9.6.12

End of MA APD Year 1

The first year in Umeå was great!
Umeå is really a unique and cool place to live, and UID is a really really great school, delivering a great experience, great projects, all on a really high level.
The daylight, from super short days to super long really messed with me (and many other people I'm sure).  The days around the start of June were amazing, and to bike home at 02:00 felt like having completed an all-nighter and be biking home at 07:00.


00:06 in Umeå - May 15th


Umeå at 03:20 - June 1st


Umeå at 03:20 - June 9th


Midnight in Umeå - June 9th

8.6.12

MA APD - Term 2, Part 3: Strategic Design Project

Part 3 of the second term, was 11 weeks long - 'Sensing the Future', a strategic design project in sponsored collaboration with Whirlpool.

This was an interesting project giving the opportunity to test out my ideas and visions for strategic design - an area that seems to be interesting me more and more these days.

With the theme 'Sensing the Future', (one of Whirlpool's research and design initiatives to imagine solutions that would enhance the evolution of the domestic experience), I decided to look into laundry as a general topic.  For some background context:


Global Distribution of the World's Water - To give a little perspective on how precious and scarce freshwater really is


Levi's WaterLess Jeans - campaign where Levi's is making strides in production processes and technology to reduce their water consumption in jeans production - Shows how other major global players are taking pro-active steps towards tackling such issues as water consumption and pollution


Common Core - as one of our exercises into strategic design, in groups we made an abstraction of the current brand design language, interpreting a range of their appliances, into this 3D shape, including both logo sizing/placement, as well as a bit of CMF


Brainstorm Session - we brainstormed together in a group on the already identified project directions


Laundry Machine/System Concept - my initial concept sketch


Future Common Core - as part of the process to identify what the future design language manifested in the product we would create would be, we also created a future version of the common core


hydrologic - my final concept design as presented at the conclusion of the project