Team Member: Ellann Cohen

Team HERDD

Project Overview

Electronics Wear

Individual Pages

'Giant Electronics' Concept Refinement

Team HERDD's goal with the concept refinement task was to refine our 'Giant Electronics' theme down to a few very clear concepts. With an array of finalized concepts, we hoped to get feedback on which concepts were more popular and more specific feedback on which materials worked the best and which shapes were most appealing.

In the sketch model stage, I already made a looks-like/works-like model of one resistor pencil case as seen in the images immediately below.

Both of these models were made of canvas and ribbon. They were both of an approximately cylindrical shape and I thought it would be interesting to explore a refined concept that had a more resistor-like shape with bulges on either end. I also wanted to explore a concept that was not pure fabric, but something more rigid. Aside from cloth pencil cases, I own a plastic case like the one below.

I think this case works fairly well and it is a standard sold by the thousands each year when school is starting in August and September. I combined the idea of this case with the shape of a resistor making a pencil case that is approximately a cross-section of a resistor. Since I wanted the case to be more rigid to hold this shape, but really liked the look of the canvas and ribbon, I researched other types of cases and found that there are many sunglasses cases, portable hard drive cases, and other electronic cases that are mostly rigid yet laminated in fabric. Upon looking around my room, I discovered that owned one of these cases as can seen in the pictures below. It is essentially a slightly rigid plastic that has canvas on one side and felt on the other. It looks very nice and feels very nice as well.

Inspired by the two cases above, I preceded to solid-model the images below for a semi-rigid fabric coated pencil case in the shape of a resistor's cross-section. The two halves of the 'clam shell' would be made of thermoformed plastic that is coated on one side with fabric. The hinge between the two halves would be made of fabric and the entire case would be securely closed with a zipper. The current resistor band colors represent a standard 150 ohm resistor sticking with a little bit of the MIT 150 theme. (Please forgive what looks like very poor quality images. When I resized the images to fit on this page they became very grainy and I don't know why. A PDF of just the content on this page is linked here and the images look much better.)

While the above solid model is informative, in order to have a good idea of what this case would look like at the correct scale and possibly in use. I rendered an image of the pencil case filled with pens and pencils on the surface of a desk. This rendering really gives a good idea of what the final product would look like in use and at scale.

Now, along with my teams various refined concept directions, we can present the images to potential users/customers and get a feel for preferences in shape, material, colors, etc.