EcoPaw Show Materials

Thought I'd upload our EcoPaw team posters from the IPD trade show. These were printed 3'x4' and looked great!

We didn't win unfoutunately, came in mid pack. While we won the web show nicely, we were in 5th during the trade show in terms of market share at 10.4% (the 2nd - 5th were all with in 1% of each other). We also overstocked by quite a large amount and that hurt our bottom line, but in the end I'm really proud of EcoPaw.

Thanks for reading!

EcoPaw : What's your carbon pawprint?

Oh yes, IPD (the competitive team design class) is in full swing. It's all due Monday afternoon. Luckily my team has worked together amazingly well and we are almost done. I just finished our 3rd prototype, which is pictured here in all it's green glory, and have a few alterations to make to our final product. Minor things though, not drastic redesigns. We are losing the rubber pinch points (the bag holders) as the bag stays put without them and they are costly to manufacture. Also the way the cordura fabric attaches to the body is being redesigned to keep the shoulder strap out of the way when scooping. Now all I need to do is make 3 more for Monday!

We had our final design crit yesterday with the professors and it went very well. Shaun Jackson and Bill Lovejoy called our teams design "sophisticated" "sleek" "cool" "hip" "urbane" and "possible winner". Oh yes.

Oh, the name, Ecopaw, is because the body is made out of recycled polystyrene and all the bits are recycleable.

Ecopaw comes with biodegradable bags and biodegradable poop stoppers (they are made from chipboard).

When done, toss the biodegradable poop stopper into the bag and it all will compost.

In this generation, the fabric cover pulls around back and is held magnetically.

The fabric cover pulled over the mouth of Ecopaw, again held magnetically in place on the back side.

The back side of Ecopaw, where the removable shoulder straps connect to the body.

Snap button closures on the front side as well.

4 finger rubberized handle for good grip in cold and warm weather.

The maligned Pinch Points, they don't work consistently and aren't really needed. They were also a pain to make. Although, Shaun Jackson (my thesis prof) was impressed at how resolved they were!

Looking down the mouth of EcoPaw. You can see the magnets on the bas and the inside of the snap closures.

Ecopaw in it's carry state. As the shoulder strap is removable, if the user wishes they could carry Ecopaw by hand.

So, seeing as how this is a design competition I was holding off posting until late in the game. If the other teams haven't figured out their design by now, well, I doubt they could successfully knock off my design in a weekend. I'm feeling pretty good about this all right now obviously.

Thanks for reading!

The Final Countdown

Welcome to Senior year! I've got a studio now (well a 8'x8' gray box, it's a cubicle really) and just bought some new sketch books. All set to design.

For Fall '10 I'm taking,

I.P. (Integrative Project)

Basically, Michigan's fancy name for senior thesis project. I actually refuse to call it IP because I think it's a silly name. I do get my own studio for this course though!

I.P.D. (Integrated Product Development)

More acronyms! Teams of designers, engineers and MBA's design, produce and 'sell' a product at a fake trade show. We are designing, wait for it, pooper scoopers. Yep, pooper scoopers. I swear if the MBA in my group says "value added", I'll punch them.

Detroit Connections

I go to Detroit on Fridays and do art projects with 4 graders who would not have access to art classes otherwise. I love kids and am excited for this one.

Yep, just 3 classes (well along with the 1 credit required lectures for all students). Thesis is 6 credits a semester and IPD is 6 credits as well. I'll be busy with those two.

So, what am I thinking of doing for senior thesis? Well after kicking around a few ideas, including developing Home Base further and working to get it manufactured on a small scale, I decided to work on a project that I knew I would love and finally get something bike related in my portfolio. I'm going to design and build an urban trailer system for bicycles. The sort of thing bicycle commuters would use.

So, initial criteria I'm working towards,

-pullable by bike and walkable by hand

-foldable

-light weight

-customizable with different bag attachment options

-water proof bags in lieu of a rainfly

-stable (two wheels)

-maneuverable (small wheels)

Stay tuned and thanks for reading!

