Simple Product Design- Cool-Terra

Rishiraj Ghosh

16 min readAug 4, 2021

Rishiraj Ghosh
2nd year Industrial Design
National Institute of Design, Andhra Pradesh

Simple Product Design

Introduction

On Day 1, we were asked to find designs from our home and web which we find interesting.

I collected different designs from architecture to sanitiser spray-cans to architecture.

some of the designs I chose

In my previous assignments, I was always into dynamic and edgy designs which were mostly a form-driven approach. This time, I wanted to challenge myself to come out of my comfort zone and explore something new.

And then in the domain selection session, I was recommended to follow a Material-driven approach on Terracotta in my SPD project.

After the domain/approach allotment, the next task was to research the particular domain from the web, articles, books, etc.

During the process, I learned about terracotta’s material properties and innovations, and somehow I feel that Terracota a.k.a. Earthenware, is something that holds our hand and takes us into nature. From reducing electricity consumption to lowering emission rates is always contributing to our nature, thus despite its brown colour terracotta is the new green.

The one thing about terracotta I find quite interesting about terracotta is its porosity. Due to its porous nature terracotta holds thousands of air pockets inside it and combining with its own thermal capacity, it acts as an excellent heat insulator.

But I am also a bit worried about one of its material constraints, its brittle and heavy nature. Whenever we talk about clay products we always think about something heavy and mounted. This constraints clay from many opportunity areas.
What if we had Terracotta Aeroplanes? Earthenware Iphones?
these questions don’t come into our brains for their practised and known material abilities.

and questions like these are racing in my mind all day.

Meanwhile, I found many interesting works on clay,

And some of the keywords I found during the process-

Sustainability
Cooling
Heating
Culture
Decoration
Gardening
Architecture
Accessory

And also I was finding studios and workshops around me that are working on Terracotta

Designlipi, Howrah

Art-Tech, Kolkata

Anupama Jalan

I am hoping I can learn a lot from these studios if I can visit them.

Primary Research

In this second week of the Simple Product Design module, we were asked to use Design Thinking tools like AEIOU in our domains and draft some design briefs on them.
I, doing a material-driven approach, was still confused as the commonly used D.T. tools have not a direct connection to material-driven approaches.

Thus I researched about it and found about Material Experience lab and how they use their design methods to promote material Experience and research about new materials. inspired by them, the first thing I did is to understand the ‘Material experience factors’ in terracotta.

Along with it I also developed the Material Properties chart after further research,

And the next step in my process was to gather down data on current uses of the material in the present day,

A survey was also conducted to study the User-material relationship and observe patterns,

survey form in a mobile interface

and the collected data were-

After the survey, it was noticed that people do have a positive feeling towards the material, but there was still a cloudy gap from the amount they want to spend after the material, this analysis encouraged me to find the reason behind this attitude and the factors which led to the decline of the wide-spread use of earthenwares.

And it was also observed that people connect terracotta to domains like potteries, decoration, gardening but rarely connect it with the field of electronics, and this gave me another impulse to explore this opportunity area!

when they heard about ‘terracotta electronics’( please ignore the lame joke)

gradually, the confusion grew less as I proceeded, gathering and categorizing the collected data as it became wase to analyze.

I continued studying about properties and manufacturing methods of Earthenware, to understand the material more.

manufacturing processes for clay

All these helped me to develop a material experience vision and have a good conceptual understanding of earthenware, and to overcome the confusion. Now I was clear enough what to do for the assigned task.

Meanwhile, my fascination with the thermal abilities of Terracotta grew more and I drafted my first design brief on a cooling solution,

AEIOU for brief 1

#brief 1- Design terracotta cooling solution for the household, which doesn’t emit CFCs and uses a negligible amount of power, and cools the surrounding.

