10 Design Ideas
To get a better understanding of new materials, a user can search through a database of materials to learn more about the characteristics and properties of the material. Furthermore, a community aspect is integrated into this idea, making it simple for users to share their designs in which they incorporated the specific material. This feature enables young designers to find inspiration for their designs from others who have utilized sustainable materials.
- Requirements Satisfied: Allow users to learn about materials for inspiration, recommend sustainable substitutes, and promote sustainable materials
This concept leans into the idea of substituting out unsustainable materials for more sustainable ones. A design student would enter into the software with materials in mind for their product. They would enter in that material and the software would suggest similar materials that are more sustainable than the original material.
- Requirements Satisfied: Should be inspirational for the designer, allow users to find substitutes for more sustainable materials, allow users to learn about materials, allow users to compare materials, and should promote sustainable materials
With this AR tool, the user would be able to scan an object and find out what materials the object is made out of using computer vision. The app would then give the users the characteristics of the material, as well as substitutes the user could make to utilize more sustainable substitutes. This app would allow the designer to get inspiration for their designs from everyday objects.
- Requirements Satisfied: Should be inspirational for the designer, allow users to find substitutes for more sustainable materials, allow users to learn about materials, allow users to compare materials, and should promote sustainable materials
In our interviews, we discovered that designers often have trouble communicating the importance of using sustainable materials because different stakeholders prioritize different properties of a material. For example, engineers may focus on the strength and durability of a material, while managers may focus more on the cost of the material. This website would organize the different characteristics of the material based on which stakeholder the user specifies. In this way, a designer would better be able to persuade others to use sustainable materials in their designs.
- Requirements Satisfied: Should promote sustainable materials.
Users would be able to upload their CAD files to this program and specify the materials they would like to use for the design. The program would then suggest alternative more sustainable materials as a substitute for their chosen materials. The program would then be able to visualize the product life cycle and show users how long the product would take to break down, how much energy the materials would take to make, and how the user could improve these metrics with other materials.
- Requirements Satisfied: Allow users to find substitutes for more sustainable materials, allow users to learn about materials, allow users to compare materials, and should promote sustainable materials
This app would allow users to explore new materials in different categories to gain inspiration for these new materials. The app would allow users to search through different categories, such as wood, plastics, or sustainable materials, and the app would present the user with random materials in that category for users to learn about. The user would then be able to add the materials to their saved lists so that they could utilize the materials in their designs at a later date.
- Requirements Satisfied: Allow users to learn about materials, should be creative and inspiring for young designers, and should promote sustainable materials
This solution would utilize VR goggles to allow the user to see different materials in three-dimensional spaces. The user would be able to see materials side-by-side and compare them in three dimensions. Using a touch-sensitive glove add-on, the user would be able to feel the texture and hardness of the material and get a better idea of its characteristics. This would allow users to learn about new materials by physically interacting with them.
- Requirements Satisfied: Allow users to learn about materials, should be creative and inspiring for young designers, allow users to compare different materials, and should promote sustainable materials
This software allows users to learn about new materials based on their use case for their product. This software would have more advanced filter options which would allow users to tell the system the context, users, and specifics of their product, and the system would suggest appropriate materials to use. The user could also request to be shown random materials or new materials to learn about different materials they wouldn’t otherwise know about. Finally, the user could find materials that are similar to unsustainable ones so that they can substitute them out in their designs.
- Requirements Satisfied: Allow users to learn about materials, should be creative and inspiring for young designers, allow users to compare different materials, and should promote sustainable materials
Design students are constantly critiquing each other’s designs throughout the design process to get as many perspectives as possible on their product and to get feedback on how to improve their product overall. This software would allow students to upload their CAD designs and leave critique notes on their peers’ designs. Furthermore, the critiquing process would be facilitated for the students, as these users would be walked through multiple sustainability metrics that their peers evaluate the designs with. Each design would then be given a sustainability score, and the critiquing process would be gamified amongst peers, while also promoting sustainable materials.
