YIKUN WANG DESIGN PORTFOLIO 2018
BLACK HUMOR Playful & Dangerous An exploration into human-chair interaction and experiments on the material and magical characteristcs of balloons.
+ EXPERIMENT I’ve been played with balloons through out the entire project. They are much stronger when not fully inflated. Balloons are lazy, they tend to keep the shape they are formed in the first place. I wanted to use these characteristic of balloons to build a chair that can change form and interact with people. So the transformation make the chair alive in a certain way.
+ MANUFACTURE Once I had the idea of the chair, I began to make prototypes. Along with the making process, I gradually learned how to make the structure more stable while keep the aesthetic.
+ BLACK BALLOONS Black is a unusual color for balloons. It creates a sense of weight compare to the lightness of balloon itself. With the idea of balloons are usually easy to pop, black balloons are like bombs, and you never know when they are going to explode. And it also reminds people of curvy figure underneath black leather trousers, which is dangerous and wild in another sense.
+ DANGEROUSLY FUN Black is a unusual color for balloons. It creates a sense of weight compare to the lightness of balloon itself. With the idea of balloons are usually easy to pop, black balloons are like bombs, and you never know when they are going to explode. And it also reminds people of curvy figure underneath black leather trousers, which is dangerous and wild in another sense.
INTERFLEX Personal Posture Coach A smart bra that can actively coach people correcting bad postures through physical feedback.
+ BACKGROUND
+
Nowadays, 65% of sitting office workers are suffering from combination of neck, shoulder or back pain. Myself is a victim as well. A leading cause of this is spending more than 10 hours on digital devices in a bad posture daily. This is costing the UK government £3.2 billion every year. But that’s only the direct cost. The pain also contributes to 1/3 of long term sick leaves in the UK, which adds up to more than £9 billion annually.
+ DESIGN AIM
Accurate Data SENSING
+ CURRENT MARKET Most products are obtrusive and uncomfortable, almost impossible for wearing daily. Though some smart wearables seems a better solution, yet I tried with lumolift, the accuracy is actually low since it’s working only based on accelerometer. and alerting buzz quickly become useless and annoying.
Positive & Active FEEDBACK
Discreet DESIGN
+ ACCURATE DATA I met with Philip Cox, an experienced osteopath therapist at ethos. He explained that when examine wrong posture in neck, shoulder and upper back, I should track trapezius and levator scapulae, for they are triggered when people slouch or shrug. However, Muscle movement on the back are hard to detect d, so I started to look for sensors that could conform to the body that measure accurately and discreetly.
Trapezius
Levator Scalpulae
I c
In order to figure out where exactly to put the sensors, I then constructed a model in Maya, where based on human anatomy knowledge, I can control the joints to see where the skin stretched the most.
Name
Conductive
polymer cord
Flex sensor
Fabric-silicone
hybrid sensor
Conductive paint
Stretchable conductive fabric
Electronics
Resistive
Resistive
Capacitive
Resistive
Resistive
Installation method
Adhere to surface
Adhere to surface
Adhere to surface
Print/Paint directly onto surface
Directly sew into garment
Linear Trend
Great
Great
Good
Good
Excellent
Noise
Little
little
Lot
Some
Little
Cyclic hysteresis
Slight(Slow)
Slight
Slight
Severe
Slight
I experimented a couple of soft sensors and compare them based on these criteria, and the stretchable conductive fabric stood out for it’s excellent linear trend with little noise, and easy to combine with garment.
+ SENSOR STUDY
T t
The stretch sensor changes it’s resistance when being stretched. I studied the fabric under microscope to understand the structure and how fundamentally it worked. Light color represents silver fibre.
S 7
The fabric is weaved in such way that when being stretched in this direction, the contact surface becomes bigger, hence decrease the resistance.
Sensors in different length and width had been tested as well. 70-80mm length and 10-15mm in width gives the best range of change in resistance.
+ CONFIGURATION
Together with an accelerometer-gyroscope sit on neck, the system can distinguish different postures. For example, when user is these three sensors are stretched and the gyroscope tilting forward, it means the user is probably slouching.
After experiments, a very interesting thing I found is that using a series of vibration on body can coach user to conduct certain movements. People can move according to the vibration pattern without much thinking, especially when it’s at the correct speed. Participants said it feels like someone’s pulling their muscle/ joints.
Since the stretchable fabric sensor can only work on tight fit garment, I, for now, choose bra as the media to embody the technology.
