Blocked



Class
Year
Tags
Tools


Industrial Design I
2017
[product Design] [user observation]
woodshop machinery





A simple and playful product for college campus coffee shops, making their customers’ experiences interacting with personal digital devices more enjoyable



The Design




Blocked is a simple, playful and useful product for adjusting postures when interacting with digital devices.

It is designed specifically for environments such as campus coffee shops, where many people come to spend a long time interacting with their laptops/ tablets/ smartphones.
Similar to board games some coffee shops would offer, Blocked would be sat on a shelf waiting for customers to take to their table. It is a small design that could greatly enhance the customers’ experience.







There are many ways for Blocked to be stacked in.
The user can play around with the blocks and find a composition that is suitable for them.

Blocked is helpful for adjusting postures in many different interactions, whether it is drawing on a tablet, watching a video on a phone, browsing the internet or video-chatting...

Magnets are embedded in each block to make the stacked composition stable.



The Process


The Prompt




The Place & Observation 



I chose a coffee shop on campus as my place of observation. I sat there for an afternoon, observing people, making notes of their behaviors.


The Problem
I decided to focus on people’s bad postures when interacting with digital devices as my identified problem.

Because many people in the coffee shop were interacting with their digital devices for a long period of time. A product in the coffee shop that could help them use their devices in better postures would greatly improve their experiences.



Storyboard




Prototyping Process
 
Authentic Observation. people in that place. Identify problems that could be improved by a designed product. Choose a specific place on campus. Sit down for a while and observe the behaviors of

Yinuo Han @2021