IDE Project 1: A Pizza Oven for the Beach
How can you bake a pizza on the beach using a product for active people?
This project was the first design project at the IDE bachelor. This project introduced design methods and an iterative print type workflow. Key design skills were introduced such as: from research methods, to brainstorming and user evaluation. This is also the first major project wherein 3D printing was used to produce prototypes.
This project started with a phase of extensive research into the company I was designing for, "Extremis", as well as the target audience. Who are they? What do they need? What do they want?
Then followed a brainstorming phase. Using various techniques to generate multitudes of ideas to create concepts.
The concepts were scrutinized to choose the best fitting design for the design requirements, while also remaining feasible. The chosen concept: A collapsible gas powered oven.
The chosen design was further refined to make it more unique and aesthetically fitting for "Extremis". Customer Journey and Scamper were used to refine the functionalities and user experience.
To gain further inspiration from a new angle, I went through the process of creating a pizza from scratch myself. This allowed me to refine the needs of the user for useful features in the pizza oven, like storage space and tools.
Now the final concept was ready to be prototyped and go through the last round of user evaluation.
The pizza oven prototype was 3D printed. This is the first time that 3D printing was used as a way to create a prototype showing multiple mechanisms. The prototype was used for final user evaluation.
The design was finished. The first real design project was completed wherein a methodical use of design practices was applied to create a complete and feasible product concept: A beach pizza oven.