This week DtM Designer, Will Harris, traveled to Providence to create some quick “sacrificial prototypes” with RISD Industrial Designers Leah Chung and Kevin Wiesner. Sacrificial prototypes are the earliest of early stage prototypes that are used in product design to illuminate what you don’t know about the problem, and more quickly reach a realistic concept. Some of our internal Pelican “sacrificial prototypes” helped us better understand that we did not fully understand the problem of medical devices accidentally “walking away” from hospitals.
During the work session the team made some big strides, which included:
- Making physical mock ups of the driver board the select along with different battery sizes. After doing that and seeing the actual sizes we were able to start making sketch models based upon those components.
- Creating very simple models and embraced the free pink (blue in this occasion) foam that the RISD model shop had, and focused more on what types of forms or mechanisms that needed to create to fit different sized infant feet.
- Were able to create six new concepts that can form to various newborn feet.
It was an incredibly productive day that lead to some of the first student team physical concepts, allowing them to start doing user interviews at Hospitals around Boston.
- Will Harris, IDSA
DtM Designer