muro | process book | 2020.06

Fur niture × Inclusive Playground

Have you ever imagined that? One day furniture can be turned into amusement facility, so that you and your children can make living room as a playground and create your own imaginary space. It's a magical cushion. It's so interesting that most furniture can’t keep up. It meets all your needs. Children can enjoy doodle, climbing, and playfulness with it. It's muro.

Design Process

Inspiration We par ticipated in a quick workshop and stimulated multiple ideas with the method of Design Sprint. We aimed to define happiness that we wanted to br ing to people and found out potential users. Our group unanimously agreed that novice parents and their children are target users. Nex t, we imagined the inconveniences in their lives. With user journey map, it’s more easily to find out the touch point where we could add our design for giving them happiness.

Interview

Find out the problems and the inconvenience In order to better understand the problems and the inconvenience encountered by novice parents in their lives, we conducted inte r v iews. Fo r obse r v ing th e inte ractio n b et we e n inte r v iewe es in actual f ield, we set the inter view location in the li ving room.

Despite the fact that we only inter viewed three families because of the COVID-19, we still benefited a lot. Not only did we get many answers to our questions, but we also received a good deal of unexpected feedback. What they responded in common was that they wanted to have fun with their children, but the living room space was too small to accommodate integral amusement facility.

Prototype Design more in line with kids We made a prototype with car tons and showed it to children. Our thought was to let the children join our team, make our design more in line with their expectations, and together create the space a nd ga mes to children’s taste. We thoug ht this p rocess was ver y interesting and vital, we had lots of fun with the children, and also stirred up various ideas.

Ideation

Form, Feelings, Function I n t his st ag e, we revo l ve d a ro u n d t h e i d e a of c o mb inin g f u r ni t u re w i t h a n in clu si ve playgrou nd, inclu ding shap e, mecha nism, a nd size. Fu r ther mo re, we discusse d the functionality about interaction between our actual product and the field, and considered the merits of the product, good cleanliness and good storage.Additionally, we made mood board style setting and CMF design. We finally decided to use the color and the composition of Memphis style, and chose a clean, scratch-resistant structural material.

Modeling

Put great idea into action W e m a d e a 1: 3 s c a l e d - d o w n m o d e l a n d c r e ate d t h e s c e n a r i o of playground. We conducted some material testing and tried to achieve not only the feelings but also the structural strength.

More varieties, more realstic I n o r d e r t o m a k e t h e m o d e l m o r e r e a l i s t i c, w e used various materials We made our base through c a r p e nt r y, c o n s u l te d t h e t r a d i t i o n a l s ofa ex p e r t about cushion production techniques ,and developed framework with 3D printed models.

Final layout

Build playground at home It creates a playground.

It stimulates your creativity.

It promotes interaction between family.

Usage of muro

Smooth angle adjustment Muro is usually in the form of a chair cushion, which can be unfolded when needed. According to your demands, dif ferent angles of muro can be adjusted , so that your form of play is without restriction.

Va r i o u s f o r m s o f p l a y Muro is much more interesting above your expectaion.

Children can not only build their own castle, but also climb and doodle. What's more, with our considerately designed playground equipments, they interact with parents, learn from the game and create a good memor y of parent-child.

CE fam. Design Trio

Clarence Lai

Grace Chen

Bruce Chen