We believe footwear will be crafted with our individual anatomy and biomechanics as the foundation. The DNA concept leverages rapid manufacturing to create a shoe built not only to your foot contours, but also to how you move.
By pairing data acquisition, user behavior, and rapid prototyping it creates a method of mass-tailoring products.
In this case, we've applied it to shoes. Throw on trainers outfitted with pressure sensors and accelerometers and go for a run. Bring them back to the store, upload the data and a series of algorithms develops a shoe that fits the way your body moves. Pushing the algorithms further will allow the computer to design a shoe that improves your running form or compensates for imbalances.
After the computer crunches the data, you'll modify the aesthetics, and the 3D printer can start to build your shoe. Within hours you have a shoe tailored to your foot, your movement, and your style.
We believe footwear will be crafted with our individual anatomy and biomechanics as the foundation. The DNA concept leverages rapid manufacturing to create a shoe built not only to your foot contours, but also to how you move. By pairing data acquisition, user behavior, and rapid prototyping it creates a method of mass-tailoring products. Within hours you have a shoe tailored to your foot, your movement, and your style. Shoes should be built for the way you move.
The first step is to acquire the data that an individual's shoes will be based on. Each customer's feet are three dimensionally scanned. Then they put on a pair of special sensor shoes and go for a test run or walk. The sensors track their movement – footfall, pronation, balance, etc. – and combined with the scan and their activity profile (running, crossfit, etc.) create a usable database to build the new shoes around.
Algorithms are used to translate the data into form and the shoes start to come together. At this point, the customer is able to customize the materials, colors and textures of their shoe. Or they can save a shoe design in advance that can be combined with their foot data when they get to the store. Their design then goes to print, and as they shop the 3d printer creates their shoes.
The DNA Shoe prototype (shown below) was 3D printed by FATHOM using PolyJet Technology on an Objet500 Connex3 — a digital combination of rigid and flexible materials were used to achieve the ideal durometer (VeroClear, VeroYellow, Tango, and TangoBlack+)
Some of our process - from sketches and 2D renderings to CAD and prototype details.
PROTOTYPES - and they fit!
Before this concept can become a reality, there are advancements that need to happen in 3d printing technology. For example, the materials currently available don't offer the durability or softness necessary for wearing every day or for athletic use. Further study is also required to ensure those materials are biocompatible and safe for consumers. Today, the cost and amount of time it takes to print a pair of shoes are both too high. But, the 3d printing industry is evolving quickly, and while material challenges may prohibit immediate implementation, user-driven rapid manufacturing will be realized in the near future.
Duo Gaming teamed with Pensar to develop a family of iOS gaming devices. The Gamer Pro, an ergonomic game controller for the iPhone and iPad, is the cornerstone of the product family.
Goals:
+ provide excellent ergonomics
+ build an identity unique to Duo
+ develop a “look and feel” that was complimentary to Apple products
Our process always starts with understanding the user, the brand, and the business. After working with Duo to establish a common vision, we dove into building the products.
We start with wide-spectrum view, quickly sketching and building rough prototypes, to explore form and interaction models. After meeting with our project team, we moved into hand-carved foam prototypes. Carving models allowed the design team to evaluate and make adjustments to the shape and proportion on the fly, rather than guessing what it felt like using CAD.
User testing foam models helped determine the best size and proportions for the final design. The best foam model was scanned and imported to use as a guide to drive surface development in CAD.
While this project was incredibly rewarding, it will not hit the shelves. Duo Gaming’s parent company lost funding and was not able to finish the commercialization of the Duo product line.
Duo Gaming teamed with Pensar to develop a family of iOS gaming devices. The Gamer Lite, a mobile game controller for the iPhone, is the smallest, spunkiest member of the family.
Goals:
+ build on the unique Duo identity developed for Gamer Pro
+ provide good ergonomics
+ ensure a “look and feel” that was complimentary to Apple products
Our process always starts with understanding the user, the brand, and the business. After working with Duo to establish a common vision, we dove into building the products.
We start with wide-spectrum view, quickly sketching, creating rough CAD and then building foam prototypes to explore form and interaction models. We used our learning from Gamer Pro to speed up the process, and after meeting with our project team we were able to jump into more refined CAD and test out SLA prototypes.
While this project was incredibly rewarding, it will not hit the shelves. Duo Gaming’s parent company lost funding and was not able to finish the commercialization of the Duo product line.
