry a stapler and supply of staples) to install one of the plastic sheeting types, so the Beta Guard delivers a significant cost in labor savings, which Williamson says was a large part of the initial brief. Furthermore, the plastic sheets are single-use and become trash after a season, whereas the Beta Guards have an expected lifespan of ten years minimum.

"With weta capable of causing anywhere from 10-100% bud damage and crop loss, the cost of these guards is justified. During research it was estimated that even 30% crop loss would incur potential losses of approximately $8000."

"The overall material and manufacturing cost is $0.29 NZD per unit, or as little as $0.26 depending on material sources. This includes material and manufacturing costs of $825 - $900 per hectare (2500 vines). When combined with the expected lifespan of a minimum 10 years, this is a cost of $82.5 - $90 per ha, per year. The existing solution costs approximately $155 NZD per ha, per year."

"For the minimum expected life-span, this is an estimated saving of up to $72.5 NZD per ha. For the approximate overall area, this is a total projected saving of $181,250 NZD annually."

Williamson's Beta Guard won a Best Design Award from the Designers Institute of New Zealand. Congratulations Williamson!

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5 Outstanding Projects from SVA's MFA in Products of Design Program by Core Jr

For a program that bills itself as "an MFA that teaches you everything from industrial design to interaction design, from service design to social innovation design, and from business design to design and climate" the projects coming out of the (now 10-year old) MFA in Products of Design department at SVA in NYC bear out the promise. We picked 5 outstanding projects from the program to feature—spanning systems-based platforms to products of sheer joy. Check them out below!

Kuddle: The Phone Charger That Requires 2 Phones

"If only one partner puts their phone down, the device won't charge. Like a metaphor of a relationship, the phones will only charge if the two are close together on the dock."

Kuddle is a wireless phone charger that encourages couples to spend more meaningful time communicating face-to-face. Designed by graduate Crystal Ching Yi Lo, the ingenious dock only charges when two phones are placed side-by-side. In her research, she found that "just having a phone out and present during a conversation (on the table between a couple, for instance) interferes with the sense of connection and the feelings of closeness experienced." Kuddle addresses this with charm and humor.

FireLink: Fighting Fire with Data

For his thesis project, Ted Scoufis created Firelink—an information management ecosystem for firefighters "that focuses on the 4:30 minutes between receiving the call from dispatch and arrival on the scene." The system provides firefighters with real-time insight into the conditions of the building they are responding to, along with data input from the FDY firefighters. This data is collected and then disseminated via two main modes: the command center tablet app, and a helmet-mounted augmented reality heads-up display."

MoMA Partnership: Roller Coasters

Every year, the MFA Products of Design students enjoy an exclusive partnership with the Museum of Modern Art's Wholesale Division—creating products for possible manufacturing and inclusion in their wholesale line and catalog. One of the recent products to emerge from the partnership are alumnus Hui Zheng's "Roller Coasters"—playful silicone coasters that "transform your drink's condensation droplets into balls in a maze." Available for purchase on the MoMA Store's site here.

Frie Menstrual Blood Plant Fertilizer

Designed by Class of 2020 Pantea Parsa, Frei is a speculative object in the form of a vessel for watering and fertilizing plants, using a mixture of water and menstrual blood. "Blood is generally used as a plant fertilizer since it contains three essential plant nutrients: nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium." Pantea offers. "However, Frei nourishes plants and also aims to nurture a woman's relationship with her intimate partner. Blood is only a mediator. Women remind their partners about the shared responsibility of procreation by gifting them Frei and giving them their menstrual blood every month.

Hiatus for iOS: Transforms "Productivity Apps" into more playful ones

Designed by Karan Mahendra Bansal, Hiatus is an iOS feature that reinforces a work/life balance by "subverting productivity and injecting play into your work-oriented phones during non-work hours." The app is clever and almost sneaky: Once enabled, Hiatus "replaces the quantitative interfaces with ones geared toward qualitative fun, hiding 'productivity apps' within the App Library and replacing them with fun counterparts." In the demo below, you can see that Zoom is replaced with HouseParty, Mail is replaced with Yo, the Stocks is replaced with Breathe, and Trello is replaced with solitaire.

You can learn more about SVA's MFA in Products of Design on their website, as well as check out the course line-up, faculty, and recent news and projects.

Attend SVA's Products of Design upcoming Open House events to learn more about the MFA curriculum and meet current faculty and students. Open House takes places November 11th and December 9th, register now.

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Shouldn't Smart Devices Feature Overt Physical Indications That They're Not Listening to Us? by Rain Noe

With a background in industrial design, multidisciplinary designer Joris Wegner points out that we have no physical indication of whether our devices are listening to us or not. At rest, are our smart devices really "just patiently waiting for their wake word or are our private conversations too tempting for advertisement and surveillance?"

With his Smarter Speakers concepts, Wegner proposes that the act of cutting off the mic be integrated with the physical form of the objects:

I like the concepts. The hard part would be getting consumers to trust that the manufacturers are adhering to the physical rules embodied by the object.

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