Winter Market is a semester-long project dedicated to the creation of 10 home goods centered on themes of sustainability. The second portion of this course is the concept development phase. We are asked to develop two concepts based on the research we received from another team. Beibei and I received research from Mark and Elise, who conducted their ethnographic style research in Woodshops. Below are the three insights they came up with...
Below details our concepts we came up with based on these insights...
Above: Our first concept is the Need a Hand? Pillow Cover
Above: User scenarios, multiple people can use the pillow at once, or it can be used individually
Above: The user is intended to add stuffing to the pillow case by using their old/unused bedding, clothing, fabric scraps, etc.
This addresses the first research insight about fostering collaboration: we provide a pillow cover, and the user is a part of fulfilling the products intended use by contributing their own materials.
Above: This also addresses waste management strategies proposed in The Re-Use Atlas by Brown. Our pillow cover asks users to re-use their materials, and on our end, this minimizes the amount of material that goes into our product.
Above: A rough prototype; on each end there is a stuffed hand. The arm portion connecting the two hands is the pillow cover. There’s an opening on the side where it can be stuffed.
Above: The pattern we used to make the prototype.
Above: A rough outline of what the final process for this concept might entail.
Above: Materials we considered using
Above: The X-axis is price point, which in this case ranges from $10 to $130. The Y-axis refers to value. Intrinsic/hadal refers to deeper assessments of value, and instrumental/epipelagic refers to shallow assessments of value. A variety of body pillows, decorative pillows, and bean bags have been plotted on the chart.
Above: The gap we identified for our concept is within the $20 to $60 range, within deeper assessments of value. This is because users would be using their own belongings they are already attached to in order to fill the pillow cover.
Above: A rough estimate of budget/labor
Above: In order to engage customers in the buying experience, we’d like to offer the opportunity to personalize our arm pillows with ‘jewelry’ made out of scrap fabric and stuffing
This aspect of personalization also addresses the third research insight regarding self expression.
Above: Our second concept is the Trade Post
Above: User scenarios; This concept references the term 'urban mining' from chapter 6 of Meaningful Stuff by Chapman. Urban mines refers to how every city is abundant in valuable items, but because of the rise of possessive individualist culture, many of these valuable resources lie dormant in people’s homes. One way we can grant new lives to dormant or ‘waste’ materials is by entering them into the flow of a circular economy. Our trade post aims to reduce boundaries and combat possessive individualism by giving communities an opportunity to start sharing.
The trade post is intended to be placed on a homeowners fence, this is so passing community members can engage in sharing. This aspect of sharing in order to cross boundaries also relates to Mark and Elise's experiences during their research process in various woodshops. They found that the exclusivity of woodshops was a barrier to their research and to collaboration.
Above: A rough prototype and example of how someone would take an item from the trade post.
Above: A more detailed diagram on the trading process
Above: A rough plan of what materials, tools, and parts we would need to make a trade post.
Above: The market analysis above includes objects that can be used to foster activities similar to trading such as mailboxes, geocaches, garage sales, lending libraries, and vending machines.
Above: The gap we identified is within the $0 to $200 dollar range, sitting in the middle of deeper and shallow assessments of value. Our reasoning for this is that our trade post is meant to deepen people’s interactions with their community, but at the same time they are trading objects they have shallow attachments to
Above: A rough estimate of budget/labor
Above: After our concept presentation, a panel of judges voted on which concept they would like to see us move forward with.
Above: The winner was our Need a Hand? Pillow Cover concept
Click HERE to see how we continued to develop this concept into a home good to be sold at the annual Winter Market!