NIDOO Final Report

EPS

2015

Valencia Furniture for Children Supervisor:Gabriel Songel Eva Hermans Yi Jhen Wang Kris Krysiak Fanny Gädda Laura van Poppel

ABSTRACT Eva Hermans, Yi Jhen Wang, Kris Krysiak, Fanny Gädda, Laura van Poppel, UPV, Valencia Abstract of EPS, Submitted 18 December 2015 Project Furniture for Children

The goal of this project is to design a piece of furniture for children. The interest in the subject is what the different members of the design group has brought together. The group strives to include a playful element in the furniture and to give it multiple purposes.

This report provides a chronological overview of the steps that were made and the methods that were used. The report first issues inspiration and research with concluding decisions that have been made. The second part shows the idea generation of the design of the furniture. The third stage consist of detailed research and the making of the product and finally the result with the market launch is addressed.

The result is a completely working prototype, which is used in a photoshoot and will be introduced on the market.

I

Table of Contents

01 02 03 04 05

Abstract Table of Contents List of Figures List of Tables Preface

I II III IV V

Introduction 1.1 Nidoo 1.2 The Team

1 3 4

Inspiration

5

Wide research 3.1 Competitors 3.2 Trends 3.3 Childs Research

9 9 16 21

Primary decisions 4.1 Childs age 4.2 Aim 4.3 Program of Demands and Wishes 4.4 Target Market 4.5 Persona 4.6 Direction choosing

29 30 30 31 34 36 39

Directions 5.1 The Five Directions 5.2 Choosing Two Directions 5.3 Research and Design 5.4 Pros and Cons

41 41 56 56 64

06 07

Concepts 6.1 Fourty Ideas 6.2 Choosing and Categorising 6.3 Five Concepts 6.4 Chosen Concepts

65 65 69 71 77

Final Product 7.1 Material Study 7.2 Color Study 7.3 Pattern Study 7.4 Forces 7.5 Additional Details

80 81 84 87 89 90

08

Production

91

09

Price

94

10

Marketing Launch 10.1 Pre-Launch 10.2 Launch 10.3 Post-Launch

95 96 98 98

11

II Prototype

99

12

Photoshoot

107

13

Discussion

113

14

Evaluation

117

15

Conclusion

121

16

List of References

123

List of Imagines

1 .Introduction 1.1 – Timeline for the project 1.2 – The logo of Nidoo 1.3 – Team members 2. Inspiration 2.1 – Inspiration collage 1 2.2 – Inspiration collage 2 2.3 – Inspiration collage 3 3. Wide research 3.1 – Images Rimobel 3.2 – Images Ikea 3.3 – Images Meblik 3.4 – Images Flexa 3.5 – Images Gris Alba Decoración 3.6 – Images Micuna 3.7 – Trend 1 3.8 – Trend 2 3.9 – Trend 3 3.10 – Trend grid 4. Primary decisions 4.1 – Visuals of the three target groups 4.2 – Persona 4.3 – Visual of box 4.4 – Visual of closet 4.5 – Visual of table 4.6 – Visual of cube

4.7 – Visual of carpet 5. Directions 5.1 – Sketch of box 5.2 – Direct competitor’s products 5.3 – Indirect competitor’s products 5.4 – Competitors with toys for cribs 5.5 – Sketch of closet 5.6 – Direct competitor’s products 5.7 – Closet combined with beds 5.8 – Playful closets 5.9 – Sketch of table 5.10 – Play tables 5.11 – Play tables 5.12 – Table similar to what we want to achieve 5.13 – Sketches cubes 5.14 – Cubes that form furniture 5.15 – Cubes forming a playground 5.16 – Imagines of carpet 5.17 – Sketches how can you..? , for the cube 5.18 – The three ideas for the cube 5.19 – OM Chinese manufacturer 5.20 – Italian cube concept 5.21 – Online reactions to products similar to the cube 5.22 – Sketches how can you..? , for

the table 5.23 – The two ideas for the table 5.24 – Example of games for the table 6. Concepts 6.1 – Morphological chart 6.2 – Example chart 6.3 – Sketches of concept 1a 6.4 – Sketches of consept 1b 6.5 – Sketches of concept 2 6.6 – Sketches of concept 3 6.7 – Sketches of concept 4 6.8 – Visualization and technical drawings of the chosen concept 7. Final Product 7.1 – Plywood 7.2 – Synthetic materials 7.3 – Faux Leather 7.4 – Chenille 7.5 – Acrylic synthetic fibers 7.6 – Natural materials 7.7 – Cotton 7.8 – Linen 7.9 – Fabric pattern collage 7.10 – Color collage 7.11 – The three chosen color pallets 7.12 – The nine different combinations

III

for the three different color pallets 7.13 – The three chosen color concepts 7.14 – Wood pattern collage 7.15 – The three concepts with the wooden pattern 7.16 – Forces 7.17 – Hidden zipper 1 7.18 – Hidden zipper 2 8. Production 8.1 – Preparation of a plywood plates 8.2 – Preparation of the foam shapes 8.3 – Cutting of a textile 8.4 – Coating the foam with the textile 8.5 – Final assembly 10. Marketing Launch 10.1 – Visual of the marketing launch process 11. Prototype 11.1 – The pieces in wood with dimensions 11.2 – Wood joints 11.3 – Wood triangle in corner 11.4 – Pattern in wood for prototype 11.5 – CNC-machine cutting the pattern

11.6 – Process of grind the edges and glueing the pieces together 11.7 – The final wood piece 11.8 – Imagines of the two different foams 11.9 – Dimensions of Styrofoam and the soft green foam 11.10 – Cutting the Styrofoam and the final shape 11.11 – Glueing the Styrofoam pieces together 11.12 – Final foam part for our prototype 11.13 – The two different color pallets 11.14 – The sewing results 11.15 – The final prototype 12. Photoshoot 12.1 – KUBOO goes kindergarten 12.2 – Collage of the furniture use 12.3 – Collage of the playing use 13. Discussion 13.1 – Colors being used in the different models of the KUBOO

VI

List of Tables 3. Wide research Table 3.1 – Measurement on children 5. Directions Table 5.1 – Competitors for the cube Table 5.2 – Tables already existing on the market 6. Concepts Table 6.1 – Forty ideas from morphological chart Table 6.2 – The sectioned ideas Table 6.3 – Section 1 grading Table 6.4 – Section 2 grading 9. Price Table 9.1 – Price table 1 Table 9.2 – Price table 2

V

PREFACE 18 December 2016

The purpose of the report is to provide a clear an chronolocigal

overview of the process for the reader. The report is written for the supervisor, cordinator and everyone, who is interested in the project.

This project could not have been realised without the help of the following people: first of all, our supervisor Gabriel Songel, who has helped us throughout the whole project with decision making, providing information, trips, facilities, resources and general support.

Secondly, Pedro Fuentes, our cordinaor, for the general help, lectures and trips. Thirdly, Pedro form the worksshop, who has been a great help with making the prototype. Finally, the people form Micuna, for the interesting tour and further advises. The auhors stand open for comments on the process, please contact us if there is anything to be improved.

NIDOO studio

01 1

Introduction We are a five membered

international and interdisciplanary design team named Nidoo. Nidoo is a newly found group which has as goal to design a new piece of furniture for children. This piece of furniture will fill a gap in the market and will form a wanted and innovitive product. The process to get to the final product will be explained in this report. The report will take you through all the stages we went through in a chronological order, visualised in image 1.1.

Firstly, there will be a more detailled description of us: who is Nidoo and why Nidoo? After getting to know our team better, the search for inspiration will be displayed.

In this section lots of products are visualised, so a primary idea of the posibillities and the market can be formed. Going through the inspiration brings

us to the first stage of research: a broad research on competitors, trends and children. This will provide some knowlegde of the current market and the users designed for. Following the research are primary decisions that needed to be made. Hereafer, the idea generation starts, firstly on the area of design directions and secondly on the forming of concepts. When the final concept is formed, some further studies have been done, exploring all the aspects of the final product .

Finally the production process, the price and the marketing laungh will be explained. This all results in the making of a prototype and doing a photoshoot. We hope you will enjoy reading about our process and journey towards our final product.

image 1.1

2

RESEARCH

IDEATION

Sep

DESIGN

PILOT

Nov Oct

Dec PROJECT COMMUNICATION

BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT Milestone

MARKETING LAUNCH

LAUNCH

3

Introduction

1.1 Nidoo The name Nidoo, is in fact

similar to a Spanish word: Nido, which means ‘nest’. The chosing of the name was done by associating lots of words with what the furniture should provide as an experience.

There has been thought of words like ‘cosy’, ‘playful’, ‘house’, ‘fun’, ‘kids’, ‘seat’, ‘comfort’ and so on.

Hereafter, there has been a translation of these words into Spanish. When the word ‘nido’ came to us, it had our preference immediatly, since

the word ‘nest’ provides an association with home and comfort. After choosing the name, the logo has been made and an extra ‘O’ was added to Nido so it became ‘Nidoo’. The oo’s of word Nidoo has been combined with the image of an owl, an animal that is often connected with ‘smart’ and ‘learning’.

The logo resulted in a playful visual with the colors green and orange, delibaretely chosen for being unisex. The logo is shown in image 1.2.

image 1.2

4

Introduction

1.2 The Team

O

ur team is a mix of students from all around the world, but also all different studies and background cultures. This makes us a strong international and interdisciplinary team.

Yi -Jhen

Fanny

image 1.3

Laura

Eva

Kris

Yi Jhen Wang , 22, studies Graphic Design in YunLin, Taiwan.

- illustration - Strict worker - planning and preparing COMMUNICATION: she takes care of communication with Gabriel, Pedro; she is partly in charge of organizing the calendar.

Laura van Poppel , 20, studies industrial design in Delft, Holland.

- Creative - Strong in the technical part - experienced in teamwork LEADER: she leads the planning on each meeting.

Kris Krysiak , 25, studies Management in Poland.

- Technical - Commerce - Spanish MARKETING RESPONSIBLE Fanny Gädda , 21, studies Building Engeneering in Vasa, Finland.

- Punctuality - Teamwork - Visualizing MEDIATOR: gets everybody back to the workflow when we are out of it.

Supervisor:Gabriel Songel

Eva Hermans , 21, studies Product Development in Antwerp, Belgium.

- Experiences with children - can work with inDesign and Photoshop - Technical (maths and physics) SECRETARY: takes care of the blog, the calendar and box.

5

02

Inspiration

To

be able to design furniture for children, some inspiration, collected in different ways, was needed.

Firstly, our team has visited the shops throughout the city to be able to gather knowlegde of what is currently on the market and what would catch our attention.

Although searching for inspiration in shops has a great value, the search for inspiration on the internet could not miss in this research, since there is far more available online than in specific stores. The inspiration came from Pinterest, Google and different websites of bloggers and brands. The images that inspired us are collected in a collage, ordered by color, and shown in the next pages. It gives a nice overview of the enviroments and existing products for children.

image 2.1

6

7

image 2.2

Inspiration

Inspiration

8

image 2.3

9

03

Wide research I

n the first stage of the research the competitors are studied roughly to give an insight of what is offered on the market. Furthermore there has been research on trends: what is growing on the market and what is interesting for us to know. Another important part is the research on children. In order to be able to design for children there has been gathered knowledge about their development, behavior, interests, toys and sizes. These researches are explained in detail below.

3.1 Competitors To start the research a rough competitor

analyses has been made. This is done to receive an overview of the biggest children furniture companies currently on the market.

The product portfolio, style, material and unique selling points are studied so it is known what they offer and how they present themselfs. The different companies and studied subjects are listed below: Rimobel, BM, Ikea, Meblik, Flexa, Gris Alba, Micuna.

10

Wide research

1

Rimobel

image 3.1

PRODUCT OFFER

STYLE

UNIQUE SELLING POINTS

Rimobel offers separate pieces of furniture and combined pieces. Examples of those combined pieces are beds with drawers, closets or pull-out couches included. This makes their products very compact and space efficient.

Rimobel has a very compact and strakke style.

The compact style is also visible through the combining of furniture pieces is a space efficient manner. They don’t use unnecessary decoration and it seems that form follows the function in the designs.

The furniture is mostly white with an aspect that is colored, these aspects are offered in different colors. They also offer fully colored furniture.

The color theme is consistent throughout all the different pieces of furniture, what makes matching separate pieces possible. The material they use is wood.

The points with which Rimobel promotes itself are their constant innovation in technology, their guarantee and support of quality to the demand of the market. They claim to adapt quickly to changes in the market, to offer the best quality-price ratio.

They also state to offer an unique style and service prior and subsequent to sale.

11

Wide research

2

Ikea

image 3.2

PRODUCT OFFER

STYLE

UNIQUE SELLING POINTS

Ikea offers almost the full assortment of furniture for children. They have split their product portfolio into three different age groups: babies, children between the age of 3-7, children between the age of 8-12. They offer the pieces of furniture, displayed above, adjusted to each age group.

Ikea offers a lot of different styles: the designs differ from very simple to more detailed or decorated, although the main style remains simplistic.

Some pieces are somewhat more playful and colorful while other are consistent of basic colors or the original color of the wood. Most pieces of furniture are offered in different colors. The material mostly used is wood, metal and plastic is used as well but in smaller amounts.

Ikea promotes mostly with the fact that their products are affordable to many people.

They also claim to combine function, quality, design and value with sustainability in mind.

12

Wide research

3

Meblik PRODUCT OFFER

STYLE

UNIQUE SELLING POINTS

Meblik has split their offers in three different groups: babies, children and teenagers. They offer the sets of furniture displayed above for every age group.

