Using research done by classmates Sharon Longdong and Harrison Dodd, I, along with my two teammates John Paul Kuepper and Peter Maczuzak, was to design a home good and craft at least ten of them to sell at the annual end-of-semester Winter Market, where our goal would be to at least break even with our initial budget of one hundred dollars.
This research presentation details how they explored the idea of "people in restaurants" and pulled three actionable insights from this for us to design around, with an overall takeaway of "unconventional convenience" as defined in the slideshow above.
Insight 1: How can design in home goods highlight or use desire paths?
Insight 2: How can design inspire people to manipulate materials in their own home?
Insight 3: How can design in home goods allow items that are out of place to inspire use or action?
After receiving this research, my team brainstormed with the class to come up with small sticky note ideas that related to our insights and used these to come up with ideas for home goods. We then narrowed these concepts down to two ideas, developing these further and presenting them to a panel of judges, who decided the concept with which we were to move forward. The judges voted and showed support for the conversation mat, which we developed further using their advice. They expressed appreciation for the surface of the prototype (above) and how fun it was to play with, suggesting that it didn't need the extra feature of being able to write on it. Ditching this part of the concept, we focused on the moldable and sculptural aspect of the object. We eventually came up with a functionality for the mat: a trivet. With these decisions, the Tra(dish)ions Trivet was born!
Above is the design for the paper bands that we wrapped around the rolled up trivets to package them for Winter Market.
The making process was simple but time consuming, as we laser cut thousands of wooden triangles and glued them to fabric using a laser cut jig to get the spacing perfect. Then we trimmed the fabric and added Liquid Stitch to the edges to keep them from fraying. Below is a short video showing part of the making process.
This is what our table looked like at Winter Market! We had extra triangles and fabric scraps, so we also made some coasters to sell. The Tradishions Trivet was priced at $30 and the sets of four coasters were priced at $10.