<aside> <img src="/icons/square-alternate_blue.svg" alt="/icons/square-alternate_blue.svg" width="40px" /> This box is a modern and interactive bathroom product, to provide an opportunity to extend the experience people seek to find in hostels, to the bathroom area. It communicates a design opportunity for Van Houtum. It is a package including a black box, conductive paint and an App. The paint is used to show artistic expressions on a bathroom wall, creating sensors that are connected to the box. The sensors themselves are connected to the App, giving the artist a chance to make the artwork interactive by adding sounds.
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Company project | Literature Research | User centered Design | Interviews | Co-creation | Multi-sensory Design approach | Zen Design Method | Product Innovation Process | Product Design | Programming (arduino)
This project was about creating a design proposal communicating a vision about how the company (Van Houtum) should anticipate on the future perspective of the (sustainable) toilet, where experience and design had to be the main aspects.
<aside> <img src="/icons/bullseye_blue.svg" alt="/icons/bullseye_blue.svg" width="40px" /> GOAL I created based on the company strengths and market opportunties, is to design something for bathroom areas of hostels, that is in line with the increasing trend of hostels building an eccentric experience to stand out and attract more young backpackers looking for experiences everywhere (also in everything in their accommodation).
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Van Houtum provides products with the focus on sustainability, innovation and user experience for in the bathroom area (mainly of companies). Van Houtums’ side focus is on recycling paper into toilet paper, paper towels and cleaning paper
A BLACK Box filled with electronic tools: an arduino, speakers and metal spots on side. The metal spots are functioning as a connection between the inside of the box to the outside, where the user is able to paint with conductive paint (paint that contains a high amount carbon powder). When the paint also touches a spot, it is connected to a gate of the arduino, changing the painting into an antenna. Now the user is able to hover over the paint, creating a difference in voltage as input and resulting in songs or sound played by the arduino as output.
As an extended option, there is an application possible connected to the different metal spots, making it possible for the user to select an own sound for the created drawing.
The product is based on research about trends within the hostel area: hostels are constantly searching for eccentric and innovative aspects to make them stand out and to enable them to compete with other types of accommodations.
This project was an individual three months (full-time) project concluding the bachelor program. It provided space to choose preferred methods, approaches and directions.
The process towards the black box involved literature research, expert interviews and creative idea generation sessions. Furthermore, I followed an own created method based on the Zen Design Method (created by G.N. Bruens), Multi Sensory Design (created by H.N.J. Schifferstein, M.H. Sonneveld and G.D.S. Ludden) and the Product Innovation Process (by N.F.M Roozenburg and J. Eekels).