Studio Blog | Stéphan Angoulvant

Product Design 2

Product Design 2 was the logical continuation of Product Design 1, in which we designed barbecue grills. The theme we were given this time was “products on wheels”. This was obviously a very broad theme, which hints at the aim of the course: concept development. Our goal during this class was to design an innovative product that uses wheels.

I chose to redesign the creeper, or as I prefer to call it, work sled. This is the tool auto mechanics use to slide under cars and make repairs. The final result was designed to be comfortable, nimble and easy to use.

I decided to call my work sled Dexter (from dexterity) feeling it needed a strong personality and a name that communicated stability and precision in motion. The logo was developed in our course ID Graphics.

The first few weeks were dedicated to research. I found that most creeper users are home users because auto shops generally have car lifts.

I soon found out that most readily available creepers are very cheaply made, and often used just a few times before they are discarded.

I isolated three markets for creepers, from low to high end. My creeper was to situate itself at the medium-high end mark, aimed at car enthusiasts who are in need of a well-designed creeper and casual users who could be inspired by such a product to perform their own oil changes regularly.

The Dexter brand, developed around my work sled was to communicate several key attributes shown below.

The course encouraged us to explore many different ideas, here are some of the interesting ones I came up with, including a wearable creeper and a creeper with spherical wheels. Of course all these ideas were based on the research.

As the form was refined, I realized that my work sled started looking somewhat shark-like and tried to integrate this theme in my form development.

The final result was recreated using the CAD software Solidworks which we learned much about in our Solid Modelling course.

I decided to use plywood to create the basic shape of the creeper and explored many resource for fabrication.

Finally I created a mold using CNC-machined ribs. Thin sheets of plywood were then stacked, glued and vacuumed into shape. The final shape was then trimmed, sanded and veneered.

For the final version I created a metal frame that supported both the seat and the wheels, allowing all four to lock into place with one simple gesture. Lights were also integrated in order for users to see under their cars.

The leather pillow was stitched and printed using the Lumi Process, developed by myself and an Art Center classmate.

I embedded magnets under the veneer, giving these tool rests a very intuitive and almost magical functionality! The tools won’t fall off even when the creeper is placed vertically, but they are still easy to remove.

The frame was a complex piece of metal bending and certainly could be simplified in the future, using different materials. The aim was to communicate the new mechanics I had developed to make braking simple.

The following is the poster board that accompanied my final model. You can find a full-size PDF here.