Kübu

Teammates: Rachel Mannella, Selina Tedesco & David Rosenberg

| 01

Concepting

For the final project in my Industrial Design studio course, my professor gave the class free reign over what we could design. The only constraint was that it had to focus heavily on user experience. My team - which consisted of myself and three other classmates - began talking and quickly discovered a common interest: play. We all wanted to design something to play with. We thought that with this, we could create something relatively simple, which would allow us to fully develop the product, while paying close attention to every detail of the user's interactions. And, most importantly, we wanted to have fun.

Once we had an idea of WHAT we wanted to design, we had to decide WHO we were designing it for. At first, we all wanted to design something for adults - because we wanted something cool to play with. This desire quickly changed as we realized that since we would all be "users" of our product, but were all very different people, we wouldn't be objective. We would end up trying to design something we individually wanted, as opposed to designing for a target consumer. Thus, we decided to target kids. So, this was our self-defined problem space: design a toy for kids. We had a long way to go before we could actually put pencil to paper and start designing.

Problem Identification & Research

| 02

Now that we had a general space that we were working in, we had to find a "problem." We needed a one sentence starting point that would ground us. Something that would clearly define what we were doing. What was the point of our design. To start, all of us assumed that too much digital play was bad for kids - probably stemming from our parents telling us not to sit too close to the T.V. when we were kids - but none of us really knew WHY so much screen time was bad. Conversely, we didn't really know the benefits of physical play. We decided that this was a good place to start our inquiry.

Our research showed that while there was a multitude of kid's puzzles and modular furniture, there was nothing on the market that effectively combined the two.

| 03

Mind-Mapping

| 04

Ideation

After our research and mind-mapping exercise, we began to brainstorm. We drew a lot of inspiration from building blocks, hand=held puzzles, and other simple construction toys.

| 05

Design & Benchmarking

Once we had our concept selected, we began with hand-sized prototypes. These small, rough prototypes allowed us to quickly and easily explore the appropriate connection edges. We made the decision to connect the cubes in order to preserve the safety of the product so that children would not be able to throw blocks or stack the blocks too high. We also decided to connect the blocks so that it is always in some formation, ready to be sat on. If the blocks are connected they do not need to be put away after playtime, establishing it as both a toy and furniture piece.

These early prototypes also allowed us to play with and experience our design before bringing it to full scale. This play - along with the anthropometric data of our target users - helped inform the final dimensions of our design.

Now that we had a clearly defined design for our product, we did some benchmarking. We found that there were some modular pieces of furniture on the market, as well as gymnastics equipment that performed a similar function. There were, however, no products that offered the same "build. play. explore." experience as Kübu.

Prototyping & User Testing

| 06

Once we had sufficiently explored our hand-held prototypes, our next step was to scale-up. We created a near-full-scale model (11"x11" cubes) from cardboard and duct tape. We then tested this prototype with our professor's 6 year old son. He was able to manipulate and climb on the cubes without trouble, and was engage for over 45 minutes.

| 07

Final Prototype & Design

The final prototype demonstrated the aesthetics of the design, as well as allowed for more accurate and relevant user-testing. The construction of this prototype also gave insights into possible production and manufacturing methods, as well as material selection. We chose our materials to be light-weight and easily cleaned, while still being able to have bold and engaging colors that both kids and parents would enjoy. The final design for Kübu would weight 24 lb. (3 lb. per cube) and production would cost $31.49, proving profitable at a $99.99 price point.

References:

1. 1. http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=78966

Image Citations: (top-left, clockwise)

1. http://static.thefrisky.com/uploads/2015/03/foam-rolling.png

2. http://rede ningstrength.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/upper-back-foam-rolling-1024x768.jpg

3. https://cdn2.omidoo.com/sites/default/ les/imagecache/full_width/images/bydate/201501/traps.jpg

4. https://i.ytimg.com/vi/LxpAmp3YcOY/maxresdefault.jpg

5. https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Cen9eEXh5aY/maxresdefault.jpg