Duo Gaming teamed with Pensar to develop a family of iOS gaming devices. The Gamer Lite, a mobile game controller for the iPhone, is the smallest, spunkiest member of the family.
Goals:
+ build on the unique Duo identity developed for Gamer Pro
+ provide good ergonomics
+ ensure a “look and feel” that was complimentary to Apple products
Our process always starts with understanding the user, the brand, and the business. After working with Duo to establish a common vision, we dove into building the products.
We start with wide-spectrum view, quickly sketching, creating rough CAD and then building foam prototypes to explore form and interaction models. We used our learning from Gamer Pro to speed up the process, and after meeting with our project team we were able to jump into more refined CAD and test out SLA prototypes.
While this project was incredibly rewarding, it will not hit the shelves. Duo Gaming’s parent company lost funding and was not able to finish the commercialization of the Duo product line.
A series of packaging concepts to exploring new ways of opening collectible playing cards. The goal was to create a range of options focusing on ideas such as dueling game play, brand exploration, and simple physical effects that could be built into the boxes to enhance the feeling of supernatural powers.
Pensar, Charity:Water, Incite, IDeology and volunteers teamed up to ease the burden of water collection in Ethiopia. Many places in the world, women and children walk hours every day to fill their empty Jerry Can at a well or other water source. Then they carry the 40 lbs of water back home.
To better understand the problem, we strapped a 5 gallon (40lb) jerry can to our backs and walked around the neighborhood. After struggling to carry it, the ideas started flowing for how we could improve upon the situation with new containers, weight distribution, wheels, pulleys, straps, etc.
Brainstorms evolved into sketch storms, which evolved into model making storms, which yielded prototypes that began to get at the goal of less painful, more ergonomic water transport. With the help of an Ethiopian organization called REST, we sent prototypes to Tigray for field testing. Feedback from the first 3 prototypes revealed insights that allowed us to refine our direction and currently a second round of prototypes is being tested. The goal is to come up with a solution that eases the pain of water transport, and can be produced locally in Ethiopia.
Challenge
Develop an RFID system to track the real time location of 20,000 garments across a sales floor and then supply that information to store employees to improve efficiency with product restocking, inventory, and customer service.
Synopsis
RFID is becoming a standard way to track merchandise in stores and is already integrated into many warehouses that keep products in boxes and crates. It is one of the front line technologies that is making possible the Internet of Things. Adapting this technology so that garments on a large sales floor can be precisely tracked in real time is a significant challenge beyond the traditional back of store or warehouse systems that exist. Very few garments have RFID currently and those that do have inconsistent methods of chip placement. Clothing is moved constantly around a store, whether this is from restocking, moving of fixtures, or customers trying things on and leaving the garments in dressing rooms or somewhere in the store. When a tag is attached to a flowing garment (where it can be jostled into any position and then placed in very close proximity to many other tags (as it hangs on a fixture) , read accuracy and quality drops precipitously. Compare this to a box in a warehouse where the orientation and position of the tag remain relatively static. Also compounding this problem is the amount of interference that exists on a sales floor due to hundreds of metal fixtures all scrambling good signals.
Typical retail RFID systems rely on an either an overhead reader that scans a space or handheld readers that employees use to scan for products while walking through a space, or a combination of both. These systems are very good for getting a general read of items in a store, or even providing general location of items, but for pinpointing items like clothes on a fixture where hundreds of items are likely crammed together in a few feet of space they fall short.
We worked with a strategic technical partner who developed a unique solution that would utilize inexpensive RFID hardware attached to each fixture and communicate with an overhead system to gather and expose data previously unavailable. An employee using a hand held device and app could then get very accurate information about any item in the store including it's location and which fixture it was placed on and be able to access that item in a very short amount of time.
Over the course of a year we built a functional store wide prototype, that we then tested, maintained, and improved on a daily basis. The prototype was a true mix of hardware, software, usability, and interaction that exemplifies Internet of Things requirements and challenges. As a designer I played the key role in helping to develop the hardware prototypes and interaction methods to allow store employees to use this system. One of the greatest design problems I faced was how to read the chips hanging from clothing using this fixture based system. Orientation of the hardware for optimal radio signal read and transmission was key and finding a way to do this without disrupting the clothes shopping experience or business needs of the store team was at the heart of the challenge. Furthermore, developing a method for rapid installation, removal, and storage of these components was a task placed in the design camp.
