Dokumentation

ZHdK IAD
1. Semester
HS 09
Industrial Design Basics
Riccardo Lardi
Gerhard Buurman
Karmen Franinovic
 SKETCHING SENSORIAL EXPERIENCE
Description: The goal of this exercise is to study the object
as the experience it enables through tactile exploration.
Students work in couples: one of them chooses an object
to be explored by the colleague. The person exploring
the object must not see the object ie. must keep the eyes
closed. Without saying the name of the object, the per-
son describes the haptic and tactile sensations caused
through manipulation of the artefact. The person who lis-
tens tries to sketch the qualities that are being described
such as soft, curved, warm, loud etc. After ten or fifteen
minutes, the two participants switch roles.

After again and again having found myself in trying to

find out what object my mate is describing, I finally got to
not only sketch the objects form and physical parameters,
but also how the it ‚feels‘ and what kind of affordances it
offers to different people. To me, that step to find out how
to bring those thinkings to paper was a difficult, but sure-
ly quite an interesting experience.

The main difficulty I was confronted with was the transition from descriptions The ruler had different Other objects had more
of affordances to drawings or sketches on paper. How to sketch ie. ‚the object is characteristics which were distinguishable attributes,
squeezy but still made of a hard material‘? Such problems made it hard at first, equally hard to describe which made it easier to
later on I‘d just sketch more freely and just put on paper what first came into my and to sketch by listening describe and sketch.
mind. That way, a broader range of information could be gathered quickly. to the description.
 SKETCHING THE OBJECT
Description: Using front and side views, sections, axono-
metric projection and/or prospective, the students techni-
cally represent an object.

The sketching of chosen objects was an exciting challen-

ge, as I never really found myself to be an able drawer. I
rapidly realized, that sketching objects which are in front
of me and so are exposed freely to me, can be sketched
in a technical way, so I‘m not bound to be really talented
in drawing, I‘d just sketch ‚what I see‘ and that‘s the trick.
After a few attempts my sketches became more and more
distinctive and pronounced.

This candy case can be opened by sliding the upper deck. While simple in const- The sliding mechanics Sometimes perspectitive
ruction, the roundings at the corners still became not all that easy to reproduce. could be represented easi- errors could happen, lea-
After having just quickly sketched the chassis in a very rudimentary way, details ly, showing it from diffe- ving no other choice than
like those roundings were applied one after another. rent perspectives. starting a new sketch.
 SKETCHING USE
Description: Students sketch the use of the object in a
functional way. The human body or its parts (hand or foot)
have to be represented.

I liked it a lot to experiment with different ways of dra-

wing body parts, namely my hand holding the object.
Again, after feeling deep despair caused by underestima-
tion of my drawing skills, I was relieved when I found out
that the outcome of my efforts were rather okay compa-
red to what I‘d been expecting before.
The presence of the human body suddenly brought life
and also movement to the sketches. The objects were not
anymore just ‚still life‘ - like drawings or technical treat-
ments of things, they actually became somehow natural.

The anatomy of a hand ie. was easy to reproduce as long as I had an example in Drawing the object in The proportions of the ob-
front of me, say, me holding that object with the left hand while drawing with the relation to different usage ject was not always easy to
other hand. Otherwise I had problems finding the right proportions, etc. scenarios could end up in keep the same during the
Sometimes finding the starting point of the drawing could become difficult. Like quite funny ways. entire sketching process.
in this sketch, it could lead to space problems and missplacement.
 SKETCHING STORIES
Description: Students invent stories of the use or misuse
of the object. The temporal aspect of the story and people
in it are the core of the exercise - How does one represent
cause-effect loops? How do you show emotional states
or perceptual experience? How can we represent social
dynamics and interaction?

For me, this was the hardest excercise. I had a hard time
findig out how I could sketch people. Better said, it was
difficult finding the most appropriate style for sketching
people to show up an experience or an interaction. I then
settled on a rather simplistic style. This way, the sketch
may seemed ‚too sketchy‘, but it could deliver dynamics
and movement better than any other approach I tried.

I tried to show emotions, to give individual appearances to different characters, In some first attemts I Finding out how to draw
to show reactions and interaction by using mimics and gestures. I realized how didn‘t introduce people, so faces showing emotions
much the shape and size of eyes could affect the shown emotion. it was way easier to draw took quite a while.
The sketching style I used is a fast one, so it should go well in situations when processes for me.
some scenario etc. has to be explained rapidly but surely has its downsides, too.
 DESIGN AFFORDANCES
Description: Build 5 objects out of foam and always start
from the cube [10x10x10cm]
Express the following affordances through their form:
Spin me / Squeeze me / Shake me / Stretch me / Break me

With this excercise we were introduced to one of the

ZHdK‘s ‚Werkstatt‘. We felt big excitement to start do-
ing something we could actually build up with our bare
hands, as we‘ve been since then only working in front of
our notebooks, except the sketching excercises. Creating
objects which were physical tangible was a nice motivati-
on and made us drastically more aware of what industrial
design can be all about.

The ‚shake‘ affordance led me directly to the idea of a box with unknown content, I made a propeller to Very obvious to me was
which can be shaken to guess what‘s probably inside. I tried to round the edges achieve the ‚spin‘ af- also the ‚break‘ affordance,
as smooth and equal as possible, while trying to retain a square-edged form. fordance. It could indeed which I realised by buil-
Also, the box should give no hint resp. should not suggest any content - so I tried spin, when blown on it. ding some very unstable
to keep the bonding surface as clean as possible. and thin skeleton.
 CUT AND PASTE
Description: This exercise is an exploration of patterns,
scale and repetition. It‘s composed of three sub-exercises:

1. From a flat paper create a form by cutting, folding,

waving and/or gluing it.
2. Using a repetition of the same element create a pattern
3. Scale the same elements and connect them

In this excercise flat, empty, boring white paper turned

into different interesting forms. By repeating the main
element and then scaling it and creating new connec-
tions, new and unforeseen models emerged. I found it
very impressive how the influence of light and different
viewing angles can change the impression you get from
the object.

How I already said, the light, viewing angle and also the scene could immensely When taking close pictures Also, making contrast
influence the viewing experience of the model. The dropped shadows would take of the object, depth of field between highlighted and
a big part of the impression one gets when looking at it. could create quite a nice shadowed parts of the
‚smoothing-out‘ effect. model made big impact on
the overall impression.
 LIGHT FORMS
Description: Exploring the relationship between and in-
teraction with form and light. How can you change, shape
and affect the light embedded in an object?

This was the most interesting excercise to me. I found

myself captured entirely by the challenge to invent and
create a form which emits light and offers an affordance
to interact with it in an interesting way.
The hardest part was the finding of an idea to work on. It
took me about a whole day to finally come to a satisfying
concept. From then on everything went like clockwork.
I used some industrial plastic tubes, cut them, sanded
them (especially the transparent part, so the light gets
diffused by it), lasered the top and bottom covers, glued
them and finally soldered the electronics.
It‘s about a portable device which emits light either on a
spot, like a spotlight, or disperses the light into the ambi-
ence. Pull out the upper tube to get more ambience light,
push it in to get more spot-on light.

The more the lighting tube gets pulled out of the containing tube, the more light The top should have a lock The overall impression is
spreads into the ambience. The light switches on, as soon as it gets pulled out, mechanism to prevent of an elegant stick which
and switches off when pushed back inside. Unfortunately the containing tube it from being pulled out. also feels very agreeable
isn‘t dense enough and so the light shines a bit through it. At the bottom, one can because of the sanded
change the battery. surface.