Future Now was a great project to work on in my opinion as it made me put my skills to test. At the start of project, we were put into a ‘design consultancy’ which included 2 Product Designers, 2 Architectural Designers, 2 Textile Designers and 1 Interior Designer. This made me excited from start as I knew I could learn different skills outside of my subject area. We was then given a brand and a product, in our case it was Swatch as the brand and Coffee Percolator. Once we was given the brand and product, I felt extremely nervous as I knew nothing about Swatch and absolutely nothing about a Coffee Percolator. I guess this wasn’t really bad thing. With a lot of research, my understanding of the brand and product was huge.
The task we was given as a consultancy was to negotiate and collaborate on researching the brand and projecting its future design strategy. Each designer within the consultancy developed their own individual design response to the brief but it was developed as part of a collective idea on the future brand representation.
As a Product Designer. My role was to design a Coffee Percolator which aligned with the brand Swatch. Tricky task right? A brand that makes watches, what would a percolator looked like if Swatch made one?
I started researching into Swatch as brand as thorough as possible, I then started ideation.
As a group we wanted to follow the main feature right through all of our work. That feature was ‘Time’ we felt like this was a massive aspect to follow right through the project to make it a successful one. For the ‘space’, we understood that the mechanics behind a watch was huge so we came up with the idea of an exploded watch. This aspect, was used as the main feature in the stairs of the space with the elevator in the middle of the building and the stairs built around, from this, we had floors coming off the centre, to make it look like the floors were moving. We was successful in making this happen.
Back to the product, I developed a few ideas with the watch face on the percolator. Swatch is a sustainable company so I thought it would be important for my product to be sustainable. By achieving this, I thought, why not be able to design your own percolator that you change the design of when you want.
Here is an example of the idea I had:
I got feedback from potential clients and the member in the consultancy and I had great feedback. I then went on to modelling and prototyping this product
I wanted it to be lightweight
Easy to use
And have an attractive interface
Heres a few sketches of my final design
Overall, from this project I gained many skills such as being able to contribute as a group, be able to negotiate, and be able to present my work confidently.
KristianCrockerDesign 