Roi Jeric Bautista
Mechanical Engineering-DIS
RPI 2015
PDI Studio 3
PDI Studio 3 is focused on the user experience. Through both individual and group projects, we learned how to incorporate various design principles and strategies in order to evoke an emotional response, establishing a positive user-product relationship and therefore a positive user experience.
Meta-Poster
The aptly named Meta-Poster project had the objective of designing a poster that expressed how to design an effective poster. As an introduction to designing for user experience, each poster design group was meant to dive head-first into learning how to effectively communicate specific information by initially engaging users and then maintaining and directing their attention. This was done by making deliberate and rational decisions on the poster's overall message, layout, text and images, color scheme, and other poster design elements.
The resulting product was titled "Dig Into Posters," and used a combination of three-dimensional layering, color scheme, and key words and their placement, among others, to communicate the central message of good poster design.
Partners: Sarah Bogdan, Emily Farella, Kuniko Hunter, Glenn Rothwell
Pen Pal
Pen Pal is a product design solution meant to alleviate clutter around the PDI studio left by unused writing utensils, and also to provide a writing utensil for those in need. The product addresses more than one problem at once, the most immediate being that there are many times within the PDI studio that someone will want to write something down, but have nothing on hand to write with. This naturally leads to another problem - a lack of readily available writing utensils. This does not necessarily mean that there are none in the room, however. It could very well be that there are supplies within the room, but they are scattered around the space, creating clutter. The person in need then has to explore the clutter just to find something to write with, which is a waste of time and effort.
The product was designed to cater to the needs of a specific group of users that utilize the PDI studio for any reason. Users may take on up to two roles, that of a giver that contributes writing utensils to the Pen Pal, or that of a taker that receives them from the Pen Pal. The givers of this group hav ea tendency towards organization and will go out of their way to help maintain tidiness within the studio. Takers require access to a writing utensil immediately. The over-arching emotional attribute of the user group is a sense of community that motivates users to be considerate of others that use the space, helping not only to maintain it, but also contributing to making it better.
The design itself is simplistic, yet it is able to cater to the needs of users as they deal with the organizational and resource distribution problems. The product specifications aim to resolve the issue in a cost-effective, yet emotionally pleasing way.
This project was completely done individually.
Designer's Block
Designer's Block is a product solution to the current experience of creating design mock-ups. It was found that current paradigms for creating mock-ups have the potential to hinder the overall design process, since existing methods can be messy and wasteful in both time and materials. Furthermore, the mock-up process is very important to pushing an idea forward during its infancy, yet it is often approached as something crude and primitive.
The solution, Designer's Block, aims to allow users to effectively communicate design ideas quickly and efficiently. It promotes the current objectives of the mock-up process while cutting down on the negative aspects associated with current paradigms. Through the use of pleasantly tactile and high quality materials, Designer's Block lifts the act of making mock-ups from an obligatory, yet not totally enjoyable experience to one that is satisfying and pleasant.
Partners: Rebecca Radparvar
Full product modeled in SolidWorks and rendered in Keyshot 4
Rendered close-up of dispensing tray.
Rendered close-up of donation slot.
Rendered view of front panel.
Recording notes and ideas typically requires writing.
A problem occurs when someone does not have anything to write with.
The final design includes an engraved or debossed title.
Closed prototype
Quick prototypes were made to determine what shapes would be used, how to use magnets, what types of magnets to use, etc.
Prototypes of building blocks were made out of laser-cut frosted acrylic and embedded with magnets.
Rendering of some of the shapes organized together.
Rendering of some of the shapes organized together.
PDI Studio 2
PDI Studio 2 focused on design process. After forming groups, we were challenged to make a design change or create a new product entirely to address a certain problem or problems. Throughout each project, we were encouraged to consider the different aspects of the design process, all the way from brainstorming to prototyping to presenting a final product.
Bio-Write
Bio-Write was the name of the product for our first project. The premise was to take an everyday product and add a design innovation to it over a period of three weeks. We took an every day disposable ball-point pen and tried to analyze its different features. We began by looking into the history of the product and tried to infer its social and cultural influences. We then interviewed our peers to get a feel for what features or problems stood out. Eventually we decided to address the ball-point pen's disposability. These pens are currently made out of petroleum-based plastics and chemicals with a small fraction of metal alloy for the nib. In their current state it is impractical to recycle the components once disposed of, which leads to waste and pollution throughout the pen's life. By replacing its components with biodegradable and eco-friendly materials like bioplastics and ink made out of a simple dye mixture, users will no longer be causing harm to the environment by disposing of their pens.
