I started by visiting a local daycare and taking observational notes. During those sessions, I learned that young children often play with whatever item they had nearby and didn’t really care whether or not it was designed for something specific. 

They used their play to explore, often trying to learn if their toys bounced, rolled, made noise, lit up, or could be ridden. 

For this reason, I wanted to design something that could help them explore how their world worked, so it needed to be interesting, multifunctional, and surprising. 

After several rounds of prototypes, I landed on an object that was able to roll up, expand or collapse, light up, and encouraged matching exercises.

I then chose to 3D model and prototype the design, ensuring everything could be engineered and manufactured realistically.

This project, sponsored by National Furniture, asked me to design something for collaborative work environments.

I started by researching the competition and taking notes of their successes and failures. I then moved into sketches and rough 3D models (to help guide my designs that were meant to nest together), which helped shaped rough prototypes.

After the rough prototypes, I refined my design in 3D and built a small-scale model before creating a full-scale prototype.

The final design was created to be as collaborative as possible, without being difficult to use or manufacture. It features 4 or 8 cushions with a telescopic tabletop to make it easy for users to choose to sit or stand while they work.

National Furniture chose it as a finalist for best design. 

This project started when I began to notice how many students at Purdue had service dogs. After some interviews, I learned that many people had trouble carrying the necessary grooming supplies for their service dogs. 

Every round of sketches was followed by an interview with a user so I could get feedback and refine the design.

Through this process, I learned that not only were the supplies for the dog difficult to keep together, they were also difficult to access for people in wheelchairs (as they kept the supplies on the back of their chair), and that some users had difficulty holding the standard supplies.

Instead of re-designing every grooming supply to fit into every hand, I chose to design a padded glove that could help a user hold existing tools. Padding created friction so the tools were less likely to be dropped. Carabiners allowed the user to strap the pack anywhere, such as a dogs’ vests, a backpack, or the back of a wheelchair.