I was also touched by the earthen miniature statues of Odisha,( which I mentioned in the previous blog) and wanted to design something which preserves cultures and focuses on emotional factors a bit more than functional aspects. And was also inspired by the traditional terracotta tiles in Bengal which have stories in them, and came up with the next brief.

AEIOU for brief 2

#brief 2- Design a mould kit consisting of different elements to make a story on a tile, so kids can make their own stories or their favourite stories by themselves.

While working from home for over a year, it was easy for me to observe around myself while working in-home and came up with the third brief-

AEIOU for brief 3

#brief 3- Design a laptop cooler platform by using the thermal capabilities of Terracotta

Evaluation results of these briefs and further processes will be discussed in the next blog. Have a good day!

Focussed research

It’s week 3 of the Simple Product design project, and we are gaining more clarity in the process. We are now done with the briefs discussion and the initial brief was selected and refined into-

‘Design a terracotta cooling solution for electronics in the household’

the reason behind choosing this brief is, as it addresses the present work-from-home scenario in which a large part of the population is involved, and I also get an opportunity to work with the thermal abilities of earthenware which was genuinely interested in.

Now, this opened a new stream of research in the process. I was advised to research how electronics are cooled. Here I came across the term, ‘thermal management! It was quite interesting to investigate and understand all the science, engineering and material aspects behind cooling systems of appliances in our daily life. It ranged from heat sinks in our computers to cooling oils in transformers we find in our desi streets.

thermal management technologies I noticed, from miro board,

Now we were asked to find major activities in our design brief and put down detailed observations on the EIOUs of those Activities( Environments, Interactions, Objects, Users). We were suggested to not just see things but notice them!

the EIOU lenses! (kidding, ignore)

It was quite difficult for me to make EIOU matrices in my project, as I didn’t have a particular product or service from beginning to map out activities, still, I tried to investigate and draft a matrix for an earthen pot in my house( as it is very commonly used and it uses the thermodynamic principles of clay as its function) and another one for my laptop cooling pad as it cools down the appliance and also very common.

Surveys and Interviews

I decided to take interviews of some users and conduct a survey as a part of my research, and to obtain more clarity about how people deal with heating issues in their appliances!

Also, a survey was conducted to understand the heating issues people suffer from their computers and other appliances, and how do they deal with it.

And according to the responses, people mostly find heating issues, in their computers and mostly in laptops.

major actions were taken by users to cool down their systems

And after analysing the collected data, it required more refinement in the brief, as I found people mostly use laptops and find their heating problems there.

By now it was pretty clear what my design brief is and what should I work upon in the next weeks.

And the immediate task was to research secondary material which I gave some technical constraints for the function it has to serve.

In the next week, I am going to find a material that will be suitable for this function and look for prototyping facilities.

Concepts

Simple Product Design- Conceptualization phase

After refinement of the final design brief, we needed to identify factors that we need to dig deeper into.

Along with identifying the factors, the target was also to interview experts from different fields to have vivid ideas and inputs from people’s fields of expertise.

After this conversation, many materials were found, which can be used as a barrier material on the product-electronic interface. Also, the second goal was to experiment with the efficiency of those materials.

the experiment was done by applying some of the materials on locally available earthen cups and keep them in a set-up to observe the heat flow.

a home-made set up for the observation

the cups were filled with hot water and were kept in a tub of water of normal temperature. And the temperature was recorded at three different time intervals.
This experiment, despite some imperfections, gave a lot of clarity on how the materials are absorbing heat and releasing them and the speed of the activities. This experiment also helped to study the surface absorption of water of those substances. Still, I wish to repeat this experiment in the opposite heat direction to have a more vivid understanding.

the terracotta potter I visited showed me how the manufacturing of earthen cups is done. These comprised mainly use-and-throw tea bhār( cup in Bengali), curd and sweet containers(100ml, 200ml and 500ml). The clay they use are found from the banks of Ganga( Hooghly in local), then they are cleared of stones, small beads and a refined form of clay is collected. the refined clay is then moved to the wheel, and over a thousand cups are made each day with two-man craftsmanship.

