Studio Blog | Stéphan Angoulvant

Design Process 2 for Product Design

In the first two terms, the Industrial Design Foundations (or IDF) program at Art Center pools people who will eventually become product designers, transportation designers and entertainment designers. The courses I’ve described so far were shared between these three majors and allowed us to gain an essential grasp on fundamental techniques such as sketching and model-building.

Though all of us have gotten quite close, we were excited to split off for the first time, each following a particular Design Process 2 class aimed at teaching us a process specific to our discipline. This was also exciting because it was our first chance to truly test the skills we had been learning.

The project for us product designers was defined early in the term: to design seating made from a single sheet of 4’ by 8’ material, which should be assembled without the use of glue, screws or other fasteners.

We started the project with a few weeks of research to help us understand different methods of joinery, materials as well as general research on chairs. From there we decided to each investigate three themes. One of my themes was insects. The full process (with bigger nicer images) can be viewed in the PDF version of my process book (20.6MB). In the interest of keeping this reasonably short, though, I will describe how my final concept evolved.

The process started with a huge collection of insects which I found all over the web for inspiration. I found that Wikipedia has a great number of interesting pictures.

From these images I tried to come up with a variety of furniture.

After some ideation on paper, some fifth-scale mock-ups were made. These included some ideas from my other themes which you can discover in the process book linked above.

Some of the more interesting concepts were developed and pursued.

I returned to mocking-up the best ideas, this time at half-scale. These were made from corrugated cardboard which I laminated.

From these mock-ups we found that the ant-inspired bench was an interesting concept to pursue. Initially, the idea was to make an outdoor furniture piece which could be used either as a bench or a picnic table. Going back to my collection of insects I picked out the ants and gave them a closer look.

The structure of the bench evolved to gain more volume and better structure.

In this second half-scale mock-up I found that cross-shaped legs were far more stable and also added a more natural element.

I went back to my sketchbook to see how the concept could be refined. We also began to think about how an additional item could help better use the leftover material.

My first full-scale mock-up was made using the same laminated cardboard technique. Though it isn’t apparent in the pictures, this was a HUGE model. It had to be reduced in size, which also helped to cut down on material usage. Antennae and mandibles were added, functioning as bookends and a cup holder. Finally, the rear legs were made longer so as to better balance the weight of the bench.

The first full-scale mock-up had a problematic rear section (the abdomen). As a cantilevered platform it just wasn’t sturdy enough. I added two more legs, thereby quenching the complaint that ants have six legs.

The following week I sent my design to be cut out on a CNC router. This first plywood mock-up helped understand the tolerances required by the material and also gave us a chance to test the strength of the chair. The two new legs were also lengthened as they didn’t seem quite fitting in their first iteration.

Some scenario images of how this bench could be used were created. The “ant bench” became more of a family product which can be used both indoor and outdoor.

The design was finalized, adding a small aphid-like stool to better use the material.

This layout shows how the material is used. The CNC router requires some amount of spacing between the parts. Grooves were also milled out of the seats to strengthen the interlocking of the parts.

The final model was made from maple Europly which was then finished and dyed a dark brown.

Branding was added to the underside of the seats using the laser cutter.

The finalized graphic elements as well as the product shots were put together on a large poster which you can download in PDF format (2.2MB).