They offer their products in different themes: the furniture is partly covered in prints or colors. These are going from very detailed and playful, like animal and Disney themes, to more basic styles, like color themes. The main color of the furniture is white and the pieces themselves are quit basic. The combination with the prints makes the design playful and standing out. The material being used is wood.

Meblik advertises to be different with their 3d patterns on the furniture. They also state to be customer oriented, to guarantee quality and to be affordable.

image 3.3

13

Wide research

Flexa 4

image 3.4

PRODUCT OFFER

STYLE

UNIQUE SELLING POINTS

Flexa divides their product offers into two catagories: play and baby. The play department offers the furniture above for children and the baby department of course for babies. They also combine furniture, especially beds with other beds, drawers or slides.

They also offer cribs that grow with the child.

Flexa has a basic style, they don’t offer a lot of products but they do offer the most furniture used in the bedroom.

They offer their products in the original color of the wood or when colored mostly in four different colors: white, green, pink and yellow. The material mainly used is wood.

Flexa claims to provide a safe and stimulating environment.

They offer adjustable products and products that grow with the children and the state to have a lot of knowledge of children as well. Finally they say to be sustainable and affordable.

14

Wide research

Gris Alba 5 Decoraciรณn PRODUCT OFFER

STYLE

UNIQUE SELLING POINTS

Gris alba decoration also uses the combination of other furniture with beds, like other beds and drawers.

The style they use contains a lot playful elements like roudings and cut figures like stars. They use these elements in most products but also offer more simplistic designs. The color mostly used is white or cream, they also use the original color of the wood. In some products there are small colored parts but no further fully colored pieces. The material used is wood.

They say to offer warm colors that are ideal for small rooms and that the furniture is customized so you can customize your room with them.

image 3.5

15

Wide research

6

Micuna

image 3.6

PRODUCT OFFER

STYLE

UNIQUE SELLING POINTS

Micuna’s main focus lies on cribs and cradles. The also offer cribs that grow with the child.

Micuna offers a very soft, lovely, baby-childish style: they include roundings in their products, decorate them with animals and use soft colors.

The color mostly used is white or cream but also the original color of the wood or soft pastel colors are used. The material mainly used is wood but the chairs of cribs could also partly be from textile.

Micuna advertises with the safety of their products and their good quality. They also claim to have commitment to an innovative spirit, values and customers.

16

Wide research

3.2 Trends

To fit the product in the trends on

this moment, an analysis was made on the current trends. We looked up 18 trends on this moment. For each trend there is a short expalanation. Sometimes there is a small overlap between the trends, but still they are all (slightly) different. After analysing all the trends we put them in a grid. The two arrows on the grid are ‘Social-Digital’ to ‘Social-Real life’ and ‘Material’ to ‘Concept’. In the grid all the trends got a spot as they are scaled on the arrows. This way we could easily find out what trends are most popular and interesting for the furniture.

1

Link the real Product to an App on your phone

image 3.7

It is no surprise that this is an important trend. Nowadays everybody uses a smartphone, or other smart devices.They replace a lot of things we used to have differnt stuff for. There exist a lot of examples of this trend : from the app for Valenbisi, until the Nike running app. It is becoming very common.

DIY & Hand Made things

image 3.8

3 Ecological Design In a world were everything is getting so automated, people seem to try to go back to the pure, artisan and crafted products.

Do it yourself and crafts are very popular. Through social platforms as Pinterest ideas for it are even very accesible for everyone. For lots of people it is a creative way to use rubbish and garbage in an ecological and economical way again. On internet there are lots of examples of people and their little DIY-projects.

2

In a world were everything is getting so automated, people seem to try to go back to the pure, artisan and crafted products.

Do it yourself and crafts are very popular. Through social platforms as Pinterest ideas for it are even very accesible for everyone. For lots of people it is a creative way to use rubbish and garbage in an ecological and economical way again. On internet there are lots of examples of people and their little DIY-projects.

image 3.9

17

Wide research

4

Cocooning

7

Compact Design

6

Because of the growing overpopulation in lots of cities, people start living smaller than they used to. Because of the fewer space, compact design is becoming more popular. Products that save space in the house in any way can be useful.

For example products wit multiple use or that you can easily store when you are not using it.

Creating theme inspired rooms are, especially for children, very popular.

There are lots of examples of themed rooms with extra playing functions.

Intuitive design is simple design, so it is easy to use for the user. The feeling that the user gets by using the product is very important. The product has to be possible to use without explanation. You should be able to use as you feel like it should work. The design includes less is more and simple solutions.

More and more people love to stay home en get comfortable in their own homes, stay away from the rough reality. It is a very common trend predicted by Faith Popcorn.

People don’t go outside their houses if they don’t have to or less often than they used to. Very known examples: home delivery for food, clothes, electronic products and lots of other products, home cinema, parties at home,and so on.

Icon Toppling

Multitasking

Vintage

Rest Space

Western people nowadays are very critical. That is why manufacturers and designers have to think about their image to minimalize these critics as much as possible. Again, this trend as already predicted by Faith Popcorn. Transparant design and communication about the whole life of the product is a must.

In the modern world people have less time but more to do. Products that fulfill more than one task at the same time are very popular (all kinds of apps on one phone for example).Again, the trend is to want more for less.

Trends from the past are trendy again. We see it in fashion but also in other products. For example the polaroid is very trendy again, or old phones like the Nokia3310.

8

Intuitive Design

5

Themed Rooms

9

10

In the bussy world we live in, people try to find rest again. Companies start creating work spaces with child-areas as well. They do it so the employers can find a place and a moment to rest as well. However, there are also other new ways of creating chilling-areas.For example,nowadays everybody is constantly botherd by their phones, iPads, computers and other electronic devices.

We are constantly online, and standby to work. People want to find rest again, turn off the wifi for a while, and have a healthy in between online and offline life.

11

18

Wide research

Online Marketing

Especially for us as we are designing something for the interior of the house the service around the products are very important. It includes a lot of things like advice, delivery,montage,repair,... the most important about service with products is the service after selling.

Nowadays, advertising on social media is very popular. This is not really a surprise as most people spend hours a day online. Lots of apps are even for ‘free’ you only need to accept that there will be advertising on it. Companies try to tell (short) stories on social media to catch the attention of the customers.

They can easliy make the marketing adapted to each customer because there is lot of information about a person on their accounts.

Sustainable Design

Bring the Outdoors in

Modular Products

Sustainable design is for every product, but especially for interior, very trending.Recycling, repurposing, reinventing and reusing it as much as possible.

This trend also works the other way around. This is very trending for interior. Plants inside the house, couches in the garden, enough examples to find in interior shops and online.

It is a long running trend that people want to be unique. They want to customize products as much as possible to their own style and personality. The individual person is very important in the western world.

There are lots of examples of Phone cases, ornaments and so on to make yourself and your stuff fit your personality. We can say that to adapt to your own personal choice or combination is a very important trend and can also be find in more modular products or different products that can interreact with eachother.

12 Service

16

13

17

14

Long Term Design

Especially for the more expensive products parents buy for the baby, it is interesting if the product can be used for a longer time. So they don’t have to buy the things they need every year again. For example, there are lots of cribs on the market that can be used until te kids sleep in a normal bed.

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Trends in Materials

15

This trend is also a part of the ecologiacal trend.For example, v e n e e r , C h r o m a t i c Gels,ShapeShifter (Fluid Solids, Beat Karrer: very ecologic material, that can be made in lots of shapes without loosing strength) are very trending materials. Partly because they are rather ecological, but also because you can make it in lots of colors (the gels).

19

Wide research

The research on trends made

clear that for the furniture project Long term design, Compact design and Modular products are the most interesting trends. These three trends will be included in the project, because they fit the aim perfectly. The other trends will partly become wishes. For a good overview,

a grid of the trends has been made, visible in IMAGE 3.BLA. On horizontal axes on the left stands Social-Digital and on the right Social-Real Life. On the vertical axes are Design-Material and Design-Concept displayed, respectively up and down. The chosen concepts have been circelled. image 3.10

20 DESIGN-Material

trends in material: veneer, Chromatic Gels, Fluid Solids

Inspired Themed Design Vintage

Modular products Sustainable Design

Link the real product to an app on your phone SOCIAL -Digital

Compact Design

Ecological Design

Bring the Outdoors in Rest Area

IntuĂ?tive Design

SOCIAL -Real life

Do it yourself & Hand-made things Long-term Design Multitasking Online marketing

Service around the products Icon Toppling

Cocooning DESIGN-Concept

21

Wide research

3.3 Child research To be able to make the best choices for the

product and the design, there has been a research on children and related subjects. This research covers the subjects: important physical development, different behavior in childrens, the role of the playful element and childrens sizes. The section is concluded with a chart containing the most important development form the birth to five years old.

Important physical development The development of the muscles and the movements is an important factor considering the design of a product for children. In the first 12 months the development of specific muscles and movements is the most detailed and important.

After this baby stage, the toddler stage has certain important characteristics in movement and coordination. This is why these two stages will be discussed below.

Baby: 0-12 months

How do infants learn?

Babies have the ability to see faces and objects of different shapes, sizes and colors. They can also make a difference between the voice of their parents and others and they communicate with crying and certain body languages.

First experiences are very important for the future: care and experiences affect the growth of the babies brain.

Loving and attention is very important for the development of the child.

Movement 1 – 3 months The movements of the baby will be very jerky and it shakes and quivers. When the nervous system and the muscle control improves over the first month, the movements smoother. The muscles and movements in this stage are as

follows: ●The neck muscles develop fast, the baby will try to lift its head when lying on the stomach but won’t really succeed until the fourth month. ●The hands are tight fists in the beginning and the finger movements are limited. The baby can however flex the arms and bring the hands to the mouth. The hands are a great point of interest. After some time the hands will relax and arms open outward, during the 3rd month the hands are half open and the baby carefully opens and closes them. They will be able to grip and the baby will try to bring things to its mouth. In the fourth they can bring objects to its mouth. ●The movements in the beginning will be reflexive, but this fades away in the second / third month. The movements will grow into

intentional ones ●During the 2nd month the legs will straighten from their inward-curving newborn position. They will remain reflexive for some time but become strong and more active. In the first 6 weeks there will be a stepping reflex, in month 3 to 4 he will be able to virtually stand when supported and he will explore the possibilities.

Movement 4 – 7 months Before the fourth month the baby establishes the muscle control it needs to move the eyes and the head so it’s possible for them to follow objects. After this the baby is going to learn how to sit, this happens in different stages: 1.The baby will learn how to raise its head and hold it up while lying on her stomach.

You can help the development

22

Wide research

Toddler: 1-3 years of this movement if you place the baby on its stomach, stretch the arms forward and then get his or her attention so he or she will hold her head up.

2.After about five months, when the baby has learned how to lift its head, the baby will start pushing up on its arms and arching its back to lift its chest. These movements help strengthen the upper body which provides steady and upright sitting. The baby may also rock on her stomach and starts to ‘swim’. These movements are necessary for rolling over and crawling.

3.The next phase is sitting up, starting with some assistance: the baby needs to be hold up or supported in the back as it learns to balance itself. They will learn the tripod: leaning forward while extending the arms to balance the upper body. To help positioned right,

without leaning forward. On this point the baby will discover what gain the balance, bright and interesting toys can be placed in front of the baby to give a focus point. After 6-8 months the baby will be able to remain sitting, when can be done with her hands from this point.

The hands and fingers movements develop as well in these months: 1.By the fourth month the baby can bring interesting objects to her mouth 2.In month 4-8 they will begin using the fingers and thumbs together in a crawlike grip / raking motion and they can pick up many things.

3.In the 6th – 8th month they will learn how to transfer objects from hand to hand, turn and twist them.

4.When they are about 9 months they learn the pincer

grasp using the index finger and thumb.

Movement and Coordination

In this stage the walking of the toddler improves a lot from stiff to more adult motions. The toddler will be able to maneuvering his body: walking backward, turning corners and he can do others things while he move.

Between 2 and 3 there will be an energy spurt and the kid will continually on the go, actively playing games. The activity level will strengthen the body and develop the coordination. The toddler will learn to kick and direction a ball, walk stairs, seat himself and with help, stand on one leg. They love piggyback rides, rolling on mats.going down small slides and climbing on the floor level balance beam. Going outside to run, play and explore is very important.

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Wide research

Different behavior in children

It is hard to define a normal

behavior in children because there is not really a behavior that is more normal than the other. Every kid is different and has its own personality when it is born. So even kids from the same parents can be totally different in behavior.

One can be really outgoing and loud while the other one can be shy, quiet and withdrawn. That doesn’t mean that one behavior is more normal than the other.

Children’s behavior reflects their level of development: caregivers who take the time to offer developmentally appropriate verbal explanations and guidance help children gain confidence, competence, and social problem-solving skills.

However, some parents find it helpful to consider three general kinds of behavior: ●The wanted and approved behaviors. They might include

doing chores, homework and being polite. These actions receive compliments freely and easily ●The behaviors that is not sanctioned but is tolerated under certain conditions.

Behaviors that can attend under illness, stress or when a new sibling is born. The behavior under times like this can include not doing chores, aggressive behavior or being self-centered. ●The behaviors that are not or should not be tolerated.

They include actions that are harmful to the physical, emotional or social well-being.

They might include very aggressive or destructive behavior, overt racism or prejudice, stealing, truancy, smoking or substance abuse, school failure, or an intense sibling rivalry.

