Suba

Overview

Time: 2022 Feb, 3 weeks Roles: Research, ideation, sketching, modelling Team: Sooa Mo, Soraya Elchehimi, Bowie Rheault, Chinmayee Kusnur Tools: Figma, Onshape, Photoshop

Objective

Suba is a submarine-shaped toy flashlight. Our objective is to conform the flashlight to be used by a 6-year-old child. This involves obtaining specific measurements of their fingers, hands and wrist to match the size of the flashlight to a 6-year-old child.

Deliverable

Designed a submarine flashlight, make it into a 3D model, create a poster with details about the flashlight (design, materials) specific for children.

Approach

We initially had to think about what type of users we wanted to focus on, eg construction workers, elderly adults, especially those with arthritis, or 6-year-old children. Our initial design was very simple. We decided to get feedback from our professor and classmates to enhance our design.

The team members' initial ideas were so simple that we had to consider more diverse sketches because we received a lot of feedback from the professor and classmates.

Sketching

The first sketch we came up with makes the flashlight look like a mug (this was also the feedback we got from classmates). After alot of brainstorming and many sketches this resulted in a very colourful submarine-shaped flashlight.

I sketched an orthographic projection for showing each part’s dimension. And that make team member understand how to create the 3d modelling.

3D modelling

I finished modelling by using Onshape. To reduce the time to create a 3D model, we decided that each team member be responsible for creating different parts of the flashlight.

My role: I needed to do a 3D model of the propeller. Before doing this, I used the dimensions for a child to create the top, bottom, and front of the propeller. I also modelled the windows, chose the colours, materials to be used and assembly.

Difficulty: Sketches were made in consideration of the dimensions for children, but there were various structural problems that we came across when we actually created the model. When modelling, we tried to keep the structure as simple as possible in order to create a stable 3D model.

Result

We designed the flashlight to fit the size of a child's hand. The on/off buttons make it easy for the child to use the flashlight and control the propeller’s brightness. We wanted to ensure that children have the alot of fun using the flashlight. Reflect: 1)I think we used too many colours on the product. I felt that it would have been a better product design if we reduced the type of colour based on children's preferred colour. 2)During the project, there was not enough time to do research, but I did do some brief interviews with parents who had children. However, I still felt this was a fun collaborative project where I was able to implement models and present designs and look forward to working on more projects like this in the future.