Pooper Scooper Ideation

Last night I decided to change my pooper scooper idea for Designer Bootcamp, and that's after working out a different idea pretty well, but never being happy with it at all. It was best described as a collapsable hiking pole with a fish net on the end. It was for the elderly. It was boring, and unimaginative. 

So I changed my target consumer. Namely to one that could bend over easily. 

I'm working on a design that is A: inspired by existing designer home appliances and tools such as the Dirt Devil Kone, and B: takes it form language from the word 'scoop'. I'm aiming the product at young, urban 20 and 30 somethings who are living space challenged, style savvy, environmentally conscious dog lovers.

Just some ideation from last night.

Thanks for reading. I'll post how it turns out!

Two Weeks.

Phew, only 2 weeks left this semester. Everything is happening all at once, each studio has a project due in the next week and then I've got a week to really pull my sophomore review together.

I realized looking back through my posts this semester that the only class I'm really blogging about is CFC 3 and Designer Bootcamp (to a lesser extent). That's really a shame, because all my classes have been really interesting and challenging.

I don't think I've really said much about the myPod since the first model, but I'm finished with it now. I don't have any pictures of the finished model, it went into a display case pretty quick. So I'm waiting to get it out and take some pictures. You can check it out at my website, umich.edu/~petemh. I'll probably end up posting the finished images there first.

I'll just get you up to speed on Dimensional Languages (a design semiotics course) and Sketching Ideas here quick.

For dimensional Lang., we spent the first half of the semester working on buttons. I felt we were kind of spinning our wheels, the project should have lasted half as long, but I believe now that I felt that way because I was never really engaged with the project and never completely understood what Jan Hendrick (the prof) was trying to teach us. For the last month we've been working on salt and pepper shakers, or grinders in my case, that are inspired by prose, poetry and factual text on salt and pepper. It's been one of the most challenging project I've ever worked on, but I am really learning allot about the intimacy and language of form.

I spent most of the project trying to encompass both a salt and pepper grinder in one form, but really got stuck and never really moved past something that looked like a finger. So, I completely reworked the design this past week, working on grinders that for one, separated salt and pepper like normal, and worked on a squeezing motion. You squeeze the lever, it turns the grinder. I'm ironing out the form details this weekend and I'm going to have the most promising forms printed on the rapid prototyping machines from Rhino and pick my final model from there. I'm really excited about this project.

My first sketch model.

The creepy finger version. The whole thing rotated about the cut lines. Salt came from the top, pepper the bottom. The grand failure of this model is that I have to explain that to you.

Even if the idea did suck, I didn't let it go. Here are Rhino models I pretty much wasted my time on. Oh well, learn from your mistakes!

Early squeeze versions.

In Sketching Ideas, we've spent the whole semester drawing. Not still life or figure drawing, but drawing out ideas so as to effectively portray your concepts. It's pretty much an industrial design sketching course. Which is just perfect. It's taught by a designer for Ford, Chiwei Lee, who is pretty awesome himself. I've never had as much work for a course as I have for this one, but I am certainly getting better at sketching.

I'm working on my final design project for Sketching Ideas, we got to define our own project. I'm working on designing a commuter bicycle for people in the city and am trying to look at the bicycle and it's accessories as a system, integrating everything together to work as one perfect machine. Of course, being a biker, I am in love with this project. It's a hell of a lot of drawing though.

Oh and for our final project in Designer Bootcamp, we are all working on a few different projects as a class, I picked redesigning a pooper scooper. I'm not as invested in this project as I am in the bike, but they can't all be the coolest project ever.

Oh, and of course, there's always sophomore review to think about right now too. I've got the basis of it together, my theme is Simple Problems Are Incredibly Complicated. I'm focusing my presentation, which is pretty much a summing up of the past two years of A&D, on the myPod, salt and pepper grinders, ant farm from CFC III, commuter bicycle, and my branded baby puzzle from CFC II. I've still got some planning and to do for the presentation, which is April 24th for me.

Oh, my digital portfolio has been updated. umich.edu/~petemh Tell me what you think!

Thanks for reading!