Baby:

Toddler:

Preschoolers:

0-1 year

1-3 years

3-4years

When they are this small it These children are full of life Children in this stage are

is a waste of time and can be harmful to use any kind of discipline. Because they are not so far developed that they can think ahead, understand reason or remember what you as a parent want. In this stage they need to learn that the world is safe and friendly. You also have to show them that they can trust you to be there and protect them.

and curiosity. They learn by doing, touching and trying different things. This often result in that they use the things the wrong way and get frustrated when they don’t get the thing to work the right way, because they still don’t have the skills for it. In this age they also learn to say “NO” and that they are different from others. When the children get the feeling that theyare able to do things on their own, they are more content and quit, they gain the feeling of control.

easily excited. In this age they begin to play and share with others. They understand most of instructions that they are given and also capable to predict the outcome of many actions. When they notice that they know what to do they can become a bit bossy because the like the control. If you have raised you child with love and approving, they will often like to please you and make you happy. If you raised them with so they fell like you are overpowering and demanding it could be that they in this stage stop doing the things that you want because they can never please you.

24

Wide research

Role of the playful element

The goal is to design a piece

furniture that is playful and therefor could be seen as a toy as well. A toy is more than just a playing device for children, they ought to empower children to develop by learning, creating and boosting theit imagination and stimulating childrens development. Playing is an important part for social, mental, physical development of children, it is also one of the activities that is an inseparable part of cognitive behaviors. In this part of the child research the proper toys to help development of young children are presented.

Infants:

Older Infants:

Toddler:

Preschool:

0-6 months

7-12 months

1-3 years

3-4 years

What

Infants like is to interact with people, for example tailing them with their eyes, they are discovering world by an interaction with touch, smell, gestures they are also very sound conscious and lively react to it.

Toys that is suitable for this age are ones that children can reach for, feel the shape of, listen to or observe.

Infants these age are far less Children

passive with in their playing.

They start with more playful moves like scooting, bouncing, creeping, pulling themselves up and even standing.

Because of a rapid body development toys that include physical activities like "to drop things and to take things out " and toys that enable to build large muscles are recommended. Also toys that boost imagination, like dolls or building blocks, are beneficial for the mind and body development.

broaden their movements and playing to the more complex ones including jumping, hanging and climbing. They also increase the coordination of moving their hands and are so able to play with smaller toys.

At this stage child should play with toys that stimulates its mind and body coordination.

Good toys would be wood puzzles or other easy problem-solving toys. Toys including audio-visuals and ones that include building or creativity expressions are also good.

The preschoolers are more able to

focus on a single thing for a longer time. The curiosity is a driving force for them, so they ask a lot of questions. They build up their physical skills and can play together effectively and competitively.

Preschoolers should play with a more complex building, creating and more detailed problem-solving toys. They are also able to play with ride-on equipment like tricycles.

Because they already have developed a kind of safety sense they can even be able to play in a small workshop. Children this age are also very eager to play with audiovisuals , easy computer programs or tablets. Although the preschool age is from 3 to 4, children untill the age of six have these preferences of toys. It is known that after the age of eight, children loose the overall interest in playing with toysa, because they feel to old for them and are interested in more grown up toys.

25

Wide research

Childrens Sizes

IT

he purpose of this research is to gain more insight in the sizes of children in different age groups. To obtain these sizes, the program Dined has been used and the tables of sizes are visible in tables 3.1.

table 3.1

Wide research

26

27

Wide research

Normal Stages of Human Development (Birth to 5 Years)

table 3.2

Wide research

28

04 29

Primary decisions After the research was done, some primary decisions were made: The range of the age of the child we want to design for.

The goals and aims we want to achieve.

The target group we want to reach.

A persona to sketch an idea of the future users of our product.

A list of requirements and wishes to receive a clear overview of what our product needs to include and what we wish to include in it.

After these decisions were made, we chose 5 directions to focus on. The five directions are areas with opportunities to generate ideas in. All the subjects named above, will be explained below.

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4.1

4.2

Child age

Aim

After

To obtain clear view of the

the research done about the children, their development and behaviour, some decisions -were made about the childs age. There has been decided to chose the minimum age when the child is already capable of moving and interacting with the environment. Furthermore, the child needs to be in the stage where it learns through playing. Therefor the period where the awareness, coordination and motorics of a child are being delveloped or already are developed is searched. The child should be able to play on its own but also interact with other children.This is beneficial because it provides opportunities for social interactions that help children develop appropriate skills.

These decisions led to the required minumum age of 2 years old. As can be read in

3.3 Childs Research, in the age range from 2 to 3 there will be an energy spurt and the child likes to actively play and develops the senses of directions and coordination more and more. From the age of 3 the children like to activly play and be able to use their imagination and energy in the games. In modern societies the approximate age when children start losing their interest in toys and games they used to like is 8. This age will therefor from the upper limit.

Concluded, there will be designed for the age group from 2 to 8 years old: late toddlers and pre-school children are set as a most attractive users of a future product.However, reaching a bigger user group will only be favourable and will therefor be in our wishes.

goal to be achieved, a specific aim has been formulated. The aim to design a piece of furniture has been made more specific detailed.

These specifiactions are mostly resulted from our previously done research and partly from our own knowlegde and preferences.

Specifications to be achieved and therefor to be written in the aim are to produce an innovative design, that satisfies the costumers and market needs, a functional piece of furniture that possibly grows with child, has an after-life or is multifunctional.

Consequently the proper aim of a project was set as:

The outcome of the project will be a product that will have certain features that will make it an attractive choice for parents to buy and will be enjoyed a lot by the child.

Favourably, it also is aesthetic designed and made of quality materials and sustainable. However, these are wishes to be achieved if possible, not a direct aims.

This will generate a high-end product that after testing would be ready for the market launch.

To design the innovative piece of furniture for children, in the age group 2 to 8, that will stimulate childrens development, has multiple functions and will be attractive on a market.

31

Primary decisions

4.3 Program of Demands and Wishes

4

Maintaince The different parts of the product are detachable and so accesible.

The different parts can be replaced.

Target Product Cost

Program of Demands

1

2

3

Performance The product is in principle a piece of furniture for children.

The product has a playful element.

The product is rebuildable in multiple configurations.

The product has multiple purposes.

The product needs to withstand forces children use on it.

The product will use a ‘learning through playing’ method.

A child will beable to play with it alone or with other children.

Environment The product will be used inside a house orother building.

The product will perform at room temperature (20 degrees).

The product needs to withstand the temperatures during production and transportation.

The product will be (at least partly) environmental friendly.

The product will (at least partly) be recyclable.

Life in Service The product will be able to be used daily.

The product has a lifespan of a minimum of 6 years.

5

The consumer price should be 100 and 800.

The cost price should be 30 and 80.

Transport

6

The product is compact during transport.

The product can be transported form the point of selling to the place of usage by a car or larger bus.

Packaging

7

The product will be packaged.

The packaging protects the product during transportation.

The packaging shows the logo, the seperate parts and the nescessary information.

The packaging has a nice appearence.

Quantity

8

The amounts of units to be produced are 1000.

The product will be produced in continuous production.

9

Production Facilities The company Nidoo will pocess the nescassary production facilities.

32

Primary decisions

10

Size and Weight The upperlimit of the volume of the product is 6 cubic meters.

The maximum weight of the product is 50 kilograms.

The maximum weight of the seperate pieces of the product is 10 kilograms.

Children in age range 2-8 are able to move the seperate pieces of the product.

The product will consist of a maximum of 8 sepearte pieces.

Aesthetic, Appearance and Finish

11

The product is offered in multiple styles or colors.

The product has an aestetic appearance that fits in every housestyle.

The product is unisex.

The product will be produced one year.

The product will be sold three years.

13

Standards, Rules and Regulations

14

Children from age range 2 - 8 are able to use the product.

The sizes and dimensions of the product are determined through the sizes of the users. These sizes are stated in 3.3 Child research.

Reliability There is no failure of the product acceptable.

The wood is not allowed to break at any costs.

16

Storage The product can be stored in an efficient way, during transportation and when stored personally.

No toxic materials are used.

No metals will be used or visible on the surface or reachable parts of product.

The product is made of wood or soft materials like foam and cuchions.

Product Life Span

Ergonomics

17

Materials

12

15

The product and production will be standarised to be able to by producted and used by all Western Europe countries.

Testing

18

The product will be tested to withstand the nescassary forces.

The product will be tested by the user group.

Safety

Precalculations of extreme usages and circumstances are made to ensure safety during use.

The product hasno sharp edges.

The wood is not able to splinter.

The seperate pieces are not so small that children can swallow them.

The product is not dangerously high to climb on.

19

33

Primary decisions

Program of Wishes

20

Product Liability The user can be held accountable for usage mistakes during abnormal use.

All normal usage will be explained in the manual.

The producer will be held accountable for any design or production mistakes.

Installation and Initation of use

21

The installation of the product is explained in the manual.

The learning how to handleand operate the product is stated in the manual.

22

Reuse, Recycling The materials and parts will be easily seperated for recycling or waste processing.

The product has second life without the need of adding or removing parts.

The wooden partof the product will be recycled.

1

The child can use its imagination as much as possible.

There are as many different configurations for the

2 furniture as possible.

3 There are as many different games as possible.

4

The product should have an as nice design as possible.

5 The product is as compact as possible.

6

The product is as light as possible.

7 The product is as cheap as possible.

8

The product should include as much trends as possible.

9

The product should include the biggest target group as possible.

34

Primary decisions

4.4 Target Market Target Market

F

irst there where was some things to consider. Identify the target market and describe this target market demographically. There are answers written to these statements below.

1

Identify the target group The target market has been divided into three different groups. The first group is the group that will sell our product, the so called resellers: the furniture stores.

The second group, the buyers: parents, family and friends and potentially the children themself. The parents are the most important in the group of potential buyers, since they will be willing to spent more RESELLERS Furniture Stores

money on their children than other parties will.

Furtheremore, there are national or commercial institiutons like kindergardens that might be also interested in buying the piece of furniture, especially if more than one child is able to use it. The third group is the group of the users, the children. These three groups are visualized in image 4.1.

BUYERS Parents Family and Friends POTENTIALLY: Kindergartens Playgrounds

image 4.1

USERS Children

2

Describe the target market demographically After the target group has been defined, a small description of the two most important parties in the first two groups made. The third group, the users, have already been discussed in chapter 4,1 Childs age, Group 1 - The Resellers The most important party in this group are the furniture stores. These are the stores located over whole western Europe. They can defer from very big furniture stores to more smaller ones.

Group 2 - The Buyers The ones most interested in buying our product will be the parents, Since the childs age range is from 2 untill 8 the parent are likely to be in the age of 30 - 45. The product will be designed for the middle class, so affordable for a big target group.

35

Primary decisions

Target Audience

The next subject to be discussed is the target audience, these

include the people we more specifically aim form, Who is going to buy it? Whose opinion is important? It is most often that the parents decide which furniture the children need. However, often the children have a say in what has their preference too, so their opinion will be important too. The design is an important aspect: if the same product needs to be used by many, a universal design is preferable. However, if one person gets to chose a design, more customized and aesthetic design will have the preference. Nidoo wants to reach a big target audiencet but also strives to put their own taste in the designs. That’s why the decision has been made to aim for families but to make different designs so there will be more choice. In this way the design can be more customized and in different ways so more people will be attracted. However, we have no control over the usage outside of our target audience, like the use in kindergartens. This will, ofcourse, only be favourable.

We started to think about which kind of families the product should be sold to or what the parents think is important when they think about furniture for their children. There were made some pointers to help the decision making: Family in the middle class, these include a lot of different people.

They also have the money to invest in a quality piece of furniture.

The family would want a piece furniture that can be used for different things so they don’t have to buy all different kinds furniture. There is a growing trend in using furniture that has a multipurpose use. For example a couch that also can be used as a spear bed if you get visitors.

The family could be interested in something that can grow with the child. In this way the furniture has a longer life which is not only preferable in terms of spendage of money but is also sustainable.

Primary decisions

4.5 Persona W

e created a persona to visualise what kind of family would be interested in our product and would be a potential buyer.

The persona in this case is a whole family, which includes mom Maria, dad Charles and two children Alexander and Anna. They live in Valencia, Spain. They all like to spend time together, play and be active. Charles works full time (8h) as a bank manager so he leaves his work at work and when he is home he concentrates on family, friends and work in the household.

He likes to share his interest in sports with his family. Anna has seen that dad reads a lot and that has made her very interested in reading as well.

Maria works as a teacher at vocational collage, she teaches design. She works halftime so she takes care of most of the household,

cooking and children, she doesn’t this mind at all because she enjoys doing these things. When Charles takes care of the kids, Maria can go out with her friends for drinks or just enjoy a little alone time. Maria thinks education is important and she likes the children to create their own way of thinking.

Anna and Alexander both have great minds. Anna is a creative and selfless girl who is 6 years old. She likes to play sports with her dad but she also likes to build a nice place to practice her reading.

Alexander has a good imagination and likes to play knight and pirate in his own build fortresses. He is 4 years old. This family is the one that we thought would buy our product when it exist on the market. The visualisation of the persona is visible in images 4.2.

36

37

image 4.2

Primary decisions

Primary decisions

38

39

Primary decisions

4.6 Direction choosing After making the decisions about the child age and the aims, we

came up with 5 directions, to be explored further through design and market research. These directions are different areas in which we can design furniture with a playful element and longer or double life. These areas are created through our own interest and consist with one piece of furniture in principle which can be turned into or used as something else. The directions are shortly explained below and will be explained more detailed in the next chapter.

40

Primary decisions

This direction has as principle piece of furniture a box. The box can be turned into multiple things after the child outgrows this or the different walls of the box can be changed to grow with the development of the child.

Here a closet is the principle piece of furniture. The idea is the be able to use the closet as an playground or use it as an play kitchen, dentist, office etc.

