Carissa Carter developed Steame’ at Stanford’s
Product Realization Lab during her first year as a student in the Joint Program in Design. Conceived as a final project for ME203, Carissa explored silicone casting in order to bring her idea to life. The main take away for Carissa while making her steamer was discovering the power of an iterative design process. Her project was as much about the process as the final product, and so she spent a lot of her time in the initial phases. Carissa told us, “With each new mold I made, casting I poured, rod I milled, and tube I bent, I improved my technique and figured out the details that would make my project work.” Like many of her classmates from the Joint Program in Design, ME203 was Carissa’s first engineering class, and the PRL served as a gateway to the world of product design. “Because I used many of the PRL resources while working on Steame’ I came to see the PRL as a manufacturing and prototyping resource throughout the year. With each manufacturing challenge that I faced, it was great to be able to draw from the collective knowledge and perspectives of the TA’s and instructors.” The following case study is a transcription of a conversation we had with Carissa.