Design 100 Assignment 2

Designing a Lamp

The Design Brief

Design and prototype a lamp for a friend or family member.

My Target User

I am designing for my Mum - Jen. I am choosing to design for her because her current lamp is broken and no longer works. Designing for her is an opportunity for me as a designer because I think that her whole bedside table area is not as functional as it could be. I believe I can design a lamp that also minimises any other issues that she has with her current bedside table situation. There are a lot of opportunities for me as a designer in this space to create a unique lamp and explore the process of a technical experiment. I know lots about my Mum. I know her style which is going to help me create a lamp that she likes in her space, but I also know lots of her habits that I don’t think she notices herself. In saying this I am hoping I will be able to design a lamp that she does not even know she needed.

My Design Statement

I took a stand with a point of view

Jen needs a way to find a lamp that meets her needs of it suiting her style and tying the whole room together while also being functionally effective because currently her lamp is dated and takes up a lot of space for how ineffective it is, while also currently being completely broken and unusable.

There are many strengths in my design that I know will be valued by my target user. Such as the idea of it making an interior statement and having effective lighting and working super effectively. I think that Jen will value this lamp because of its easy-going ness, it may not be the highest-tech lamp but I know that adding a technological element to the lamp design would have resulted in the final design being something that Jen wasn’t looking for, she was after a lamp that was effective but mostly was the statement piece in her bedroom. I think another strength is I really listened to what Jen wanted and took the reflecting on the interview really seriously. I sat down for a long time to think about what I had discovered in the interview and after doing the contextual enquiry, which helped me a lot come to my final design because I got to know Jen more and learn more about what she really wanted, rather than what she just told me. I listened carefully to my client which helped me create a lamp that she really loved the look of aesthetically. I think this lamp will be valued highly by my client. Her face when she saw the visualisation prototype was so exciting and to do something bold that didn’t totally match the style of the room but go out and try and make something really bold that suited Jen’s personality is what makes my final design really strong and highly valued by my client.

There are many improvements that need to be to this lamp, and if I were to continue the design process and continue prototyping and developing this idea there are things that I would change such as, looking more carefully at the materials and the cost of them. I would look for alternative forms of acrylic and easier ways of making it thicker so that it was less expensive, such as melting it etc. I would also like to improve the technological functionality of it, like define further the types of sensors used, and look more deeply into how sensors work, could it be a hard touch turns on room mode and a light touch turns on reading mode, rather than having the one tap and two taps. I would like to brainstorm further easier ways of turning the lamp on and look more closely and easy switches. I would also like to improve and look more deeply into the types of light bulbs used and really testing out how the light looks through the Perspex. Due to being very limited because of COVID-19, this is something I would like to look further into if I went on to actually produce the lamp. Other improvements including adding a USB hole, I really wanted to incorporate some sort of phone charging element into the design whether this is a charging plate or a USB input, I think that I would include in the base of a stand more of a neat and tidy place to hide the circuits and wires rather than being visible through the pink Perspex stand.

However, overall I thoroughly enjoyed going through this design process, it was really fun because when I went into this challenge I already had this idea in my head of what I wanted to make which was a gold very simple lamp with a cloth shade, but the lamp that I have finished with is completely different and I would actually love it myself. It was interesting to see how the feedback and research I did influenced my final design as shown in my assignment.  You never know, maybe one day this lamp will be on the market!