The principle piece is a table or playtable. The playtable will have different top plates with each have other games to play with. In this way there will be one table on which multiple games can be played. The table could also have more functions or an after life.

The cubes are a more creative and free direction: the principle piece of furniture could be a couch, bench, table, closet or a combination of these. The playful element they turn into could be everything as well. The idea is the usage of the imagination of the child to build things with them.

For this direction the principle piece of furniture is the carpet.

However, this carpet can be folded in multiple ways to create different pieces of furniture and playgrounds.

41

05

Directions

5.1

The Five Directions At this point the time came

to study the five chosen directions more deeply. The directions will each be explained more clearer, they will be illustrated with sketches including some ideas and they will be viewed from the marketing point. After this deeper research and design, the aim is to remain with two directions and research these even deeper to eventually come up with the best direction to design in.

The five directions started out as seven directions but then they got eliminated to five. The seven directions where the box, the closet, the table, the cube, the carpet, the cardboard and outdoors.

Brainstorming about the directions helped us to come up with some good ideas about five of the directions. It has been decided to only continuou with five directions.

We kept in mind that the ideas that we did not use could maybe be combined with the others. The five directions are going to be explained more detailed in this chapter.

42

Directions

BOX This is the first idea being though of when the brainstorm started,

the drawings of the box are visible in image 5.1. The box is similar to a crib for children. The box will grow with the child through different age ranges. The things to be included in the box are: Certain toys or mechanisms to help the development of the muscles or movements of the babies and younger children.

Replacable walls of the box that included games or pictures for the children to play with, these walls are replacable so it can be adjusted to the preferences or of the child.

Walls that made playing on both sides possible, one inside the box and some one outside of the box.

Second life as a playground.

The principle is a box for small childeren, the idea of growing with the child works as follows: When the child is still very young, there will be toys or mechanisms to help develop the muscles and movements. The specific muscles or movements aimed for are stated in chapter 3.3 Child Research. For example the development of the grip of the hands and the use of the seperate fingers and thumbs could be stimulated by certain toys with specific shapes or games with specific challenges.

When the childs grows up a little and is starting to move more and is wanting to sit up, one wall could be changed in the box to a wall that has a game or some pictures for the children to play with or look at. The game could also be played with two players, so the older sister or brother could play with the younger child. One child in the box and the other on the outside of the box. The walls could be adjusted to the specific age or preference of the child.

In a next stage, when the child learn to stand up and walk, the box would also have small things like handles that would be very helpful for the childs physical development and they would help to develop the muscles for the child. This is skechted in the “learn how to walk details� that you can see in the sketch. Meanwhile the walls can be replaced to again have games that match the age of the children.

When the child is big enough and is ready to climb and play, then the box would turn into the playground. For example the box could be turned into a playground with a ladder on one side and the slide on the other side. It would also include some storage for all these different elements that you could use with the box.

43

Directions

image 5.1

44

Directions

Market for the BOX The market for this product is big. There are a lot of different cribs or boxes for kids to sleep in or just to be in when the parents want to do something else on the market already. These cribs and boxes differ in size and details. Some are very basic while others have lots of decorating ornaments. The most direct competitors are the ones that provide a box that has an additional aspect, like growing the child or having multiple configurations or functions. An example of these most direct competitors are visible in images 5.2. More indirect competitors are regular boxes, meaning boxes that don`t provide a

multiple purpose expect, shown in images 5.3. Another group that could be viewd as indirect competitors are the ones that provideelements for on the boxes, like handles that help the child walk or games. Examples of these are shown in images 5.4.

Concluded there is already a lot on the market on this area and the direct competitors are strong. However Nido strives for something not yet on the market, a box that grows with the child, helps the development, includes games and had a second life.

image 5.3

image 5.2

image 5.4

45

Directions

CLOSET The things we wanted to include in our closet are listed below: Convertibility, the closet should be able to turn into a toy or playground.

Storage.

A closet has a principle use of storage, so this is also included in our design. Our aim is to include a playful element in the closet which makes it a toy or playground as well as a storage system. This closet could turn into different things like a scene to play in, for example a boat, a kitchen or a doctorsoffice. There will still be room for the things that you want to storage in it.

Another idea is to combine the closet with cubes that have storage room inside them and are strong enough to be stand on. In this way the children can climb the cubes to come to the top of the closet. The other side of the closet could for example function as a slide and so the children have createda playground. This is sketched in image 5.5.

These two ideas could also be combined which allows the the closet to be transformed with help of the cubes into a boat or something else in the range of the childs imagination. The product would also have come with stickers that you could put on the different parts to make it more realistic when it is a boat or when it is a doctor reception.

Directions

image 5.5

46

47

Directions

Market for the CLOSET There are some direct competitors, shown in images 5.6, in this field, although there are not much. The ones that combine closets with playing are mostly whole ‘houses’, which are not easily placed in a home, thus need to made specifically for a room and need to be installed. There are some playgrounds like slides but not much and those that do exist aren`t very advanced. There is enough room for improvement here.

There are more indirect competitors, one group is in the field of multiple purpose closets. These closets are often combined with beds,

visible in image 5.7. Other indirect competitors could be the ones that provide playful closets, so not a playground or toy but just playful looking products. Some examples of these are in image 5.8.

Indirect competitors do not aim at the exact same target group and don’t share the same goal, so they shouldn’t be considered too much.

image 5.7

image 5.6

image 5.8

48

Directions

TABLE The idea of a table is to make a play table for children with which they can play multiplegames. The features we want to include in the table are:

Usages of different plates for different age groups, levels or interests.

Storage sytem for the plates.

Sides of the table also usable to play with.

This table would be a piece of furniture that could also be multifunctional like the two earlier products.An idea for longer use would be that when the child is small it could be a table for changing diapers or a little bath for the baby. The table would consist different plates so you could change the top surface.

When the child gets older you can change the plate so the child can have different games to play with on the table. There is also an opportunity to use the bath for the little child as a sand bucket for the older children, so they can take the table outdoors and play with the sand on the table. The plates would be available in different categories, like ages and interests. The design would allow multiple children playing at the same time, either on the plate or some at the sides where there could also be plates.

For more use the table could also be transformed into a castle, fortress, boat, etc. This would happen easily: the plates can be taken and shoved like walls between the legs of the table, see image 5.9.

A very favourable aspect would be that the height could be adjusted.

49

Directions

image 5.9

50

Directions

Market for the TABLE There are no direct competitors who want to offer the same as Nidoo does: multiple games in one play table. A close competitor is the play table for children with storage for different toys. With this children can practically play different games on one table and they can also change the toys with age, some examples are shown in images 5.10 and images 5.11. The difference between these two

image 5.10

image 5.11

groups is that the toys from images 5.10 are made for the table specifically and the tables from images 5.11 can be used with seperate toys. However, Nidoo wants to go further than this current market offer. Something more similar to what we want to achieve is visible in images 5.12. These are tables with the changing plates but it is designed for older children than our target group.

image 5.12

51

Directions

CUBES A lot of inspiration for all of the directions came from Pinterest, but

especially the inspiration for cubes came form there. The cubes are be something to be combined with each other and the only the limit would be the imagination of the child to stop them from creating everything with the cubes. We had a lot of different cubes in mind, soft cubes, hard cubes, cubes with hole in them, round “cubes�, triangles etc. See image 5.13. The aspects to be included in the cubes are: Play, tunnels and castles.

Storage.

A piece of furniture.

The cubes can be used in a lot of different ways. The cubes could be stored on each other and then turn in to a closet or they could be use as chairs when multiple seats are needed. The cubes can also grow with the child in a certain way: when the child is little the cubes could form a playground and when the childs grows older the cubes could be turned into a piece of furniture that can be used for a long time, like a chair or couch. There are also ideas for cubes that would have the holes in them so children could sit on the cube but also climb through them. They could make them into a tunnel if you put several of cubes after each other.

Directions

image 5.13

52

53

Directions

Market for the CUBES There are already existing cubes on the market but there is not yet a company that combines the cubes to make furniture and a playground like Nidoo intends to do. For that there are no direct competitors. However there are indirect competitors on two fields: cubes that form furniture, visualized in images 5.14 and cubes that form playground, shown in images 5.15. Concluded, there is a gap on the market for this product.

image 5.14

image 5.15

54

Directions

CARPET In the carpet there can be played with the materials, different

fabrics and texture. It can be folded into a tunnel or usedit as a soft playground. The carpet is nice for children, since they often like to be on the floor playing and it would be nice to have something soft under your them for their own protecion. The following things were to be included in the carpet concept: Different materials Playful and foldable Multiple use

There could be played with the material of the carpet, to give it differnt looks and feels for example. The children can fold it in different ways and make multiple configurations of it. No sketch has been made for the carpe, since it could be expressed better in pictures and existing products. The carpet would be able to be folded in pieces of furniture or playgrounds. It is visualised in images 5.16.

55

Directions

Market for the CARPET

image 5.16

As can be seen in image 5.16, there already are carpet that can be folded in multiple configurations on the market. These consist of playful carpets as well as ones that are folded into furniture.

However, there is no specific carpet that combines the furniture aspact with the playful aspect, which means that we are excluded form direct competitors. However the market is trong with indirect competitors shown in image 5.16.

56

Directions

5.2

5.3

Choosing Two Directions Out of the five directions

that seemed interesting, four main directions were chosen.

The closet, the cubes, the table and the box. The carpet and the ‘indoor-outdoor’ were directions to keep in mind for any idea, so it became more a wish to combine with one of the 4 directions.

Because the box and the closet were the first ideas, they were a bit overdone. It is clear that, while inventing these concepts, we wanted to put every idea, every function and every age group in the product concept. This made the concepts unsafe, quite impossible and not interesting for customers. The two other product ideas on the other hand, were very simple and interesting: the multifunctional table and the cubes.

It has been chosen to go deeper into the cubes, because of its simplicity, and yet its many functions. You can

build anything with the cubes, the imagination of the child will do the rest. It can be used as a children`s chair, as a table, it can be stand on and crawled under. There are many ways to use the cubes, and yet it is a very simple product. Above all, it does look quite nice in the interior.

Diifferent materials could be used for it so it fits the preferences of the cildren and the parents. The cubes could also be interesting for schools and kindergardens, even though that wasn’t the target audience.

However, a possible con of the cubes could be the storage and shipping, while the volume of the product could get quit large.

The other interesting direction chosen, is the multifunctional table. It also is a very simple concept. It consists the frame of the table and multiple plates. These can be adapted to what activity is going to be

done at the table. It could be a normal table, a chalk board, a Lego plate, a sand box, a board game, and so on. The different table plates can be stored in the frame as well. A table is rather a large object, but by including the storage, and the multiple function it becomes a very efficient use of space.

The marketing aspect of all directions have been studied too and it had the very clear outcome that the most opportunities lie in the directions of the cubes and the table. These both have no direct competitors and so will form something new and innovative on the market. It would be a lot harder to try and break through in the market with the box and the closet, since there already is much offering. The choice has been made to continue with the cubes and the table.

Research and Design To be able to make a well

founded decision between the cubes and the table, additional research was done and more ideas were created.

To generate more ideas and come up with all posibilities and solutions a specific method was used, named: ‘how can you….?’. This allows the team to explore every aspect of the direction.

Combining all the answers to the how can you..? generates ideas for actual products in the directions. In addition to the exploration on the design field, more marketing research has been done to be able compare the two directions on the fields of design and marketing research. After this a list of pros and cons has been made and these in combination with

the teams interest resulted in the final decision for a direction. The two directions will now be explored seperately below.

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Directions

CUBES How can you..?

The questions of the how can you of the cubes are as follows: How How How How How

can can can can can

you you you you you

build furniture from cubes? play games with cubes? attach cubes to each other? combine a carpet with cubes? store cubes?

The answers to these questions were studied by each teammember to be able to come up with as much and as divergent solutions as possible. The solutions are visible as sketches in images 5.17.

image 5.17

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Directions

Ideas

Through

combining these seperate solutions from the how can you three ideas, or more likely three subdirections for ideas, were made for the cubes. These are shown in image 5.18. The three ideas will be explained shortly.

image 5.18

Idea 1 In this idea the piece of furniture formed by the cubes is a couch. The cubes have different shapes and sizes but are all made of soft material. The pieces of the couch can be taken apart and the cubes can be used to create a playground, build a fortress, used as seperate seats for multiple children or whatever the children or parents could come up with.

Idea 2 Idea 2 is similar to idea one but now the furniture consist of bench and a table. These could either be ridgid or soft materials. The bench and the table could be any form or size. The different pieces can form a playground or seats again, just like in idea one.

Idea 3 This idea is somewhat different. The cubes are foldable and can be made into a closet as a piece of furniture.

When the cubes are taken apart they could form a play kitchen, doctors office, dentist, etc. These playground can be created with the help of stickers on the cubes.

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Directions

Market research

The

cubes are to be researched on the marketing field some more. There are many products available on the market from very simple ones like cube volumes similar to yoga blocks to more complex solutions like soft playgrounds made up from cubes.

The majority of cubes available are produced in China. This means that suppliers are quite easy to reach and production costs can optimized to achieve competitive product.

An example of cubes sold with the wholesale price form OM Chinese manufacturer is shown in image 5.19.

There has been done some deeper research on competition, a clear overview is displayed in table 5.1. From the direct competition, one of the most interesting companies is Wesco. They offer a wide range of soft

modular cubes for children that are made from quality materials. The prices of Wesco products tend to be quite high and are comparable to premium products available for adults. Another interesting product is from the Gogo blocks, this is originally a concept from students, inspired by Multiplo, an Italian concept design shown in image 5.20. The ideas are fundamentally the same, however, Multiplo underlines its product as convertible grown-up furniture, while Gogo Blocks are exhibited as furniture for children to create their own particular play spaces, posts, labyrinths and designed for a rather for the younger audience.

