proto 3

proto 3 ii

Continuing on, I assembled the hinge assembly and was surprised by how nice it was to use. The gears meshed well, and were very smooth to use. Conducting user testing, all my users liked the initial feel - however some of them said that they could not judge their overall opinion until there was equal weight on either side. This was a very valid point as the difference in weight of the sides gave a very distinct feeling in the hinge. However this was still encouraging news. What was less encouraging though was the utter failure of my money clip to work as a bottle opener. When trying to open a bottle of Lidl’s finest the points on it broke. I predict that this is down both to my design being too thin, as well as the difference in the colour printing and mono printing multijet fusion processes, as the material scored and marked far easier than the mono. This would lead me to believe that it is softer and easier to break and malform. However, I had printed these and bar this design flaw the money clip worked well, with the right amount of flexiblity to hold either a single note of a large bunch of tickets. I didn’t see the need to re-make these, especially as I would have to pay for them in round 3 of printing. Therefore I decided just not to market the fact there was meant to be a bottle opener in the first place when creating the branding and marketing for the product.