Studio Blog | Stéphan Angoulvant
I'm a fourth term product design student at Art Center in Pasadena. I post my work here. I also blog about my inspirations, have a portfolio and do some photography.
Product Design 1
After my successful results with the insect-inspired family bench last term, I was excited to see what my third term would hold. Product Design 1 was a direct continuation of Design Process 2 with the focus being oriented more towards user research and the development of a functional product.
The project for my class was to create a portable barbecue grill for a specific target audience. I quickly identified “river fishing” as a general market and with a few weeks of research and interviews began to understand exactly what design criteria that implied.
The research phase started with a benchmarking of existing products and retail environments, allowing us to get a good understanding of the market.
After a few weeks we proposed three different directions. My research led me to investigate three river fishing grills based on different cooking methods. Ultimately I chose to design a barbecue based on the concept of plank cooking, a Native American method which uses a soaked plank of wood as a grilling surface. (PDF of the presentation)
By mid-term we had clearly defined our concept and began to develop mockups. I decided to base my grill on a new ethanol fuel which is currently marketed as the FlameDisk. (See the large format presentation here)
My design started to become clearer and tried to remain as compact as possible with replaceable ethanol cartridges that could be loaded from the side and a lid that fit inside the body for storage.
The whole unit was meant to be waterproof so that it could be carried through the water by fishermen.
Vents can deprive the fuel cartridge of oxygen allowing the user to save fuel.
The cedar plank is soaked in water using the lid as a basin. When in use the water evaporates to create delicious smoky flavors.
Our new SolidWorks skills became useful as we started to develop the final version of the design.
The next few weeks were dedicated to finalizing all the details and create the finished model.
My final presentation went fantastically well. I urge you to look at the PDF version of my presentation here.
Comments
- carly on Oct 18 2009, at 07:51 PM
- Stéphane on Oct 18 2009, at 07:54 PM
- Brian on Dec 26 2009, at 12:40 PM
- mbt shoes on Aug 2 2010, at 01:09 PM