Terra for the new era- Focussed reasearch
Rishiraj Ghosh
2nd year Industrial Design
National Institute of Design, Andhra Pradesh
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!
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 computer 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.
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.
to be continued…have a good day!
