During my transfer term at The Rhode Island School of Design in 2019 my culminating design project was centered around the increasingly nomadic lifestyles of students, creatives, and young professionals. I wanted to address organizing, storing, and moving work and personal life in a mobile world through modularity and portability.
Process
Through user research the specific constraints that my storage system needed became clear. A combination of sketching, rendering, color studies, and rough modeling allowed me to hone in on the specifics of the product itself.
Modeling
To aid in the refinement of the proportions of The Unit, as well as flesh out the specifics of the folding mechanism for the table and its legs, a 1/3 scale model was built. A simple but effective magnetic fixture and alignment system was employed to model the detachable aspect of the desk portion. While the magnets ensured that the unit aligned itself precisely with no work from the user.