Partner: Molly Zuk
Aegis
The Aegis project was done in a group of six over a period of three months. This time, our group was meant to acknowledge a single social problem in the world and create a product that would address it. Our group started off by brainstorming. We each came up with as many social problems as we could and put them all together in a large list, saying what we each thought of the different choices and considering problems that were repeated. We went through several rounds of narrowing down the problem until we had a list of ten to pick from. From there, we had originally chosen disaster relief as our focus, but after an unfruitful brainstorm for concepts, we decided to switch to reducing the risk of concussions in contact sports, specifically football.
We did research on concussions, its mechanisms, and how, when, and where they occur. We also looked at current athletic practices and techniques, as well as the evolution of protective athletic equipment to how it exists today in the sport of football. We did our best to look into different articles and issues written about concussions in football, and came to the conclusion that we are currently in a fairly unique point in the sport's history. American football has only existed in its current form for a few decades, and we are now finally starting to see the consequences of many seasons' worth of concussions taking its toll on human bodies. For further reading, please look into the players Ray Easterling and Junior Seau, two players who committed suicide very recently due to a condition called CTE.
Once we had a handle of its social history as well as information on current technology, we began drawing out concepts for an innovative protective system, most of which revolved around redesigning football helmets. We made mock-ups of some of the ideas and tried to test their concepts until we finally settled on a concept using multiple layers of protection in the helmet to maximize time of impact as well as energy distribution.
After receiving many material and equipment donations from different companies, we were able to put together a single full-function prototype of our helmet and put it through impact testing. Unfortunately, we ran into scheduling and logistical roadblocks as we were planning out our experimental method and had to settle for performing a single session of experiments before giving our final presentation. Our helmet design was not able to outperform the current industry standard overall, but we were able to see improvement in dragging out impact time, which was very encouraging to our overall mission. We finished the project confident that if we had been given more time to experiment and revise our design, we could eventually surpass standard helmets in reducing the risk of concussions for football players.
Partners: James Cazzoli, Spencer Parker, Rebecca Radparvar, Ana Cardenas, and Brooke Ruggiero
Here is a logo for Bio-Write that I came up with.
The outer casing of ball-point pens are usually made out of petroleum-based plastic. It includes the button on the top used to click the tip in and out of the pen as well as the spring mechanism that allows the pen to stay outside with one click and retract inward with another. We judged all of the parts here, except for the metal spring, to be replaceable with more eco-friendly bioplastics, which can be made out of sugars or starch-based plants, like potatoes.
Here is the ink reservoir. In a typical ball-point pen, the ink reservoir is made of plastic and is attached to a metal ball-point nib. The ink on the inside is made out of an assortment of chemicals meant to optimize writing quality, drying time, and odor. We chose to replace the reservoir plastic with bioplastic and the ink with a food dye made form household materials.
The ink reservoir again in 3D.
Our final presentation included this poster which highlighted some of the features of the Bio-Write ball-point pen.
My own design for the Aegis logo.
This is an illustration meant to represent coup-countrecoup theory and how it affects the brain in the event of a hard enough impact to cause a concussion.
These types of fluids are actually usually a mixture of more than one ingredient and act as a liquid until they are subjected to some sort of acceleration, usually in the form of an impact, during which the liquid will become rigid. We considered this concept for use in our helmet, but decided that rigidity was not a quality that we needed in our design.
We personally contacted several companies hoping that they would be interested in what we were trying to accomplish with our project and to our surprise, many of them did not hesitate to donate their some of their products to us as long as we shared our findings afterwards. We were very grateful for the groups and companies that supported us.
During our research, we resorted to using a gel as the cushioning medium in between the inner bonnet and the hard, outer shell of the helmet. We stumbled upon Sorbothane, a synthetic rubber originally used for the insoles of shoes (and endorsed by Olympians!). Today, it currently serves several engineering applications, mainly in absorbing shock as a vibration dampener.
These helmets were donated to us from three different helmet companies. We took them apart to look into how they were designed and see where we could implement the concepts that we came up with. Eventually, we mixed and matched the helmet parts to build our full prototype.