- Requirements Satisfied: Should promote sustainable materials
The product life cycle of a material is an extremely important aspect of the sustainability of that material. Therefore, this software would give users visualization of each step in the product life cycle. This would allow users to appreciate the process that goes into the production of each material. Likewise, the program would highlight the waste products that are created in the product and the manipulation of the material. This software would inspire designers to choose materials with less intricate and harmful life cycles to the environment, which would promote the use of more sustainable materials.
- Requirements Satisfied: Allow users to learn about materials, should be creative and inspiring for young designers, and should promote sustainable materials
Top Two Design Ideas
Top Design #1 Material Inspo 2.0
Narrative Walkthrough: In the above storyboard, Erin needs to find sustainable material for her class project. However, she is only familiar with a limited selection of sustainable materials, none of which meet her design criteria. Erin searches online and comes across a product called Material Inspo. When she opens it, she discovers a variety of sustainable materials. Erin selects “Mycelium” from the list of materials and uncovers much information on the detail page. She learns about its lifecycle and physical characteristics and views similar materials. While Erin feels excited about this material, she is unsure of what it may be used for or where she can obtain it. She scrolls down and comes upon a section titled “products made by this material”, which contains designs from others who have utilized Mycelium. She can click to view more information and see tips for using Mycelium left by other people.
Design Requirements & Strengths: Material Inspo 2.0 meets both our functional and non-functional criteria. The material library aspect allows young designers to explore and learn about materials (FR#1). They can learn different aspects of one material on the detail page. We prioritized the factors related to sustainability, such as material lifecycle, how long it would take to break down to promote a sustainable mindset (NFR#4). The “View similar material like this” feature allows users to compare and find more sustainable substitutes ( FR#2 & 3). This platform is also easy to learn and use, fulfilling our Non-functional requirements#2(NFR#2). Industrial design students can easily find materials that match their needs using the search or filter feature. On the homepage of Material Inspo, we chose to prioritize new sustainable materials to keep our users informed about new materials( NFR#2). Furthermore, the community aspect of this design enables users to view works done by other designers using specific material and be inspired ( NFR#2).
Design Weakness: One potential weakness of our design is the lack of linkage between the library and the community. As a result, users might only focus on using one feature of the website. Specifically, the library function outweighs the community in our current design as most community-related features (share products, chat, etc.) have lower priority than the searching features. If most users prefer to use our website as a material library, they will have a weakened sense of a designer community and less incentive to share their results and thoughts. This shortage might cause our product to be less durable in the long run.
Top Design #2 CAD LifeSpan 2.0
Narrative Walkthrough: In the storyboard, John finishes his 3D model in a Computer-Aided Design(CAD) tool, and he attempts to find materials he can use for his prototype. John is an industrial design student with pre-existing environmental awareness to develop more environmentally-friendly products. Therefore, he wants to select more eco-friendly materials. After downloading and launching the CAD LifeSpan, John imports his 3D model into it. John finds the interface of this software easy to understand and use since it looks very similar to the other CAD tools. He can drag the material to the components to see how it looks. He can also search for material and explore sustainable alternatives. In addition, the “compare feature” enables him to compare a few similar materials to make a better decision based on his design requirements.
Design Requirements & Strengths: Our concept in CAD LifeSpan allows users to learn about various materials by selecting and applying them to their design work (FR#1). The program gives them real-time information on the product lifecycle and suggests more sustainable materials as an alternative for the ones they’ve chosen. Additionally, this program enables users to pick, compare, and evaluate the product’s lifespan on one platform(FR#2 &3). According to our research, their current process involves selecting materials from a material library, manually entering the material name and quantity into a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) application to analyze the product’s life cycle. We attempt to simplify these tasks by integrating them into one platform. Moreover, because it follows the same layout as other CAD tools, the interface of this application is easy to understand and learn for our users(NFR#2 &3).
Design Weakness: Users may not utilize this tool during the ideation process, which is a weakness in our design. They are unlikely to download software to seek prospective new sustainable materials for inspiration if that is all they want to do. Another flaw in this design is that our product may not be capable of rendering. Consequently, users may be unable to see the actual appearance of one material and distinguish materials that look similar.