After the search on existing product, there has also been looked at the reactions to the products. Some of these reactions are shown in image 5.21.

Concluded, the cubes even if they might seem very simple and not that attractive as a separate piece of furniture, they can be easily developed into a product that would be adapted to existing trends.

There is also an existing market gap for playful cubes transformable into multiple pieces of furniture that were spotted.

image 5.19

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Directions

image 5.20

table 5.1

image 5.21

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Directions

TABLE How can you..?

The questions of the how can you of the table are as follows: How How How How How

can can can can can

you play games on the table? you play with the sides of the table? multiple children play with the table? you change the plates of the table? you store the plates or the table?

The sketches are shown in images 5.22.

image 5.22

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Directions

Idea 1 This idea has the storage on one side of the table, the plates can be shoved in there. This side will also form a ‘game’ like a chalkboard so the children can play at this side. The feet of the table on the other side can be folded in and the table plate itself can be folded towards the storage side. This makes the table in ‘folded’ position very compact and for example it can be shoved towards the wall.

The chalkboard side will still be availble to play with in this way.

Ideas

Again

somewhat more ideas have been generated for the table. This time the ideas have been split into two segments: table and storage and games. This has been done in this way because the different games could practically be used on every kind of table. The ideas are shown in image 5.23.

Idea 2 Idea 2 has a different storage system: the plates are stored under the highest plate. These plates can be changed and the shoving system will consist of rails, so the plates can be shoved in and out easily.

image 5.23

image 5.24

Games There are almost endless posibilities for games to be used in the table. To show a few examples, there are some pictures visilble in images 5.24. In these images are games as puzzles, mazes, chalkboards, building blocks and so on visible.

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Directions

Market research

Secondly, the play table is

to be concerned for the market research to make an accurate decision on narrowing decision on the product to be developed from two ideas to just one,. This kind of product is a variation of a regular table that is adjusted to the children needs. It is done by decrease of size, increase in safety, suitable selection of colors and addition multiple plates that can be used.

In table 5.2 an information about the tables on the market is presented. The price range of children’s tables is varying depended on functionality, complexity of design and the material used. It is possible to buy a simple and cheap table for one of tenth of a price of another, more functional table. It is possible that most of parents will stay with the purchase of a simple design and cheap table, like the ones of ikea, more often than they will go for a more compact

design, like a play station for children.

There are many products available on the market, so the competition is quite rough.

Companies that manufacture regular wooden tables, sometimes tend to involve themselves in the sector of more advanced or playing tables, when they have the capacity and opportunity to put it on the market.

Concluded, the market research the play table market is very interesting, however it is also difficult: because of the fact that manufacturers of regular tables are also seeing opportunities on the children`s market, this market is really competitive. Another thread is the easy transformation of a cheaper, regular table to a play table. table 5.2

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Directions

5.4 Pros & Cons

After the research on Cubes an Tables

CUBES

was done, a list of the pros and cons of both ideas were made. Through the pros and cons it is more easy to decide wich is the best direction to follow. The pros and cons both include the design aspect and the marketing one.

TABLE

Pros

-Free in usage of imagination -Multiple functions -Easily play together -It can be combined with the carpet -Simplicity -Market gap

Cons

-Storage forms difficulties -Takes a lot of space -Difficult to find a save way to connect the cubes

Pros

-Grows with the child -Multiplepurpose -Product can be extended -Unique

Cons

-Competitive market -Storage is difficult, the product is big -Complex and expensive -Takes a lot of space -Limited in imagination and games

The most important pros and cons have been highlighted. When having the listed these pros and cons it is visible that the cubes consist of more pros and less cons. There lie more possibilites with the cubes on the market and on the design field. It has been decided to choose the cubes as our final design direction.

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06

Concepts The

final direction in which the idea generation will take place is the cubes. Within this direction we will produce a minimum of 40 ideas. These wil be created with the use of a morfological chart. After these ideas were made, they have been categorized in 4 directions and from every direction one or two ideas have been chosen and worked out to more detailled concepts. From these concepts the final concept has been chosen and alterred to our wishes. This section ends with a basic presentation of our final concept, focussing on the forms and measurments. A more detailled description of each step is stated below.

6.1 Forty ideas As

stated above, a morfological chart has been used in order to help creating the ideas. To fill this chart the ‘how can you…’ of the cubes of section 5.3 Research and Design are used.

The morphological chart is shown in image 6.1. The chart works as follows: an idea can be formed through combining different subsolutions of different parts the product should posses. These different

solutions of parts are visible in horizontal rows. So an idea is generated by making a path from the upper part of the chart down to the last row, choosing one or multiple subsolutions in multiple or every row. An example of this is visualized in image 6.2. The forty ideas are shown in the following table: table 6.1.

Concepts

image 6.1

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Concepts image 6.2

table 6.1

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

A B C D E

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Concepts

6.2 Choosing and Categorising F

rom the ideas shown in the previous pages we have made a selection of the most preferable ones. They have been categorized in 4 sections, these are based on the principle furniture the cubes make and the playful element they turn into:

Cubes that form a sofa as furniture and turn into a playground in which the children can build with the cubes.

Cubes that form a sitting or ‘hang-out’ place as furniture and turn into a playground in which the children can build with the cubes.

Cubes that form a long mat that can be multiple types of furniture and can be build and played with in multiple ways.

Cubes that form a sofa as furniture and turn into a scene as a playground like a kitchen or a doctorsoffice.

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Concepts

The sections with their ideas are shown

in table 6.2 . Form each of the sections one or two ideas were chosen, through grading them with wishes they should require. The wishes used come from the program of wishes, shown in section 4.3 Program of Demands and Wishes. The ideas were graded with -2, -1, 0, 1 or 2 on every wish, the ideas with the highest scores were chosen to be developed somewhat more detailled. The wishes are formulated as questions and are as follows: How good is the furniture use aspect, speaking of quality and quantity?

How good is the play use aspect, speaking of quality and quantity?

How nice does the overall design of the furniture look?

How nice do the seperate pieces look and how well can they be used?

How efficient is the size or the shape of the product in a home?

table 6.2

Concepts

Section 1 table 6.3

Section 2 table 6.4

With these wishes the ideas in sections

1 and 2 were graded. Section 3 hasn’t been graded like this, since the decision could be made very easy and quick, 4 has been left out in the grading system since it only contains one idea. The grading tables are visible in tables 6.3 and 6.4.

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Concepts

Section 3

I

n this section there are 3 quit similar ideas, they have been discussed and the conclusion was to continue with idea A1.

A7 has been eliminated because of the possible safety danger with the ropes and idea C3 has been eliminated because it would not be possible to actually realise the concept:a stiff material would be needed to be able to build with the mat and a soft material to be able to fold it to a chair or something alike.

Section 4

Since this section only contains idea C2, this one will be worked out more detailled.

6.3 Five Concepts The 5 ideas that were chosen in the previous

section, have been worked out like concepts and will be explained below. The dimensions of the concepts have been made with the sizes of the children, stated in chapter 3.3 Childs Research.

The sizes are adapted in a way that the concepts are useable for 2 year olds, the smallest dimension, and 8 year olds, the largest dimension.

Concepts

Concept 1a (A4)

This

concept consist of a wooden bench with a tunnellike hole through the bottom side. The bench itself consist of three identical pieces with a wooden outside and a soft inside. In folded form the tunnellike form is filled with a wooden beam and a ball. The bench can be used in multiple ways and positions, visible in the image 6.3. One seperate piece turned 90 degrees combined with (part of) the ball forms a chair or when turned 90 degrees it forms a hanging spot. Combined with the beam the seperate pieces can be placed in multiple positions, forming a table-chair combination. For the playing part the benches make a tunnel through which the children can crawl. They also can play with the ball or hang over the beam, or just use their own imagination to play with the pieces.

image 6.3

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Concepts

Concept 1b (C1)

This concept forms a soft

half round sofa and it is shown in the image 6.4. The seperate pieces of the sofa can be used to play with. The children can build stuff with the pieces, like fortesses or play with the pieces itself like lying in them or rocking on them. The pieces can also be used as seperate seats or and extra bed when needed.

image 6.4

Concepts

Concept 2 (C2)

Concept 2 is a sofa with a

wooden plate on the back and wooden boxes with a soft top, shown in the image 6.5. The sofa can be turned into a playing scene like for example a kitchen. This is done by puting the wooden plate to the front, this plate is painted to simulate the scene, and by turning the boxes, which are also painted on the backside, taking the top of the boxes off, the toys out and putting the painted theme matching plates on top of them. In this way the whole sofa has been turned into a scene. So there is painted on the plate side and the boxes and children can play with the toys that were stored in the boxes.

image 6.5

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Concepts

Concept 3 (A2)

The third concept is shown

in the image 6.6 and is basically half of a fruit. It is made out of soft material and forms half of a ball when folded. It consist of 6 identical parts and a core. These parts have patterns to symbolize the fruit, examples shown are an orange, a kiwi, an apple and a watermelon. The fruit can be taken apart and the seperate half round pieces can be used as rocking chairs or lazy lying chairs. The core could be used as a table. The chidren can play inside of it, use it as their little fortess or just use their imagination while playing with the seperate pieces.

image 6.6

Concepts

Concept 4 (A1)

This

is the last concept, shown in the image 6.7. It is a long mat that is made from several identical smaller mats and connected with little elastic ropes. In this way the mats can be folded towards each other very easily and a bed, sofa or chair can for example be formed. The mat will be combined with triangular shapes pieces and children can create all kinds of forms with the pieces of the mat. There will be 10 mat pieces and 10 triangular pieces, they will be attachable through the use of magnets.

image 6.7

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Concepts

6.4 Chosen Concept All the five concepts have

been analysed and discussed deeply. Concept 1B has been eliminated since it forms a hanging place or sofa turned into a playground and concept 3 actually has the same goal but is more original and special. Concept 2 has not been chosen eighter since only one scene can be made.

The making of playgrounds, which can be done with the other concepts, has more posibilities and stimulates the imagination ofthe children far more, which is an important wish of ours. Eventually concept 3 and 4 have been declined since there are already multiple simular offers on the market. There has thus been decided to continue with concept 1A. This concept has a lot of possibilities on the playing part as well as the furniture part.

Concept 1a has been chosen for the final concept, however some changes to it were

made. First of all, the concept will consist of one piece instead of three, since this will probably be more successful on the market while people might not have the room for three pieces and the strengths of the product can be combined in one piece.

Secondly, the dimensions have been changed: the height has been decreased from 70 cm to 60 cm. This has been done because of safety regulations.

When we offer the table and with it a beam, then that might an invitation to climb on the table via the beam. Since the table is 70 cm high, it is on the edge of being dangerously high for climbing. For this reason we chose to make it 60 cm. The lenght and the width have also been decreased to 60 cm because this will make it more compact and the product can remain its square design.

With these changes came

changes for the beam and the ball. The beam has been separated in two pieces of 20 cm, attachable by a zipper.

They will be made of a soft material instead of wood. The ball will be 20 cm and also detachable by a zipper. These sizes and pieces have been chosen because in this way two children can sit at the table on the separate beams on the right height and they can be attached for a higher seat when the table is in its chair form on the side.

There are many different ways the product can be used: the wooden part as a table combined with the beam as seats or turned 90 degrees with the beam as a small sofa.

The wooden part around the cube can be used as a different piece: a table or a tunnel. If you want a long tunnel you can use the wooden part and the soft inside next to each other to crawl through it. All together,

the furniture offers a lot of possibilities and only your own imagination is the one stopping you for using it in every way possible. The cube consists of a lot of different pieces but it can still be stored compact. The 3D renders, the computer drawings in the right sizes and the visualisation of the different possibilities with the product are all visualised in images 6.8.

image 6.8

Concepts

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79 Big Cushion unit : cm

585

100

185

570

350

390

R90

90

600

600

MiddleCushion

unit : cm

480

400

350

image 6.8

90

90

R90 R20

390

200

07

Final Product When the final concept had been chosen there was still a lot to do:

Which color should it be?

What materials should be used?

What can be done with the wood to make the design look better?

What forces does the product need to withstand?

What are the additional details to be thought of?

In this section we will guide you through the questions stated above: the different stages of the final design and final product.

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Final Product

7.1 Material Study The material study can be devided in three parts:

the wood, the foam and the fabric. These three parts are seperately explained below.

The Wood

I

n this paragraph most convinient wood for creating a furniture will be elected. The selection of wood depends on factors like its properties, price and availability. A list of properties the wood needs to posses are as follows: ●Strong and durable, so the it won’t break and is safe in usage ●As cheap as possible with still possesing the necessary properties ●Available ●Easy to manufacture ●Easy to adapt and tool ●A nice structure of grains, meaning having a nice appearance

a minimum of six years, refering to chapter 4.3 Program of Requirements. and strong enough to resist the forces of children using it: dragging, pushing, jumping, sitting and standing on the product. This results in a choice for hardwoods instead of softwoods. The difference between these two comes down to the physical structure and make-up but for the readers it is enough information that hardwoods are in general harder and more durable. That is why these are mostly used for furniture and construction instead of softwood.

There needs to be decided what kind of wood should be used: hard of soft wood, solid wood or plywood and which woodsort specifically. These subjects are all studied and explained in this paragrahp.

A quick research reveals that hardwoods like Oak , Maple, Cherry, Mahogany and Walnut are found in high-quality furniture that needs to last. These materials are used because of their strength and resistance. For this reasons, the choice will be made between these sorts of

First of all, the wooden part of furniture should be durable for

woods.

