My first exploration was how the hand naturally grips an object and what hand positions are comfortable. I took a disposable water bottle, a fairly malleable object, and gripped it in different ways, trying to find a shape that felt comfortable in my hand. I then documented my colleagues drinking from reusable water bottles, noting hand positioning.
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I tried to compartmentalize the ideation process by ideating each facet of the experience of operating a reusable water bottle (filling it, drinking from it, transporting it, etc.) This came in the form of both sketches and rough foam models.
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After some ideation and exploration, I found an idea that I liked and wanted to refine. This resulted in another round of sketches to try to work out the mechanics and foam models to figure out the proportions.
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The model that I presented was made of yellow foam that I cut the rough profile out of two pieces on a band saw, laminated the two pieces, and then ground and sanded to the desired form. It is not a perfectly working model. I allowed for hardware to recreate the motions I imagined the design to have. With this model, I designed a poster to document my goals, the experience I imagined for the user, and the process that resulted in this design.
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