The Lantern virtual reality headset is fully made with only paper and plastic. The foldable headset is designed for tourism in Japan and inspired by the Japanese lantern and Google Cardboard.
Programs used: Adobe Illustrator, CorelDraw, Maya
The project group consisted of 4 people. My role in this project was one of the product designers and the head concept designer.
As the head concept designer, I was in charge of communication between teaching staff and and within the project group. I designed the persona and context for the usage of the product and handled much of the written content for this project. I made many design decisions regarding the type of material that would be used for the product.
As one of the product designers, I assisted in the physical design of the product from the initial foam model iteration to the final model.
Elaine Tran is a 22 year old university student who is planning her graduation trip to Japan. She visits a tourism office to get some information on where she should go. The employee hands her the Lantern VR headset and shows her a 360 tourism video of Japan. If she decides to go on this trip, she can keep this collapsible headset and bring it with her on the plane to get an early overview of what she might experience there.
The constraint given for this project was that the product must be a VR headset designed with paper and plastic. The type of paper and plastic that was chosen was red tissue paper, ABS plastic and acrylic plastic.
Tissue paper was chosen based off the lantern theme of the headset. The paper needed to allow some light to go through which would add a cool feature with the phone's flashlight.
ABS plastic was chosen for the hinges as the hinges are what would be supporting the acrylic pieces together. The hinges were also small enough to be 3D printed.
Acrylic plastic was chosen because the laser cutter would not ruin the plastic when cut. Acrylic plastic is also light so it would not be too heavy on the head. The price of everything was also kept in mind when choosing materials.
