夜間night*mode

One of the main issues which my final year project, 夜間night*, tried to solve was young people using their mobile phone too much in bed and not getting enough sleep. There was a sense all through out the project that it could be taken further on the software side of things. I was massively disappointed when my idea for an accompanying application could not be made due to iOS developer limitations. This led to the shelving of the application idea and the focus remained on the physical project.

Recently, in an attempt to get back into the way of thinking, I decided to revisit the idea of a software based 夜間night* but look at it from a different angle. Taking the computer as the main focus and the application I blogged about a while ago, f.lux, I wanted to combine the two to envisage what I am calling 夜間night*mode.

Computer screens are generally bad for your eyes. However, this is more apparent at night when the ambient light is lower and the stark blue light from the computer screen can cause eye strain. F.lux gives the screen warmer tones, matching it more to the artificial lighting found in your home (my f.lux setting at the moment is the equivalent of halogen or 3400k).

夜間night*mode expands the idea of f.lux into what I would imaging being a feature built into computer operating systems. Not only would it change the colour temperature of the screen, but it would make a whole host of visual changes to the computer to make it easier on they eye, which would subsequently help reduce eye strain and help the user get to sleep.

Even though this is just a concept and the result of an afternoon of work, it does provide an endless scope of possibilities to take 夜間night* and turn it into something that will actually be of use to someone. Additionally, with the launch of iOS6 and ‘Do Not Disturb’ there may be a renewed possibility of making a mobile application more relating to my project once more. But that is for another time as I have another personal project that is in the sidelines waiting to be completed.

A full write up can be found on the project page I made for it on behance (click here or on the image below).

Fourth Year: Solution to Painting Problem

A real progress update this time. It has been a week since my last post concerning the paint on the project. A week has passed and things are starting to look up I suppose. The spray paint that effectively ruined the pieces had to be binned because it looked terrible when applied. Thankfully a solution was come to. Emulsion paint. Unfortunately, this has meant that a lot more effort has had to be put in and a week was wasted pursuing the spray paint.

Two different emulsion paints were bought, matte black and a white. When applied, dried and sanded down to a smooth finish they looked quite good. A polish was applied and the appearance looked even better, though it did show up imperfections caused from the sandpaper such as deep scratches.

Over the past week I have been working almost non stop trying to get the coats of paint thick enough so that when they are sanded down, the wood/primer doesn’t start to show. Because of this, the white one has had well over 10 coats of paint applied. The black one has been problematic too. Because of the extreme difficulty in removing the original spray paint from the part, the matte paint was applied on top. Whilst this may not seem too bad, when it comes to sanding it down, things start to go wrong. It is fine on the sides but on the top and detail of the phone slot, it makes everything a little too rounded and the surface is a pain to get smooth.

In hindsight I probably should have got someone to paint it for me, but if they messed it up and I had to start again then I would have been in big trouble.

After well over 6 hours of sanding today, they are very nearly finished. The black one just needs the top detail finished off and the white one needs touched up in places and it also needs the top part finished. The two bases are almost there too. Fingers crossed that tomorrow will be the last day of sanding.

The paint does have me worried in a number of ways though. The only one that I am going to put on here is the fact that it has added too much thickness to the MDF parts so instead of a smooth seamless join between them and the acrylic block, there is a notieable step. I do not know how much of a problem it will be to rectify but it is annoying me very much. With only three weeks left until the final hand in, I was hoping to have finished this almost a month ago. There is only setback after setback at the moment.

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#169 I still need some baffles…

The impending electronics drive is soon to start as soon as a soldering iron with a fine tip makes its way to me. Practicing PicAXE programming is the order of the day when it gets underway. One thing I would need for all this prototyping is wire, and to save it from getting tangled up in a big mess I made this… and I say made, all I did was make some holes in the plastic bit of this coffee jar and there you go, a wire dispenser.

The only thing I might end up doing is to make some baffles or rearrange the way in which the wire is wound just to keep them separate and not get tangled up, but for the time being it is very simple and works. What more do I need.

#117 D&AD Draft Boards

Draft boards for the D&AD project. A few minor changes are yet to be made but it is nearly there.

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#113 Backwards Cars: Part III

Another installment of Backwards Cars. This time a Ford Focus RS500, with a video I quickly put together.

#111 Design Products D&AD – IP32001

Three weeks into this semester seems like an ideal time to talk about this modules project. After the shambles that was last semester, it is refreshing to be back on a project where you are not put under as much pressure. This should mean that the work produced should be better.