The next decision that needs to be made is a choice between plywood and solid wood. In this case the economics of a product and availability plays the major role. Plywood is made from multiple layers of plies of thin solid wood, these are glued together and so form a panel with a specific thickness. Solid wood is produced from slabs of wood that are sawn from logs and then dried. The advantage of solid wood is that it is stronger and stiffer and has a generally nicer look than plywood. However, solid wood is not only more expensive itself (0.75 to 4 times more than plywood) but also more expensive and hard to work with due to the strength.

Another disadvantage of solid wood is that, when moved, it can cause inner scars and self-destruction over the time.

Plywood on the other hand

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Final Product

The Foam also has more against ageing.

The

resistance

Overviewing this research, the decision has been made to use plywood and not solid wood. This wood be more convinient, especially since we use plates which are going to have cut-outs in them, the explanation for the cut-outs will be explained further in this chapter: 7.3 Pattern Study.

Summing up a perfect wood for the product would be a cheap hardwood plywood with aestethic grains structure which enhance its natural appearance. After a research on prices and availability in a few european wholsalers it has been found that it is the best choice to use maple plywood, a picture of this wood is shown in image 7.1.

image 7.1

foam used in the production of furniture should be of premium comfortability with not much wear of foam. It should have a profitable economic price and it should be widely available. The major function of the furniture, where the foam plays a big part, is the function of the armchair. The use of two different types of foam is therefor the best option, the explanation for this follows below. The furniture consists of three foam parts: the rectangular outer piece (the backsupport) and the two U-shaped inner pieces (the seats).

The seats The seats should be more rigid because the children are going to sit on them when they are in a horizontal as well as a vertical position for longer periods of time. Therefor the used foam will be high firm, high density foam.

The backsupport The foam for back support should be significantly softer than the foam that is used for the seat. This will make the chair more comfortable to sit in and the children can ‘sink in’ the back. The used foam will be high firm but lower density foam.

After the economics have been studied, it has been decided to use a HD foam that satisfies the price-quality ratio.

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Final Product

The Fabric

Possible materials to cover

the foam have been studied, these can be devided in synthetic materials and natural materials. These two sections are stated below, from eachofthe materials some characteristics and specifications are named, to gain a clear overview of the differnt materials.

Faux Leather image 7.3 Faux leather is a popular choice for those who like the look of leather but don’t want to use real leather. It has some advantages over the use of real leather: it is more resistant to pets, less expensive and animal friendly. It offers the same durability, look and feel as real leather does.

are very resistant wrinkles. affordable

durable and are to stains and The materials is too.

image 7.4

Synthetic materials

leather, which becomes softer and more comforatble with the years. Because it is easy to clean and not affected by shedding pets, leather is often recommended for people with pets and younger children.

However, leather does not stand up well to sharp objects.

It can be damaged quite easily by pets’ claws or metal edges, and tends to feel sticky in hot or humid weather.

Textured cotton is a popular choice for sofas in quieter environments, where it can not be easily damaged. Although it looks good, it wears fast and tends to trap dirt in the grooves in the fabric.

image 7.7

Microfiber image 7.2 Microfiber is a type of very fine polyester that is soft but durable, easy to clean and competitively priced. It is extremely closely woven and does not allow pet hair to stick to it.

image 7.2

image 7.3

image 7.5

Chenille image 7.4 Chenille is a material with an elegant look and it is stronger than other fabrics. It can be made from cotton, but is often created from synthetic materials like rayon or olefin.

Natural materials

Acrylic synthetic fibers image 7.5 Acrylic fibers resemble wool and are soft to the touch. They

Leather image 7.6 Leather is one of the most popular materials used for sofas. It is strong and durable, easy to clean and develops character over time. There are not many materials that can compete with the characteristics of leather: the luxurious feeling of soft

image 7.6

Cotton image 7.7 Cotton is not as stain resistant or durable as synthetic materials are. Depending on the tightness of the weave, cotton can be prone to damage and wrinkling. A tighter weave produces a stronger fabric though.

Linen image 7.8 Linen has similar characteristics to cotton.

While it is not the most durable fabric, it has a nice appearance. It is mostly used for sofas in homes, without small children and pets, or in more formal settings.

Our preference goes to the use of natural materials and more specifically a thick cotton. The preference of

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Final Product

7.2 Color Study cotton over leather is because the facts that cotton looks more child-friendly on furniture and is a lot less expensive.

Cotton has advantages over linen because it is more durable and more children-use proof, since the children are also playing with the product, the material should be strong enough.

The decisions to use cotton over synthetic materials has been based on the facts that cotton is more sustainable and less alergetic and the fact that there won’t be any patterns on the fabric, the explanation for this follows in chapter 7.2 color study. If a pattern would have been used, this would be easier on synthetic materials than on cotton, however this is not of our concerns.

image 7.8

After

the material of the final concept had been decided, there had to be thought of the fabric that would be used in the product.The first idea was to use fabric with a pattern for the cushions. There were a lot of patterns that would fit our product. A small collage of different kind of patterns that could be used, has been made, a collage of these can been seen in image 7.9.

However, there has been decided to make cuts in the wood as a pattern and leave the cushions without a pattern.

This alternative had our preference since it is a big trend to use cut-outs in wood.

It gives the product a nice design and the possibility that the child grows tired of the pattern or feels too old for it is less big with the wood pattern than the fabric pattern.

Now there has been decided to make the fabric plain, without a pattern, the colors of

this should be studied. The color should preferably be unisex, close to nature and colorful. There has been a brainstorm sessions to gain some inspirations for the colors. The result of this brainstorm is visible as a collage in image 7.10. The pictures shown in the color study collage have been categorized in three sections: the softer peachy-green colors, the blue/green/yellow pallets and the autumn colors. These catergories all caught our attention and the decision was made to choose one color pallet from each section, thus creating three products with different colors. The idea appealed to us since in this way the customers can choose a color of their preference, for example fitting in the room the product will be placed. The three chosen pictures with their pallets are visible in images 7.11.

With these three pallets, the

possibilities on the product have been explored. Each pallet is used in nine different combinations.

The three chosen pallets and the accompanying nine combinations are shown in images 7.12.

The different color combinations were studied and eventually the three concepts in images 7.13 were chosen. The colors were chosen through our preferences, this preference became known through a grading system that has been used by all of us: every team member showed the three most preferable ones of each concept and these resulst have been discussed and analyzed.

The explanation for the final choices are as follows: for color pallet 1 the concept has been chosen because it consist only of three colors and will thus look somewhat more quiet in room. In our experience the customers

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Final Product

image 7.9

should be offered at least one concept that is more quiet without very bright colors.

Also this color combination spoke to us the most because of the nice aesthetic design. In color pallet two, the choice for more bright colors was made since the first concept was somewhat more dark. For the third concept the choice was made for the one with shades of green on the outside, this was a preferable color and unisex, thus the whole design would be very fitting for both girls and boys. Also, if people would like only one color when the product is in the compact form, this should be offered by us in at least one product.

After deciding the color pallets to be used, the shades of wood came to our attention.

There has chosen to use three different shades: a light wood, in combination with the first concept. A medium dark wood, in combination with the

second concept and a dark wood for the third concept, so completing the color pallet with using the only color that had been left out. These wood shades are visible in image 7.14, in the following paragraph.

image 7.10

Final Product

image 7.12

image 7.11

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87 image 7.13

Final Product

7.3 Pattern Study As has been stated before,

image 7.14

a pattern in the wood will be used instead of a pattern on the fabric. A search on patterns in wood has been done, resulted in the collage in image 7.14. There has been decided to choose three different patterns in wood just like three different color patterns have been used. For the first concept, a cutout of animals has been chosen, since children often like this and it gives the concept a playful look. For the second concept it has been decided to use a pattern made out of geometrical shapes. This has been chosen because abstract forms could be liked and fitted into a house style more easily, giving the customers the chance to choose something universal. In the third concept, the autumn color pallet, it has been decided to connect the theme of the colors with the theme of the patterns: making the pattern a tree form which fits the colors that came from

the leaves of a tree. Three different color pallets with three different patterns with three different colors of wood have so been created and visualised in image 7.15. It has been decided to give the three different concepts their own name, to be able to easily refer to them. There has been some thinking on the names and the decision was to give the concepts a unisex name, since they are unisex themselfs. Our product can beused by anyone, so can their names. The flower pallet concept is calles Jamie, the berry pallet concept is called Charlie and the leave pallet concept is called Alex.

Final Product

image 7.15

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Final Product

7.4 Forces F

or the wood, a study on the forces was needed, because the children might sit on that part or even jump on it, play on it and so on. Therefore the wooden piece must be strong enough to carry these weights. In SolidWorks the wooden was tested by exerting a force of 1000N on top of it as a distributed load.

Unfortunately, it was not possible to use the maple wood that will be used in the real Kudoo. Instead the test is done with Balsa wood, which is a lot less strong than the wood used for our product. If the weak Balsa wood is strong enough to withstand the forces, then the Maple wood will be strong enough for certain.

There has been chosen for a 1000N force, since this resembles the weight of three children with a safety marge.

The average weight of an eight year old child is 26/27 kg. The distributed force so

equals three children, in the maximum age of our user range, standing on the wooden part. In images 7.16 the test shows us that even the Balsa wood is strong enough for these forces. The Yield Strength isn’t reached yet, and the maximum displacement is only 2.076mm, so for the maple that is even going to be less.

The conclusion of this test is that the wooden part is strong enough for children’s use.

image 7.16

Final Product

7.5 Additional details An aspect to think about

was the cleaning of the product: since children will be using it, the changes are big that it will get dirty relatively fast. A solution for easy cleaning is to provide the possibility to take the fabric of the foam and wash it. The fabric will be closed around the foam with a zipper, so it is easily detachable. The zipper is going to be located on one of the sides that is not on the outside, so not showing the most. The zipper is also going to be hidden under a patch so it will not be directly in sight, this is visualized in image 7.17. Another advantage of hiding the zipper this way is that it prevents the children to find it easily and it provides a nicer feeling of the product since the zipper won’t be directly felt, so the children can hurt themselfs easily with the zipper.

A zipper is also going to be applied to be able to connect

the two U-shaped cushions.

There has been chosen to use zippers for the connection, since zippers are sustainable and don’t break easily. This zipper is also going to have a patch of fabric over it, for the nicer design and the safety of the children. The patch would be slightly different however since it needs to connect to seperate pillows, this is visualised in image 7.18. image 7.17

image 7.18

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08

Production The production processes have been studied and the

production of one piece of furniture can be divided in five main stands which consist of fourteen major activities. Hereby the transport between the stands have not been taken into account. The five stands will now be described and visualised:

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Production

Preparation of a plywood plates 1 2 3 4 5 6

Cut the smaller plates from a big plate Cut the support triangles Cut the detail with CNC mill on a big plate Hand finish edges and details Glue the joints at the edges Nail the support triangles in the corners

image 8.1

Preparation of the foam shapes 1 2 3

Cut the rectangle shape cushion from bigger piece of foam with a hot wire machine Manually cut the inner "reversed U shape" from inside of a rectangle Cut the "U" in the right dimensions: two smaller parts

image 8.2

Cutting of the textile 1

Cut the textile in the right dimensions

image 8.3

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Production

Covering of the foam with the textile 1 2 3

Initial sewing of the parts of the textile to form ‘textile cases’ for the foam Put the textile cases around the foam parts Final sewing by closing the cases

Final assembly 1

2 3

image 8.4

Assembly of all the elements The rectangular shape will be placed in the wood The U-shaped inner parts will be placed in the outer shape along with the ball Final quality check Packaging

image 8.5

09

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Price

The price strategy is aimed

at the middle class. This market has the money to buy quality furniture but might not be willing to spend a lot of money on in if it doesn’t provide something special.

The Kudoo however is a multiple purpose piece of furniture with a second life and should there for be allowed to have a higher price range than regular furniture. The product should be of good quality and be afforable for our target market.

The market research proved that simular products for children offered on the market differ form hundred to a few hundred euro, depended on the quality and retailer.

To count the predicted final price the detaild production costs have been counted. This has been done through calculating the costs of the raw materials, the work hours and the packaging and catalogue and some additional overhead costs.

This calculation can be seen in table 9.1 and table 9.2.

According to the tables with cost calculation the approximate production cost, when creating a thousand pieces like in our demands, should be between 46,47 euro and 91,2 euro.

The final customer price of Kuboo should be afforable for our target group but should be profitable for Nidoo, with an optimal 4 times profitabilty rate for a retail product.

Assuming a 400% marging rate on the product, it should be sold from around 185 euro up to 365 euro with avarage expected price of 275 euro. This results in a decent and affordable price for an advanced piece of furniture like the Kudoo.

table 9.1

table 9.2

10 95

Marketing Launch To launch the Kudoo on the

market, several pre-launch actions need to be done to create awareness and demand on the market. After this stage has been succesfully rounded, the actual launch can happen. Hereafter follows the post-launch stage, mainly to receive feedback and remain awareness. These three stages are described in this chapter and have been deeply researched. Since Nidoo is a new design company and the Kudoo is the first product to be launched, this will be a challenge. We, as a company, can’t build on earlier established contacts or customers so everything is depended on a good marketing launch. For this reason the marketing launch has been studied relatively detailled. A visual of this process can be seen in image 10.1.

image 10.1

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Marketing Launch

10.1 Pre-Launch Initial Planning and Research

The

first stage of the pre-launch is the initial planning and research. This has already been done in earlier stages of our work. This stage consist firstly of strategic positioning, in which the category of the product, the map to its key benefits, the core value proposition and the competitors will be defined.

