Special Carrier for Dinner
Our second project is about special carriers. It is that for our final project we need to make a carrier using cardboard without glue for our randomly assigned object. And our scenario is that we need to bring this object by using the carrier to the dinner party. My object is a glass vinegar bottle. Before putting my hands on the actual carrier, I started by using the cardboard to make a 6-inch by 6-inch corner without glue, and making a dummy for my bottle in case if my carrier is not strong enough to hold the object and drop the glass bottle.
Make a corner without the glue
At first my idea for the fastener is putting rectangular shaped holes on one side of the fastener side, and wide arrow shaped fastener on the other side. So that the arrow shaped fastener can go through the holes and fasten by having the arrow head stuck in the hole because it is wider. But after physically cutting out the shapes and trying to put them together, i figured it was hard to archive because the holes has to be close to the edge in order to make a perfect 90 degree angle. But the holes also need to be far from the edge or the process of putting the arrow shaped fastener will destroy the thin cardboard left between the holes and the edge. At last I chose to cut out the thin cardboard between the holes and the edge. Since the arrow head and the notch still kept the two sides of the cardboard together. My attempt to make a corner without the glue is still successful.
Dummy for my project
After making a corner and experienced the material, we start to make dummies for our objects. Since the dummy is just a prevention of breaking glasses or staining our carriers, we can use glue to stick the parts together. So I simply measured the dimensions of the vinegar bottle and glued every parts together. I did, however, forget to put stones into the dummy to imitate the weight of the glass bottle when it is filled with vinegar.
Think about the shape of my object
Before I start to make my carrier, I thought about the qualities of my object first. Obviously the first thing come to mind is how heavy the bottle will be when it is filled with water. And then I see the different cross sections of the object, like the square-shaped cross section of the body, the circle-shaped cross section of the neck, and how the neck is not uniformly wide but some parts in the middle is wider than the two ends.
Trying out different ways to make the carrier
#1 Attempt
My first attempt is rather a simple one. I saw the head of the bottle is wide on the top part and it is noticeably thinner right after the top part. So I designed this first carrier to take advantage of the shape of the top part. I cut out the flower-shaped hole in the middle of my carrier so the top of the bottle would go through but it will not come out easily because of the friction of the flower-shaped hole prevented the top part to slip out. At first the carrier seems working fine because the hole hold the bottle tightly. However after I carried the full bottle around for couple times and take the carrier on and off the bottle, the flower-shaped hole starts to worn out and won’t be able to hold the bottle in the air anymore. This leads to my second attempt to improve the worn out rate of the carrier.
#2 Attempt
The way I wanted to improve the first attempt is to increase the friction of the hole on the carrier so that the worn out rate is slower than it was in the first attempt. So I made this attempt so that there will be two flower-shaped holes to hold the object. But the result didn’t meet my expectation. Apparently two flower-shaped holes did hold the bottle tightly, but the shape came out terrible. If I use the other direction of the corrugation, I wonder if it will be strong enough to carry the bottle around. And the aesthetic of the carrier makes it look crappy. So I decided to think about other ways to make the carrier work.
#3 Attempt
My third attempt was to carry the bottle sideways. Apparently this was not a good idea because the water leaks sometimes when I tried to carry the bottle around side ways. So I started to think about new ideas.
#4 Attempt
My fourth attempt wants to take advantage of the vertical cross section of the body. It is very simple but the problem was that the two sides of the carrier immediately falls when people are not holding the handles. Which is inconvenient when in actual use.
#5 Attempt
My fifth attempt want to show the shape of the bottle so that people will know it is a bottle before they actually see the bottle. They might raise curiosity and think if it is a wine or something else. Originally I wanted to do a box and lid style, but I figured a slip in and out style is more interesting. So I added handles for people to carry this object around, and one of the handle can work as a fastener to prevent the “box” part to slide off. The cap also works as a fastener to hold the “box” and “lid” together.
#6 Attempt
The original thought of my sixth attempt was to make two “half-boxes” that one is slightly bigger and one is slightly smaller. They overlap with each other in the middle and are connected by a piece of thin cardboard that works as a handle. But the top part didn’t work out the way I expected so that the outcome is quite different than the original. The interaction with the carrier is fun, but the inner part seems a bit useless because I tried to carry it around without the inner part and it still worked out.
Think about some other ideas
After we discussed in class about how to design our carriers, I generated some more ideas towards the goal of protecting the object, easy to use and assemble, reusable, etc. I choose to focus on two of my sketches that are reliable.
