Dokumentation ZHdK IAD 1. Semester Se mester HS 09
Industrial Design Basics Riccardo Lardi Gerhard Buurman Karmen Franinovic
SKETCHING SENSORIAL EXPERIENCE Description: The goal o this exercise is to study the object as the experience it enables through tactile exploration. Students work in couples: one o them chooses an object to be explored by the colleague. The person exploring the object must not see the object ie. must keep the eyes closed. Without saying the name o the object, the person describes the haptic and tactile sensations caused through manipulation o the arteact. The person who listens tries to sketch the qualities that are being described such as sot, curved, warm, loud etc. Ater ten or fteen minutes, the two participants switch roles.
Ater again and again having ound mysel in trying to fnd out what object my mate is describing, I fnally got to not only sketch the objects orm and physical parameters, but also how the it ‚eels‘ and what kind o aordances it oers to dierent people. To me, that step to fnd out how to bring those thinkings to paper was a difcult, but surely quite an interesting experience.
The main difculty I was conronted with was the transition rom descriptions o aordances to drawings or sketches on paper. How to sketch ie. ‚the object is squeezy but still made o a hard material‘? Such problems made it hard at frst, later on I‘d just sketch more reely and just put on paper what frst came into my mind. That way, a broader range o inormation could be gathered quickly.
The ruler had dierent characteristics which were equally hard to describe and to sketch by listening to the description.
Other objects had more distinguishable attributes, which made it easier to describe and sketch.
SKETCHING THE OBJECT Description: Using ront and side views, sections, axonometric projection and/or prospective, the students technically represent an object.
The sketching o chosen objects was an exciting challenge, as I never really ound mysel to be an able drawer. I rapidly realized, that sketching objects which are in ront o me and so are exposed reely to me, can be sketched in a technical way, so I‘m not bound to be really talented in drawing, I‘d just sketch ‚what I see‘ and that‘s the trick. Ater a ew attempts my sketches became more and more distinctive and pronounced.
This candy case can be opened by sliding the upper deck. While simple in construction, the roundings at the corners still became not all that easy to reproduce. Ater having just quickly sketched the chassis in a very rudimentary way, details like those roundings were applied one ater another.
The sliding mechanics could be represented easily, showing it rom dierent perspectives.
Sometimes perspectitive errors could happen, leaving no other choice than starting a new sketch.
SKETCHING USE Description: Students sketch the use o the object in a unctional way. The human body or its parts (hand or oot) have to be represented.
I liked it a lot to experiment with dierent ways o drawing body parts, namely my hand holding the object. Again, ater eeling deep despair caused by underestimation o my drawing skills, I was relieved when I ound out that the outcome o my eorts were rather okay compared to what I‘d been expecting beore. The presence o the human body suddenly brought lie and also movement to the sketches. The objects were not anymore just ‚still lie‘ - like drawings or technical treatments o things, they actually became somehow natural.
The anatomy o a hand ie. was easy to reproduce as long as I had an example in ront o me, say, me holding that object with the let hand while drawing with the other hand. Otherwise I had problems fnding the right proportions, etc. Sometimes fnding the starting point o the drawing could become difcult. Like in this sketch, it could lead to space problems and missplacement.
Drawing the object in relation to dierent usage scenarios could end up in quite unny ways.
The proportions o the ob ject was not always easy to keep the same during the entire sketching process.
SKETCHING STORIES Description: Students invent stories o the use or misuse o the object. The temporal aspect o the story and people in it are the core o the exercise - How does one represent cause-eect loops? How do you show emotional states or perceptual experience? How can we represent social dynamics and interaction?
For me, this was the hardest excercise. I had a hard time fndig out how I could sketch people. Better said, it was difcult fnding the most appropriate style or sketching people to show up an experience or an interaction. I then settled on a rather simplistic style. This way, the sketch may seemed ‚too sketchy‘, but it could deliver dynamics and movement better than any other approach I tried.
I tried to show emotions, to give individual appearances to dierent characters, to show reactions and interaction by using mimics and gestures. I realized how much the shape and size o eyes could aect the shown emotion. The sketching style I used is a ast one, so it should go well in situations when some scenario etc. has to be explained rapidly but surely has its downsides, too.
In some frst attemts I didn‘t introduce people, so it was way easier to draw processes or me.
Finding out how to draw aces showing emotions took quite a while.
DESIGN AFFORDANCES Description: Build 5 objects out o oam and always start rom the cube [10x10x10cm] Express the ollowing aordances through their orm: Spin me / Squeeze me / Shake me / Stretch me / Break me
With this excercise we were introduced to one o the ZHdK‘s ‚Werkstatt‘. We elt big exciteme nt to start doing something we could actually build up with our bare hands, as we‘ve been since then only working in ront o our notebooks, except the sketching excercises. Creating objects which were physical tangible was a nice motivation and made us drastically more aware o what industrial design can be all about.
The ‚shake‘ aordance led me directly to the idea o a box with unknown content, which can be shaken to guess what‘s probably inside. I tried to round the edges as smooth and equal as possible, while trying to retain a square-edged orm. Also, the box should give no hint resp. should not suggest any content - so I tried to keep the bonding surace as clean as possible.
I made a propeller to achieve the ‚spin‘ aordance. It could indeed spin, when blown on it.
Very obvious to me was also the ‚break‘ aordance, which I realised by building some very unstable and thin skeleton.
CUT AND PASTE Description: This exercise is an exploration o patterns, scale and repetition. It‘s composed o three sub-exercises:
1. From a at paper create a orm by cutting, olding, waving and/or gluing it. 2. Using a repetition o the same element create a pattern 3. Scale the same elements and connect them In this excercise at, empty, boring white paper turned into dierent interesting orms. By repeating the main element and then scaling it and creating new connections, new and unoreseen models emerged. I ound it very impressive how the inuence o light and dierent viewing angles can change the impression you get rom the object.
How I already said, the light, viewing angle and also the scene could immensely inuence the viewing experience o the model. The dropped shadows would take a big part o the impression one gets when looking at it.
When taking close pictures o the object, depth o feld could create quite a nice ‚smoothing-out‘ eect.
Also, making contrast between highlighted and shadowed parts o the model made big impact on the overall impression.
LIGHT FORMS Description: Exploring the relationship between and interaction with orm and light. How can you change, shape and aect the light embedded in an object?
This was the most interesting excercise to me. I ound mysel captured entirely by the challenge to invent and create a orm which emits light and oers an aordance to interact with it in an interesting way. The hardest part was the fnding o an idea to work on. It took me about a whole day to fnally come to a satisying concept. From then on everything went like clockwork. I used some industrial plastic tubes, cut them, sanded them (especially the transparent part, so the light gets diused by it), lasered the top and bottom covers, glued them and fnally soldered the electronics. It‘s about a portable device which emits light either on a spot, like a spotlight, or disperses the light into the ambience. Pull out the upper tube to get more ambience light, push it in to get more spot-on light.
The more the lighting tube gets pulled out o the containing tube, the more light spreads into the ambience. The light switches on, as soon as it gets pulled out, and switches o when pushed back inside. Unortunately the containing tube isn‘t dense enough and so the light shines a bit through it.
The top should have a lock mechanism to prevent it rom being pulled out. At the bottom, one can change the battery.
The overall impression is o an elegant stick which also eels very agreeable because o the sanded surace.