Basically this comes down to the answers on the questions what the product is and how it fuctions, who the customers are, what they want and who the competitors are. All of this has been stated in this report, to be found in the chapters 3 Wide Research and 4 Primary Decisions.

The second part of the initial preparations is about the brand development, which include finding an out standing brand name, logo and URL. The first two aspects have already been completed succesfully, after long research and try and error, and are stated in chapter 1.1 Nidoo.

The last aspect, the URL, has been done in this stage and the result is: http://nidoodesign.jimdo.co m/

Creating Awareness

The

next stage of the pre-launch is the creation of awareness. This can be done in multiple ways. These will be clearly and seperately explained below.

The first way to be named is the web presence, since social media and digital marketing are an important factor nowadays.

Creating awareness in the digital area can also be done in multiple ways. Firstly the webpage: this forms a way to present the company. The site should not only be functional but a presentation of the image and the vision of Nidoo, it should invite people to learn more about us and stimulate the purchase of the product. The design, content, structure and visual elements will be critical.

Secondly a blog is a way to stand out on the market. This enhances the company’s strategic positioning and promotes the product. The blog has already been thought of since our founding

and has been up to date from the start, it can be found at: http://nidoo-eps.tumblr.com.

So this part has been done as well. After these completed stages follow the stages that have not been done yet but will be part of the further marketing plan. The third way is the digital PR and partnering program that could be set up to create more awareness. This will be kicked off to drive communications, traffic, networking, partnering and to monitor conversations, word of mouth and online reputation. Twitter is the easiest main tool for this. The PR should include customer and business development communication and standard blogger and media outreach.

The fourth way to build awareness and amplify word of mouth is the use of viral videos. These cost almost nothing to produce and only require original ideas and content. For these reasons the use of viral videos would be a

smart move, however it should be done carefully. When it is executed in the wrong way or too fast it could backfire and create the opposite effect: negative publicity.

The ways to build awareness through web presence have been stated and other ways will be explained next. One has simular effects as the use of viral videos and also simular difficulties: the guerilla marketing. This too requires great, original ideas and works in the B2B and B2C environments. Other ways to build awareness are to reach out to the press, to build relationships with journalist and press outlets. Also, building relationships with third-party industry analysts and receiving endorsements can boost the marketing efforts. All these ways to build awareness can be used and when this is succesfully done, the advertising phase can start.

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Marketing Launch

Close-to-Launch Stage

Advertising

Advertising

has been named as a new phase but also falls under the previous awareness building stage since advertising is one of the most important ways to build awareness.However the phase is very important and so deserves a seperate paragraph. The first field of advertising to be examined is the digital one. Once again this can be done on multiple fields. A good way to start would be with Google Adwords, since it is cost effective, flexible, results oriented and highly scalable.

Other online advertising fields could be Yahoo or Bing and Facebook ads and banner campaigns.A second field is the one of strategic PR to get the necessary response and recognition. The PR strives to strategically drive events or campaigns with big media.

Also, when our brand and service are established, high impact events can be established. This all can be

done through conferences, radio and tv. This advertising is a much bigger and more difficult step to perform than the online search-engine marketing, but will be very effective once completed.Crowdsourcing campaigns are a third possible option for advertisement and brings the advantage of using the crowd for our own good. For example: campaign ideas, viral content development and marketing can be tapped from the crowd through contests.

Other pros that crowdsourcing brings are the use for cost effective business development, market research, opinion gathering and customer service support.

All together does sourcing from the crowd bring lots of advantages.A fourth possibility of advertising is speaking and briefing, this should be done when our reputation and awareness are already well developed.

When the the soon to come product release is known among the customers, the speaking and analyst or media briefing ensure that it will remain in people’s minds and relevant.Building demand after the advertsing will be a difficult stage for us. If there would have been an excisting customer base, they could have been targeted through email or referral campaigns.

In that way the excisting customers would be informed about our new product and new customers could be targeted withthe referral campaign, this means that excisting customers are stimulated, through for exaple a gift, to refer a friend. This is an efficient technique since the change that people will buy the product when it is referred to by a friend is much higher than through nonpersonal advertising. It might be possible to copy this techinque by using the customer base of a company

with the same or a simular target group, meaning partners should be formed.

W

hen it is almost time to launch, this last stage will be passed. This is all about creating buzz, externally as well as internally. For the external buzz all the ways above could be used for some extra awareness. Another strategy that can be used is the ‘leaking’ of some information or photos to build extra awareness and get people’s attention. A big user of this technique is Apple. It is also profitable to create a launch internally, to get everyone excited and ready for the event. This can be done through screensaver messages, posters in the workplaces, internal social media sites, email and meeting for example.

Furthermore, the website, social media and blog should be up to date, all ready to announce the big launch. At this point the pricing and distribution stages should be finalized.

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Marketing Launch

10.2 Launch It has been kept in mind that Nidoo as a newly found company probably will not posses all the resources to fullfil all the above stated techniques, since some of them require a lot of money or employees. However it is useful to study all the possible techniques so at least all the possibilities are know. Below will follow an examinationg of which methods would be realistic and achievable, taking into account that we might not have all the resources.

For creating awareness it is realistic for Nidoo to focus on webpresence: put effort in maintaining the website and the blog. Twitter is an achievable and cost efficient tool for the digital PR and the usage of viral videos form a cheap way to build awareness. The viral videos are also realistic to make since our team excists of creative minds, capable of finding original ways to gain

people’s interests. To build awareness guerilla marketing is achievable but might be too much effort or cost too much money, the web presence is an easier way. However reaching out to the press and connecting with journalist is an important point that should be focussed on as well.

In the advertising stage, some methods are more realistic than others. Nidoo should focus on online advertising, especially Google Adwords, since it is the most cost efficient. Strategic PR forms an advanced and difficult step, but if been done correctly could be very productivefor us. However, this should only be done when the needing resources are available since it will cost a lot of effort, time and money.

On crowdsourcing, which brings lots of advantages, should a bigger focus as well as on speaking and briefing. These events make the company more personal and

approachable than online advertising.

The stage close to the launch should be fully done.

However, creating the internal buzz is not necessary but does stimulate everyone.

The most important stage of our marketing launch will be trying to attend Cologne Fair.

This is a furniture fair with a section for children’s furniture.

If Nidoo manages to get Kuboo through the selection, then this will be the first opportunity to show the product to the potentially interested and to see our competition.

D

uring the launch, all the preparation and planning should come succesfully together. Through the earlier made contacts with the press and journalist, a press release will officially show the product to the world along with the webpages going live. For the rest the launch day doens’t has a lot to wright about.

There should be observed and adjusted when needed. After the launch all the prepared advertising will go on too, stimulation sales and gathering customers.

10.3 PostLaunch The

porst-launch is about two main aspects: firstly, gathering feedback from customers and sales and secondly establish an ongoing plan for lead generation and awareness. All the techniques for creating and so maintaining awareness as well as the advertsing campaigns will continue and make sure that a positive buzz remains.

Going to fairs and try to win prices or awards will also boost awareness and is a good way of promoting.

Nidoo has already planned to appear at the Cologne Furniture Fair in hope to gain more awareness and possible customers, in the pre-launch stage. Further promotion can be done with crowd funding, this is also a good tool to raise funds.

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11

Prototype

Making of the wood

F

irstly, there has been decided to make the wood 15 mm thick, because it is strong and steady and the wood needs to be able to withstand children playing with it. The wood will be made of three main pieces: the two sides and the upper piece, visible in image 11.1.

600 mm

Now

all the theoratical aspects of the process have been dofne, the next step is to make a prototype. The prototype will serve as a control to see if everything worked out as wished, will be used in an user research and will be used in the final photoshoot. This section of the report will take you step by step through the making of our prototype. It has been divided into 3 subsections: making of the wood, making of the foam and making of the fabric.

image 11.1

600 mm

600 mm

15mm

600 mm

600 mm

15mm

600 mm

15mm

The wood has been bought at Lamiplast, but not yet in the right sizes. They have been cut in the right sizes by a sawingmachine. These three pieces need to be joined together in two corners, to form the table-like structure. There are multiple ways to join these plates together, some examples are visible in image 11.2. There has been decided to use the miter joint but with an extra triangle within the joint to make it more stable. This is visualized in image 11.3.

With the same machine used for sawing the wood in the right dimensions, the corners of the plates have been made with a 45 degree cut. After the plates had been made ready for joining, they only required the designed pattern on them. The pattern has been designed in Illustrator and is visible in image 11.4. These documents have been put in a CNC-machine and this machine cutted the patttern in the wood, a few images of this is visible in images 11.5.

The cutouts had to be treated with sandpaper to remove splinters and make the whole piece smooth. When everything was smoothed it was time to join the parts. This has been done by puting tape around the corners, which worked as hinges, and glueing the parts together. The support triangle has been nailed in the joined corners. To support the structure and to keep the angles 90 degrees, a stoke of wood has been taped inbetween and support

100 11.4 11.5

pieces have been put in the corners. The pictures of this process are visible in images 11.6.

After the glue has dried, the wooden piece was finished and the result is shown in image 11.7.

image 11.2

image 11.3

11.6

11.7

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Prototype

Making of the foam 18

45°

542

390

430 0

R7

530

560

make the foam part fully of solid soft foam. However, in the store we found out that in order to make the solid foam part, a mold needed to be produced and the costs would be really high. As a second option, it has been chosen to make the part of styrofoam, which is relatively cheap, and then cover it with a 2 cm layer of more expensive soft foam to make it appear soft. The block of white styrofoam and the soft green foam for the layes are visible in image 11.8. The dimensions of the white styrofoam were calculated and with a hot-wire

machine the seperated pieces were cutted. The dimensions of the styrofoam and the dimensions of the green soft foam are visible in images 11.9. The cutting of the pieces and the result of this are shown in images 11.10.

When everything was cutted, the seperated pieces were glued together, visible in image 11.11. After the white styrofoam was fully glued together, the green soft foam has been glued on this, forming the final foam part of our prototype. The result of the foam part of the prototype is visible in images 11.12.

unit : cm

65

The original idea was to

Dimensions of Styrofoam

350 R110

image 11.8

image 11.9

400

0

R11

69

379

440

310

160

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Prototype

Dimensions of Green Foam

unit : cm

585

100

185

570

350

390

R90

90

600

600

480

400

350

90

90

R90 R20

390

200

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Prototype

image 11.10

image 11.11

Prototype

image 11.12

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Prototype

Making of the fabric

The finishing tough was making the fabric around the

foam part. The fabric has been carefully chosen after visiting multiple stores. The store Tapicerias Ruiz offered the full set of colors needed. The fabric is shown in images 11.13 and are from two different materials since one material of fabric did not offer all the colors needed.

The fabric has been cut around the pieces and sewed together. The images of the sewing and the result are visible in images 11.14.

The result of the prototype is visible in images 11.15.

image 11.13

image 11.14

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image 11.15

12

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Usertest and Photoshoot The photoshoot has been the last stage of the process. Since the photoshoot was done with children this was simultaneously a user test.

There have been two shootings, one at the kindergarten done by the Nidoo team and one professionally done at a photostudio.

Firstly, the usertest part of both shoots will be discussed and secondly the results of the shoots will be shown.

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Usertest

I

n the photoshoot at the kindergarten, children of the age of two were used. The children were somehwat shy at first and it took a few minutes of adjusting for them to start playing with it. They played very actively with the Kuboo, their preferences with playing were crawling through the tunnel and playing with the ball. They moved the foam parts around but they did not move the wooden part. Also, they did not build playgrounds themselfs but did play with the ones made for them.

For the professional photoshoot a boy of four years old was used. The boy also needed to adjust a bit but

then went to play with the Kuboo in all possible positions. He moved every part of the Kudoo to build all kinds of fortresses or parcours, positions we did not even think of ourselfs. The boy also moved the wooden part and really went exploring for himself: exploring all the posibillies of all the positions.

He did not get tired of playing with the Kuboo and even after one hour, when his mother came to get him, he still wanted to play with it.

The conclusions of this user test are as follows. Firstly, it can be concluded that our product was a succes regarding the playing aspect.

The children enjoyed it a lot

and could not get enough of playing. The furniture apect worked out good as well, while the heights were suitable for the children using it. Secondly, there was a clear difference in usage between the children that were two and the one that was four. The Kuboo has been found suitable for bot but the studied differences will be discussed.

The two year old children are playing with the Kuboo in different positions, however they do not really create the different positions themself.

The four year old child created all the positions himself and used his imagination.

The other difference is the fact that the

two years old do not move the wooden piece, whereas the four year old one does. The last noticible difference was that the interrest of the younger children lied more in simple games like crawling through the tunnel or playing with the ball where as the interrest of the older child lied in building structures or games himself. This means that the Kuboo can be used for both age groups but older, more developed, children can use it to the fullest, using their imagination, where the younger children are more limited in their imagination.

However they can enjoy the product just as much as the older ones.

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Usertest and Photoshoot

Photoshoot

The photos taken at

both shoots are visualised in several collages. The collage of the photos from the kindergarten is shown in image 12.1.

The collage of the furniture use of the professional shoot is shown in image 12.2 and the one of the playing use is shown in image 12.3.

image 12.1

Usertest and Photoshoot

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image 12.2

Usertest and Photoshoot

Usertest and Photoshoot

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image 12.3

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13

Discussion To start the discussion, the

aim is repeated and carefully overviewed. The goal of this discussion is to gain insight on the fact whether or not the aim has been fullfilled. The aim was to “To design the innovative piece of furniture for children, in the age group 2 to 8, that will stimulate children’s development, has multiple functions and will be attractive on a market”. The aim has been followed throughout the whole project.