The New Designs
Here are the two designs that I wanted to focus on. One is to create adjustable layers of cardboard to fasten the bottle while the other one is to put the bottle inside a cylinder shaped protector and fasten the two sides by the heavy weight of the bottle.
#1 Design
Advantages
This design is successful in someways. First I made this design without any glue so it meet the requirement of the rubric. Also it protects the bottle finely that the bottle will not come out when I carry it around. Third is that it is fun to interact with because the way to get the bottle out is simply pull the bottom piece of the layer up and all three layers will come up, and remove the bottle sideways.
My own thoughts on improvements
1. the handle is too thin and the corrugation of the cardboard is making the handle weak.
2. The handle is too long.
3. the bottom piece of the layer can slip off if it is not tight enough anymore. I did bent the bottom part of the four thin vertical cardboard pieces to prevent the slip but it is not the best idea. Think about the ways to prevent the slip is the next step.
4. The cutouts of the layers are very close to the edge, and making the layers really easy to be worn out/destroyed
5. The thin handles make it hard to tell which way I should put the bottle into the carrier. (It seems that I can put the bottle in from four different directions)
Speed Dating
My daters all give me very sophisticated ideas towards how to improve my design. Some of their feedback are these:
Too thin-easy to bend
Fun to interact
Feels unsafe visually
Corrugation may need attention
So I will need to improve my design towards these directions. Also what I have heard from them have made me want to use this design as my final design.
#2 Design
Advantages
1. The carrier protects the bottle all the way.
2. Looks fancy on the outside
3. Handle is strong enough to carry the filled bottle around
My own thoughts on improvements
1. Need to have something inside to keep the bottle at one place, or it is going to move around in the carrier-unsecured
2. The fastener at the bottom is tape, need to find a way to avoid using the tape
3. It is hard to pull the bottle out of the carrier because of the heavy weight of the bottle keep two sides of the carrier together
4. There is no fastener on the side of the carrier, it is easy to open it up if I lay the carrier on side ways
5. Can’t tell what is inside-more like a wine holder
Speed dating
My daters gave me advises as following:
Looks like a donuts holder
Don’t know how to use the handle properly
Without the weight it is not perfectly closed
Need more protection on the inside
Something to secure the top/side part
Move Forward
After read through all the feedback I got from my daters, I chose to continue improve my 1st design.
For a improved edition, I shortened the handle part of the carrier but hesitate to change the corrugation of the cardboard because I fear the width of the cardboard sheet is not long enough (the cardboard sheet is 30 inch wide and our bottle is about 12.5 inch tall and 2.5 inch wide). I added a fastener on the bottom of the handles so that the “layer” pieces won’t come off. I widened the handles to give more support.
Feedback from professors
1. Need a visual cue for where the layers should be placed (top? Bottom? In the middle?)
2. Try the other way of corrugation of cardboard
3. Direction is good just need more details towards the final project
4. Improve the handle
5. The dimension of the layers are still not protective enough
So I continued to build a better model for our draft before the final submission.
Draft before final
For this carrier, I have tried the other way of corrugation and it worked just right. The length of the cardboard is perfectly fit. After I changed the corrugation, the carrier did seem more supportive. I improved the handle part so the fingers can have more space. I have widened the handles again to improve the visual cue of which way people should put the bottle in and gives more support to the bottle. I also tried to add a visual cue, which is making each layers of the cardboard in different width to show that they are different layers. But that didn’t work out too well, one reason might be that I didn’t make the visual cue obvious enough, so I will continue working on that.
[I didn’t realize that I didn’t take photos of the draft before I did some detrimental experiment on the handle of the carrier… So no photos for this one]
Final project
Now I know where to make improvements. So I made several designs in the sketchbook to fix the visual cue problem.
- I thought about making grooves on the side of the frames so that people will know there is a connection between the grooves and the layers and might try to move the layers towards the grooves. But I didn’t make this design because the grooves will interrupt the movement of the layers if I want to take the bottle out. It is not smooth anymore and it is bad user experience.
- I thought about making one layer having longer length comparing to the other two and one layer having longer width comparing to the other two, but it won’t look good and still not suggestive enough.
- Then I thought about put semicircles on the side of the layers to suggest that people can move them individually. At last I chose to take this improvement.
- One other way I thought about is to put a bump at where the bottom piece of the layer can lay on. But that is just not a good visual cue. It used to be that if the bottle is at different height I can adjust the layers to fit the new model. So I also give up this design.
Photos of Final Project