This project was rewarding example of true interdisciplinary development and ways that design could be used to help guide development of an initially strictly technical proposal.
Research
Collaborative technical research into RFID components and needs.
Worked with senior engineers and scientists to understand layout and orientation of RFID antennas to gain best interaction with RFID chips.
Spent countless hours on the floor of Nordstrom Rack observing customer interaction with product and fixtures. Observed and interviewed employees about daily routines around stocking and replenishment of fixtures, as well as their methods of customer interaction. I dove deep into this including time spent training and operating the cash wrap to understand the practical needs and behavior of employees and customers.
Design
Early involvement taking a strictly engineering project and helping to guide it into something that was ready for employee and customer interaction. I made a detailed audit of all of the fixtures in a Rack store and helped to create a prototype that would attach to this range of fixtures.
Design, fabrication, and installation of prototypes, conceptual illustrations, small scale production hardware, and interaction concepts and content for digital app.
Implementation
Worked with overseas engineering team to build and roll out a small production scale modular prototype that was then implemented into a Rack store.
Spent multiple weeks preparing, organizing, installing, and maintaining new hardware components as well as gaining learning as to impact on the store and making on the fly changes as necessary
Testing
Worked in conjunction with internal and external engineering and analyst teams to test and maintain rfid readers on a daily basis.
Production
After the results of our 3 months test, I took the results to develop prototypes for an antenna system that could be installed and uninstalled in seconds (as opposed to 20-30 minutes for our store wide test prototypes). I designed and fabricated multiple working prototypes that were used to inform and guide our engineering team as they moved forward on production concepts.
Presentation
Throughout the project I was involved in presenting to Nordstrom staff from floor sales to senior executive level employees. I Worked with multiple internal teams to gain alignment on goals and procedures to keep customer impact during test period to a minimum and pave the way for future partnerships across the company.
Each Rack Store contains roughly 200 Fixtures with between 30-200 items per fixture. Fixtures move around the store and on and off the floor regularly, as do items of clothing. Finding a way to track these clothes was our challenge.
Early engineering needs called for a series of solar panels to power the devices. I felt that this would greatly disrupt the store experience. I developed a number of concepts to implement the solar panels into fixture signage and displays to reduce this impact.
A typical store had about 26 different fixture types. While many of the components were standard (such as the bar widths and diameters), there were a number of challenging and unique configurations.
I audited and modeled all of the main fixture types in our store and then used Solidworks to explore different configurations of components.
The first challenge was that the metal of the fixtures created disruption for the radio signals, so antennas needed to be placed in precise locations to interact with RFID tags on clothing.
The second challenge was that most fixtures could be moved, or folded up to store on any given day. Our system needed to account for this and particularly for the time it took to install and uninstall these devices in a way that would offer minimum disruption to the shopping experience.
An initial modular system was developed that would allow us to place these devices on many different types of fixtures and to make changes to our system as we gained more knowledge about best placement. This system did allow for good reads but was cumbersome and took a prohibitively long amount of time to install and remove.
Installation of the initial prototype hardware was very complicated. It took on average 20-30 minutes to install one fixture. I was involved in this process over the course of many late night store installation sessions. Through these efforts of organizing, assembling, and installing the components, I gained a strong understanding of the needs, challenges, and opportunities to improve the process.
After the implementation of our test, I developed multiple prototypes to explore methods of improving the intallation process.
This prototype was designed to fold up with the fixture so that i could be stored flat in the back of the store without the need to removal. I designed, modelled, 3D printed, fabricated, and installed all the components.
The second prototype was designed to be installed or removed in under 30 seconds. This design was easily folded out and configured to get optimal RFID chip read and could be used on multiple types of fixtures. This was strictly a functional engineering prototype and built to accommodate the testing hardware.
Along with developing fixture RFID hardware brackets I was also involved in creating a series of prototype apps used for tracking merchandise across a store. Since we tracked the merchandise at the fixture level the solution was to locate and relay the position of a fixture and then provide further detail about the items on the fixture. Diving into this app would allow a store employee to find a great deal of information about what was on each fixture and all of it's associated data.
A concept for a 3D map for a real time update of fixture type and placement.
A small scale map for a first limited scale prototype.
App Icons
App screens for displaying fixture contents, and proximity to selected clothing items.