With these field visits, I was also developing some concepts which primarily consisted of a positive volume, while all these craftsmen work on negative volumes generally. They suggested other places where I can find craftsmen who work on things closer to what I was looking for.

Meanwhile, the concepts developed were-

I started up with basic forms, focussing on the function as a key aspect. I came up with ideas of where the laptop is to be kept on a platform, and that platform has to cool itself to absorb the heat away from the computer.

I drafted concepts where there will be a hollow earthen tank, which might be filled with water or water-absorbable particles like granules, sands etc, and the tank will cool itself in the same principle on which our desi matkas( pots ) keep the water cool. I also ideated heat maps to communicate the idea better.

a 3d render of the above concepts

I was also inspired by the heat sinks that how they use the maximum surface area for heat loss, and also incorporated that principle on the platform so that it can absorb and release heat faster along with the evaporative cooling capacity of terracotta.

By this time, my faculty suggested looking into the venturi effect F1 cars use for aerodynamic aspects. This literally got me excited and I dived into studying what venturi effects are and reminiscing the high school science lessons of Bernoulli’s Principle.

motivated!!!!!( ignore :i)

After getting a grasp of the scientific phenomenon and its practical application in cars, I made up some concepts

wind tunnel location and tunnel ideations

liquid cooling inside the platform

I was trying to amplify the heat management of terracotta by amalgaming it with fluid dynamics, air cooling and liquid cooling and was also looking forward to exploring aerodynamic cooling!

I also visited Kumortuli( the biggest potters hub in Kolkata) and found a variety of earthenware products and had insightful conversations majorly with clay idol makers and also got locations where large-scale manufacture is practices of terracotta products.

By this time, I interviewed a Ceramic artist based in Kolkata who is specialised in terracotta and has been practising for many years, and sone a lot of works in the famous Durga pujo pandals.

During the conversation, I learned about the material limits while manufacturing i.e., if we make hollow cuboidal forms with slabs they might have cracks after firing, thus we divided the form into two separate bodies while minimising the possibility of cracks in the surface.

sketch and cad model

And now, I wanted to combine the latest manufacture-friendly feature with the venturi tunnels I ideated,

and also a tower-based concept inspired by cooling towers in power stations.

with further functional refinement, the next target is to develop it ergonomically and aesthetically.

Refinement

After being introduced to the concept of the venturi effect, I tried to ideate tunnels for amplified cooling, over the evaporative cooling of terracotta. the intent is to keep the terracotta body cooler so that it can absorb heat from its surroundings.

A new part of the research was to identify the function of a radiator fan to suck out the air out of the tunnel so that it can create a vacuum inside, resulting in outer air rushing inside the tunnel from the other end.

The fan is to be run with a waterproof, brushless motor so that it is safe with the moist body of terracotta. The power o run the fan will be 5 volts, as it will be taking power from the laptop.

Also, there was a quest to find the right diameter of the tunnel, to keep it aligned with the radiator fan.

It was a nice experience to apply Bernoulli’s principle and the Venturi effect I learned in school, to apply in my work!

The next task was to make a simple mock-up to testify the principle. I designed a simpler version of the product and contacted a prototyping service provider with CAD references

The manufacturing method was mainly slip-casting and then joining semy-dry surfaces manually.

mould for slip-casting of POP

Then the concept is also refined and developed into a CAD model with real dimensions.

The manufacturing processes-

Terracotta body- Slip casting and slabbing

2. Aluminium body- Stamping

Final Concept

by now, the final form has been achieved with the help of feedback from faculty and further ideation

the product is targeted to a niche of the user spectrum- people who want to experience the almost lost material in a relevant, and functional way in their life.

In the survey, people couldn’t associate terracotta with electronics, they associated it with pottery, decoration, gardening, etc. This idea is also an experiment to challenge the stereotype.