Fra-
mily
Interactive
Furniture
Welcome Home!
A smart hallway system furniture makes family close even intimate.
Highlight
1° HDG furniture award nominee.
2° A well-thought design process including 3 phases and 14 design methods.
3° Interactive furniture finished by our own practice including: 3 Arduino boards, hundred wires and hundred lines of codes..
Principals
In the summer of 2012, I started to work my Thesis design with my wingman, Wen-Shian Huang. He was a thoughtful person and want to solve a relationship problem by product. And I was interested in introducing some technologies into an emotional product. Therefore, we tried to do early-stage brainstorming and sketch. We concluded following principal for the project.
A product for communication
A Product is a medium for human-to-human communication. And we want to make people notice the underlying interaction with others.
Gateway furniture design
We interpreted the family as a nest. When birds stay in a nest, it is warm and comfortable. However, when leaving the nest, the world is harsh and dangerous. The idea inspired us. We focused on the experience of entering and exiting the “nest” and we decided to design a gateway furniture.
Insight
Since the subject was not clear, we conducted research to define the constraints, variables and, most important of all, insights. We did the interview, field research, and statistics analytics, and we found some interesting insights:
An unsatisfied need of shoes wearing
“I feel troublesome when I wear shoes.”
The micro interaction in the gateway
“Sometimes my mother left the umbrella near the gate for me.”
Unconscious notice
“When I work late, my kids would leave a light for me. I know they sleep, and it is thoughtful of them. I feel proud.”
Target User
We selected all the facts and tried to tell a story about our subject.
Persona
Parents are classmates in college. Father is now working in a constructure company, while mother works in post office nearby because of family. Sister leaves family to study college in Taipei. Comparing to young brother, she behaves herself. Brother is in high school now, going to the cram school two times a week,and also joining the guitar club. For him, home is nothing but a place to sleep.
CMF Test
The image board was a guide for our further design ideation. I created a board to display the feeling of the topic, applying the result to CMF(color, material, finishing) test. We chose wood as the major material along with some vivid colors. Our attempt was to transform our subject from feeling and fact into a design.
Prototype
As for furniture, we made paper prototype for each proposal. We evaluated all the models for its usability, propotion and feeling. Then, we iterated the design, making the final model of this interactive furniture.
Modeling
Since there were no identical electronic devices to fit our design, all parts are made by our own. The furniture used two Arduino boards for different parts. One was for the reflective mirror, showing the time and detecting whether users stand ahead of it. Another was to sensor the ambient light. Once the environment was getting dark, it turned on the light.
Design
1° Mirror Clock
It is simply a clock hanging on the wall of hall way or living room at home, making it easier to check the time when around. If there is a need to take a look in the mirror, the clock display will automatically disappear when standing in front of it several seconds.
2° Key Chain
Other than adsorbing objects, the round magnets are also a key rack. We can learn if our family are at home or not when we put the key in the corresponding colored board.
3° Family Frames
Each family member have their own distinguished board in different colors.It’s not only a personal little white board, but also a simple message processing center to recieve sweet and short messages from familiy.
4° Whiteboard Tools
One-hand manipulatable whiteboard pen button not only makes the pen attachable to the groove, but helps users to take off the pen cap easier. The lateral side of the whiteboard eraser is designed to be inclined plane, which makes the eraser more convenient to take and less possible to dirt user’s hand.
Welcome Home!
The purpose of “framily” is to enhance the sense of “feeling good at home” by creating a unique scene belongs to their own family. Even when life is getting busy, touching scenes are still waiting in the hall way.