Overall, the Kuboo fullfills the requested aspects in our aim.

After the aim has been discussed, there has been looked at some other aspects in the report that require the product to fullfill certain demands or wishes. A more detailled overview is stated below.

Firstly discussed is the age group. The aim was to make the piece of furniture for children in the age range of 2 - 8. As stated in chapter 3.3 Childs research, the children will use their imagination in playing form the age of 3.

Children of 2 years old won’t be developed so far as to use their full imagination when playing. This was also confirmed in the user test: the younger children will stick with simple games. However, when playing with older children, families or parents, the product can still be used to the fullest.

A second aspect to be considered regarding to the age group is the fact that the Kudoo is a big and heavy product. A small child could have troubles moving this or building with the foam pieces

without help. In the usertest it was seen that the two year olds do not move the wooden part themselfs but they are able to move the foam. The zippers could be a difficult mechanism for smaller children as well. However, this too is helped when older children or parents play along with the child.

By giving the Kudoo a configuration as a nicely designed table, the age group has been extended far beyond 8 years, since the table, as a piece of furniture, could appeal to every age group.

The result is that the Kudoo is suitable for the initially stated age group but not optimally made for this group. The age group could probably be better defined without an upper limit for the furniture

use, but for the playing aspect an upper limit of eight would be suitable.

Secondly, the part of the aim of the development of the children is discussed. There has not been as much emphasize on this aspect as originally planned. Partly due to the fact that it became clear in chapter 3.3 Childs Research that children learn through playing. The Kudoo is one big puzzle and the childrens developtment, like the one of the muscles or the coordination, will be stimulated by just playing with the product. However, when the aim was formulated we had in mind to add something that specifically stimulated the development of the children.

This results in the fact that this aspect ofthe aim has only

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been partly fullfilled.

Thirdly, the part that requires the product to consist of multiple functions will be explained.

The Kudoo completely and succesfully fullfills this part of the aim. First of all the Kudoo is furniture as well as a playground.

However, the Kudoo provides more than just these two functions: a whole range of different uses within these functions. As a piece of furniture it could be a small table, a table for children to work at alone or together with different ways to sit at it, a small sofa and even a hanging spot.

As a playground, the Kudoo could be everything: a tunnel to crawl through, a fortress to build, a goal to shoot the ball

in and so on.

Finally, the part of the aim that requires it to be attractive on the market will be discussed.

This can’t be confirmed with a 100% certainty, since the product has not been launched yet. However, it can be stated that the Kudoo has a good change of being attractive on the market. This can be concluded through the market research that has been done, saying there is a market gap that the Kudoo would fill.

More certainty comes from the fact that our product follows some upcoming and long term trends, for example the pattern in the wood, compact and longterm design, to be found in chapter 3.2 Trends.

This brings us to the Trends part in which is stated that the

product would preferable include the three most important and relevant trends found: compact design, longterm design and modular design. To design compact has been achieved: the Kudoo can be stored in a room as one compact cube and can be taken apart for usage when wished.

To design for longterm has also been succeeded, since the Kudoo can always be used as a table and so has a second life as a table. The modular design has been achieved as far as we think is possible. The product is being offered in three different color pallets with accompanying wood pattern, so customers can choose which one fits their preferences the best. When designing for a big target audience like Nidoo has

done, it is nearly impossible to offer a truly modular design, since this requires it to be fully customised. The Kudoo would fit this trends better if the customer would be able to choose the colors, the wood and the pattern. However, this increases the costs so much that the whole tarket audience would change from middle class to far upper class and the Kudoo could not be mass produced and would change into a design piece. This all results in the fact that our product fits two of the three chosen trends perfectely and one as far as possible with the remainance of our other demands (price / tarket audience).

The last section of relevance to be discussed are the colors being used in the different

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Discussion

models of the Kudoo, visualised in image 13.1. The demand was the use of unisex colors, so our product would be suitable for girls as well as for boys. In our opinion this demand has been achieved succesfully: the three different models aim at girls as well as at boys. However it can be argued that Jamie is somewhat more girly, because a soft peach-pink colors has been used. For Charlie counts the opposite, because two of the four colors are blue. Alex would be completely unisex, since this model doesn’t use a blue or pink shade. It has been delibaretly chosen to use the colors in the final pallets since we did not want to limit ourselfs in the use of colors by eliminating blue and pink completely. However, no extreme girlish pink has been

used and the blues in Charlie have been compensated with purple which is somewhat more girly. The result of this section is that our products are in our opinion just as much for girls as they are for boys. We like to note with this that pink and blue are just the stereotypes of colors used to fit boys or girls, at Nidoo we don’t like to appoint certain colors to certain sekses and boys and girls are in our eyes free to like whatever color they please. However, the majority of the world thinks different and that is why we adapted and tried to avoid the stereotype colors as much as possible.

image 13.1

Discussion

Jamie

Charlie

Alex

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14

Evaluation The evaluation has been split in two parts: the process

and the product. The things that did not go as planned or went wrong will be named and evaluated, meaning there will be explained why is went wrong and how it could have gone better. Other than the aspects mentioned below we must say we are very content with out work, the process as well as the product.

The Process

For

the process a few aspects have been evaluated: the planning, the child research, the survey and the sketching.

We didn’t encounter any further problems or difficulties.

Firstly, the planning is going to be evaluated.

The planninghas been madein a very early stage and was overall very realistic. We made several deadlines for ourself and we managed to realise all of these in time.

However, there were some difficulties in our process regarding to the planning, these were mostly beyond our reach and unpredictable. Our biggest concern for the planning was the date of the photoshoot. We managed to finish our prototyping in time and the photoshoot was planned right after this.

Unfortunately the photographer was not available anymore on the picked date or in the rest of that following week. The solution was to move the date of the photoshoot to the next week, the final week, which gave us some stress about getting everything done in time. This could have been arranged better if the prototype would have been finished earlier and the photoshoot planned earlier. In that way there would have been spare time in case something went wrong, like it did with us. Concluded, some spare time for important events on which you are dependend on others is very important.

The child research is the second aspect to be evaluated since it had been done very

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inefficient.

Four group members went researching on children without very clear arrangement about who would research what. This resulted in a big, unclear researched, written in different kinds of styles. This mess needed to be rewritten to one style and all the double parts needed to be filtered out.

Thisis ofcourse no disaster but could have been more time efficient. A better way to have done this is two group members who did the child research with clear tasks on which parts of the research.

Then these two members could have typed the tekst together and inform the other group mates ofthe results afterwards.

The third aspect to be named is the survey. The original idea was to make a survey which could help us to provide

information of what kind of products our target group is interested in. However, the first obstacle that stood in our way is our lack of knowledge of the spanish language, which made it very hard to speak to our target group.

Secondly, we reached out to our target group in furniture stores for children, which was not much appreciated by store owners. Luckily we did got some results from this but with these complications we decided to put the survey online instead. This was a good second option to gain more knowledge on the subject but the moment the survey was correctly translated to spanish andput online, we were already a stage further in our project. In this stage the idea generation on thedirections ad already

begun withoutthe further results of the survey after so it had been decided to put the survey to no further use. A better decision would have been to still use the survey since the knowledge it would have provided could have been usefull after all.

Ofcourse, the best option would have been to have planned everything better, so the survey outcomes would have been known before going to the next stage.

Fortunately, with the information we did receive in the furniture stores from our target group and our own creativity we still managed to come up with very good design directions. The fact remains that we will never know how this outcome would have been if we had the results of the survey in this

stage.

The last aspect to be evaluated are the making of the sketches. At this point we are referring to the ideas made after the how can you, these are visible in table 6.1.

The idea sketches have been made by every member of the group which was deliberately done so all would have an equal share in the idea generating process. While this sounds very fair, the outcome was not as wished: there were very big quality differences between the ideas as well as the visualisation of these ideas. This is the logical result of the fact that not every group member has a design background or knows how to properly sketch. In table 6.1 some of the original sketches have been redrawn by group members which are better at

drawing and visualising.

There could be argued on this point that this is very time inefficient and the members that are not strong with idea generation or sketching could have been put to better use during this stage, using their own strength. This would be more time efficient since these members could have done something useful and other members did not need to redraw afterwards. However, the drawback of this is excluding people of an equal group in the most important stages of working towards our product. In our opinion it was a good decisions to let everybody use their imagination in the idea phase and the lost time is something we have to accept with this.

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Evaluation

The Product

After the evaluation points Product of our process have been stated, we move on to the actual product. Above all, it should be mentoined that we are more than happy with the final outcome of the product and the prototype. All of our hard work has been paid of and it shows in what we have achieved during these months.

However, with being very critical, there are some aspects to be named. These are diveded between the final product and the prototype.

The biggest struggles occured by deciding the sizes. As is known, the chosen concept originally consisted of three pieces. Two of these have been eliminated, partly due to space efficiency. Here after, a small carton prototype was made to visualise the dimensions and it was obivious that a 70 cm by 70 cm cube would still be a very large product, also coming with safety issues of the height. At that point, it had been decided to make the Kuboo a 60 cm cube, which appealed to us more in size and would probably be bought earlier by customers than the 70 cm cube would have been bought. However seeing our prototype, though we are content with the final sizes, still shows a rather large

piece of furniture. The Kudoo is allowed to be big, since it forms a table to work on, a sofa and a playground, but it has passed our minds that not everyone in our target group will have the space in their house to place it. These people could be content with the child working at the regular table and sitting on the already excisting sofa. There has been discussed whether the Kuboo should be made smaller, but this would exclude multiple functions.

For example the child would not be able to crawl through it anymore and the support in the back would be too short to form a small sofa. We decided that the functions the Kudoo provides, are more important than the sizes it has.

Concluding, our product is a relatively large piece of furniture but we our content

with the sizes and these can not be changed without making other critical changes to the Kudoo.

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Evaluation

Prototype

In the making of the prototype occured the most obstacles of our whole project. This is partly due to our inexperience with prototype making, partly because we lack certain resources like a car to reach out the city and partly again because of our lack of knowlegde in spanish and the city Valencia. Luckily we had the help and knowledge of our supervisor in our search for shops that could provide us with the necessary materials for our prototype. Several difficulties will now be evaluated.

The first problem stumbled upon has already been named in chapter 11 Prototyping: the foam part. A short recap of this difficulty will be discussed. The original

thought was to make the foam part fully of solid soft foam.

However, in the foam shop it became known that a mold would be needed for this, which would cost within a thousand euro. The solution came to our mind pretty fast to use cheap styrofoam as a base and cover this with the desired soft foam so it would have the same appearance as wished in the real product with the fabric covering it.

Although this solution came relatively fast, with better initial research we could have known that our idea was impossible to make and then we could have directly started with our plan B. This section concluding that our initial research should have been done better for faster results.

However in this case, the trial and error method used by us worked out fine.

The other difficulty was the sewing of the fabric around the foam.

We have underestimated how difficult and time consuming this would be. First of all came the problems with the sewingmachine, which did not work properly and was hard to figure out in use. We had hoped for more help from someone who knew how to master the machine but unfortunately she was busy herself so we needed to figure it out on our own. If the working of the machine was know, then a lot of time would already have been spared.

This is a fault on our behalf, we should have made better arragments with the girl from the machine and then she could have told us the exact working of it. The rest of the difficulties is due to our lack of

knowledge with the sewing: the pieces were cut to big, so they needed to be cut again, this was very time consuming.

We are not sure who we could have improved our sewing skilss. A solution would have been to let a professional do it but then we would not have learned it either. The fault was to underestimate it, we should have taken more time for it.

The sewing done may not be perfect but we are very happy with the result. This ends the difficulties we encoutered, tluckily nothing has badly influenced our results.

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Conclusion Now

all the theoratical aspects of the process have been dofne, the next step is to make a prototype. The prototype will serve as a control to see if everything worked out as wished, will be used in an user research and will be used in the final photoshoot. This section of the report will take you step by step through the making of our prototype. It has been divided into 3 subsections: making of the wood, making of the foam and making of the fabric.

To design the innovative piece of furniture for children, in the age group 2 to 8, that will stimulate childrens development, has multiple functions and will be attractive on a market.

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The Kudoo fulfills the aim on

the aspects of being innovative, being suitable for the aimed age group, having multiple functions and being attractive on the market.

However, the age group could be better specified than this original aim does and the success on the market can’t be stated with a hundred procent certainty without actually being launched on the market.

The development of children has not been pressured as much in the Kudoo that is should be in the aim.

However, children learn through playing which means that this aspect has been fulfilled.

Concluded, the Kudoo fulfills the original aim but the aim does not match the product perfectly. This means we succeeded in fulfilling our aim but our product resulted to

be somewhat different than we originally had in mind.

However, this was deliberately done to gain the best results.

The program of demands and wishes has been tested on the Kudoo with the conclusion that the product complies to the programs. The most important demands will be stated below.

The product was required to be unisex. Through careful color study this has been achieved. All the editions are suitable for both girls and boys, while all giving a different appearance and having different colors.

Concluding, the product has a nice unisex appearance.

Three important trends needed to be included in the design: compact design, longterm design and modular design. The first of those two

have been fully achieved, while the Kuboo is a very compact form and has a second life as a table. The third one has been achieved as far as possible, since the design could not be as modular as to design for everyone their own piece, while this would change the tarket market a lot.

Concluded, the trends have been fulfilled.

This results in the conclusion that the Kudoo fits in our original aim and requirements, though it has somewhat grown into a product with its own characteristics and specifications.

With this conclusion we want to add that we could not be happier with the result and that we did not only learn a lot from

creating this product and the whole process, but above all from eachother, while coming from different countries and having different backgrounds.

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