THE 5 CHAIRS CHALLENGE

My user, Ralph is a high schooler who spends 8 hours a day in class. Most of the time, Ralph has to sit in uncomfortable chairs, sitting up and facing the front of the room. When Ralph moves between classes, he carries a large backpack. When he gets to class he needs a place to put his stuff.

I identified that he has to spend such a long time to sit in class and he has to carry a large backpack.Therefore, he needs a comfortable,soften seat and a hanger, a drawer under the chair or what for putting his stuff.

Designed 3 chairs for my user.

Tried to add on hanger and soften seat for him.

Tried to satisfy his requirements but failed and used a long narrow piece of cardboard to support it to stand.

Bent the chair from the top and used too much wires on top.

Lead to the legs of the chair can't support the weight and can't stand.

Ralph can hang his beg on the chair.

The chair is more heavy than I expected so the legs of the chairs just can reach to this high.

Cut the toothpicks into half and assembled a chair by using tapes.

Too focus on the seat, no enough time for the legs.

DISCUSSION QUESTION

I enjoy working the most with the material clay because for me, it is more easier to shape the chair out in 5 mins. In contrast with modeling clay, cardboard is the material that I like the least. As I enjoy working the most with the material clay. As it required to cut it out in 5 mins, cannot use glue, cannot sketch on the cardboard before cutting and the chair had to able to stand, that make me feel like don't know where should I start to cut and where should I stop, it's really hard to cut the shape out. In my opinion, the chair molded by modeling clay is best expresses the essence of the chair that I drew( the 3rd design ). Along the way, I had changed my ideas and tried to keep the chair more and more simplify. For example, I had taken the legs of chair away and also the hanger. I think I had learnt a lot from my prototypes such as I have to make sure that my speed is not too slow in the process so that I can complete the process in time. By keep changing the ideas, I realize that sometimes I need to give up some parts of my ideas, otherwise I can't continue and complete my process. Honestly, I really get stuck when cutting the chair by only using scissors and cardboard. I had tried few times to cut out the shape but all failed, many of them cannot stand. I feel like very anxiety and nervous because the limited time. As the forth times I tried, I finally cut out a standing representation of cardboard chair successfully. It's a direction for me when build the chairs using the design principles I identified. Based on that, I can design the chairs more functional and more comfortable for my user. It was like I'm finding a most suitable chairs for him as creating different iterations of my design because different materials have different properties, have to mold in different way and the final outcomes definitely would be different.