The project for this semester is based on ones set by D&AD for their student awards competition. We had a choice of 4 set by different companies who sponsor the competion:

1. Michelin: Create a unique product for MICHELIN that would provide real life assistance to high risk motorists in a roadside emergency situation.
2. The Body Shop: Design a contemporary range of packaging for The Body Shop that unites their brand values with the premium nature of the products.
3. Oxfam: Present an idea that engages support for Oxfam by triggering shared values and concerns in a wide range of people.
4. E.ON: Engage generation “Y” in a relationship with E.ON that champions new ways to use energy in the home and empowers them to enlist others in an energy revolution.

Of the four briefs, I chose to do the one set by Michelin, as it was, in a way, about cars, which I like… very much…

Week 1: In the first week of the project, we sat down in groups, depending on the brief that we had chosen, and discussed the brief. What were they asking us to do? What sort of situation might you be in? Have we been in an accident or other roadside emergency ourselves? After this we were given a week to carry out as much research as we possibly could regarding the company and what sort of area we might like to focus on. I contacted a few roadside emergency services, such as the AA and the RAC asking numerous questions, from which I got no response*. A questionnaire was also constructed and posted somewhere where I knew I would get numerous responses and I was not disappointed. The results given were rich in information and provided a deep insight into what people thought. This along with masses of secondary research gave huge amounts to work with, which was useful for the following week.

Week 2: At the start of week two, we went into the groups once again and discussed what we found out. This then led onto the brainstorming of various different ideas to get us thinking. Different insights and scenarios were also thought of so the idea generation could be continued on as we saw fit. Group discussion over we were to go away and in the style that is synonymous with the product design course here, we were to come up with 100 ideas (which I don’t think is the most effective way of idea generation) for the following week, but this time in the format of an A0 sheet and not a sketchbook as this was thought to make the process easier. In fact it made it a little more awkward. I had the sheet stuck on my wall in my room, and was planning on recording it just to show the process of the 100 ideas but the time it took, eventually led me to scrap that idea after only a small amount of time recording.

Week 3: The 100 ideas were whittled down to 3 and the sheet was handed in. The three ideas (shown below) had to be decided and developed over the course of this next week. This along with a first draft of a scenario board had to be completed in the short space of time. As of this moment in time, I am quite far on in the development part and have pretty much completed the scenario board, which says how the product might be used by the user, and this is, as far as I am aware, at a further point that most other people on the course. The idea which was chosen after receiving feedback from a number of people, was the idea of a high visibility flag or flap which hangs down from the bootlid of a car. This would make the car and driver much more visible when they are broken down at the side of the road.

*The no response was in regard to that week that the research was needed. Today (February 4th, and well into week 3 of the project) I received an email from the RAC with their responses to my rather hastily put together questions, so thank you to them greatly, albeit a bit late.

#102 An Idea

Click for a bigger version…

#96 Laptop Bag

Now that the semester has finished, I can get on and show you the main focus of my efforts this semester, my laptop bag.

The basic idea behind this bag, apart from it needing to be designed for myself, was that there are times when people do not have enough room to carry all that they are wanting to carry in their laptop bag. This left with the simple principle of making it modular. A main laptop bag was supplemented with a number of smaller bags in order to achieve what I was looking for. These smaller bags were attached to the main bag using belts or straps. This gave a very distinctive appearance.

Overall I am relatively happy with the outcome of the bag, but there are quite a few parts of it which I feel as though could have been carried out better. Anyways, here are the pictures.

#95 NCR Boards

Part of the main product design module this semester was for the NCR Student Competition, held with a number of Product Design Courses at Universities in Scotland. Having been one of the ones chosen to go through and present at the final event, I pulled out due to the amount of other work that was needing to have been done for the course at that particular time (amongst other reasons).

The following boards show what my final idea was. The basic concept was for those living in rural india to be able to record, share and view other videos on a device aimed at helping those with their own small business advertise themselves to try and increase their income. It was called RECORD.

#80 Volvo V60 BTCC

In my ongoing trials of my Wacom Bamboo and Photoshop CS5, I am continuing on with doing various different things on photoshop. One of my most recent completed pieces of work (for fun I should add) is this Volvo V60 BTCC car. It is taking a modern spin on what it would be like if Volvo would re-enter the BTCC with an estate car, in a similar way to which they entered the 850 estate in the 1990′s. A car which captured my imagination and cemented my adoration of Volvo’s ever since.

It is just an idea and it is a bit rough around the edges, I was quite annoyed that I was unable to find a decent background for it instead of the one found on the source image, but those are minor details in the grand scheme of things and I’m sure that it will not detract from the finished image.

Find below the image, a video of me making it. This was the first one to be completed fully on my MacBook, whereas all my previous videos have been done exclusively on my iMac as it can definitely cope much better than the laptop. It’s keeping me busy, when university and everything else isn’t.