My classmate introduced me to Louise – a 2nd year architecture student. I did a reserach with Louise on how freshers in DJCAD use photography, which was very valuable for this project.
I did an interview with Louise again, asking her different questions to get valuable insights from the scenarios she finds herself in, motivations she has, etc.
Sketching, technical drawing and 3D modelling are all among Louise's skills. Her half-professional hobby is to observe lot of buildings and structures with a camera in hand, snapping one detail after another - she showed me these and it was a lot of photos. I asked myself - how to merge this? How to make her able to draw over what she took a photo of? And how might that work in practice with this product being in, say an architecture office working team of people?
Looking for inspiration, I stumbled upon a soulful drawing table made by Nike of Eskilstuna in 1950s in Sweden. I liked the one solid base leg with hydraulic mechanism, and also the lever which was locking the adjustment "mode" of the table.
I started prototyping some mechanisms for how a drawing table might work, with two objectives - the angle of the board should be pretty variable, and it should also be possible to bring the whole board up when it's flat with the wall, so it could be used as screen for presenting. Notice the crazy idea on top right - with the base leg sliding into the floor :)
I then came up with different approach to holding the board at it's top, which granted the user a lot of space beneath the board. After making a quick prototype, I built a polished one from laser-cut cardboard.
To explain my intentions and show a small user journey of somebody using this table, it was a good idea to make a presentation board as well. Along with more theoretical task of creating a product design specification (definitely fun to think of this table being mass-produced, transported by ships and so on :)
This module with Chris was really amazing. It gave strength to my little voice in head which kept going on, saying "you can actually make physical things". I am very grateful for that!