+ PROTOTYPING
I collaborate with Yimeng Yu, a fashion designer to make the garment. It’s tricky that we need to combine stretchy with non-stretchy fabrics to make sure the sensors could move in the way we want them to, while the rest remains stable and tight.
In the second version we changed the back design into two layers, so these two straight sensors could be stretched separately without affecting each other.
The third version was an attempt to embed all the circuits into the inner layer of the garment. The stretch sensors are fixed with conductive thread. The sewing process could be applied into mass production as well.
This is the final look alike. The stretch sensors and vibration motors are integrated with the bra. Whilst other electronics like gyroscope, chip, battery and bluetooth module will be embedded into a processor which can be taken off to charge after use, and the garment can go into wash machine.
+ SYSTEM & VISION
I can see this project be taken further into other areas like to help people going through rehabilitation to do exercises or to improve sports performance. The sensor system could be configured based on human anatomy according to the need, as well as the vibration motors.
MEDUSA MECCANICA Our electromechanical jellyfish is an experimental insreument. Inspired by the ethereal experience provided by jellyfish we aimed to emulate their motion, aesthetic and sinister nature. Team with: Orfeo, Anisha, Syed
+ IDEATION Our main focus was emulating the ethereal experience jellyfish provide and so we ensured that the aesthetic of our design was the driving force behind all other elements. The translucent nature of the jellyfish meant that we explored and experimented with a range of materials and techniques which could provide a clean, glowing finish. For this reason we also displayed our mechanism leaving nowhere for us to hide in the same way the heart and brain of the jellyfish are always exposed. To maintain our organic and natural image we wanted to create a sound that displayed the natural working sound of our machine alongside a dangerous, electrocuting sound. This also balanced the calm and terrifying juxtaposition we previously identified. It was from these inspirations that we used the method of ball bearings falling on an ABS plate to create this audial experience.
Ball feeding cam
Crankshaft
Circuitry
+ PROTOTYPE As a group we were very keen to iterate and innovate practically and so from the first day of the project we were in the workshops creating small, lo-fi models to gain a clear insight into different mechanisms and how things work. In line with our aesthetic vision, we used clear acrylic to manufacture the majority of our mechanical components. The use of such a material meant that our design had to be sensitive to the loads we could apply, the precision of all joins and also great consideration of the design aesthetic.
+ ITERATION Being the most load bearing component it was important for the crankshaft to go through many iterations of testing and optimisation. Particularly with our desire for a clear mechanical system, we laser cut parts from clear acrylic for precision, fast iterations and also the allowance for complex geometries. The head, being the largest and the most visible part needed utmost perfection. We tried with silicone moulding and vacuum forming of different scales. Finally we used sandblast on both side of the vacuum formed clear HIPS which gave us the opaque appearance. It perfectly hided the inner structure yet still let the UV light go through.
+ ELECTRONICS We endeavoured to keep our electronics and circuitry minimalist and simple. We used 12V LED strip and a 12V geared DC motor to provide lighting and power the jellyfish. As Arduino only supports 5V components, we used Mosfets which were soldered onto the ‘brain’ of our jellyfish to switch them. We housed the motor in a welded steel structure and connected the it to the crankshaft via a coupling, using a bespoke metal plate to protect the acrylic shaft. Due to the mixture of stationary and dynamic components, we ensured all our wiring was guided, minimal and safe during use. To further maintain minimalism, we housed the arduino into a small control box with two simple toggle switches. One controls the LED lighting in the bottom ‘engine room’ while the other controls the motor and also the LED lights housed in the head.
PLEASE S https://youtu.be
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Flowcus Get in the zone A system that measures and logs brain activity to help users understand their personal relationship with ‘flow’ – a psychological state that brings happiness, fulfilment and focus. Team with: Andrew, David, Dongyuan
+ SYSTEM DESIGN The Flowcus system contains three elements: earpiece, chronometer and app. The earpiece records your flow history while the chronometer displays it in light. The app stores a detailed personal flow history for you to look back at, helping you work out where and when you get the most flow.
EARPIECE
CHRONOMETER
The earpiece is the core of the Flowcus system, housing a sensor that measures your brain’s electric -field and identifies when you are in flow.
This is a 24-hour clock, displaying you flowfulness is shown by the brightness chronometer’s face.
ur full daily flow cycle. Your s of the lights around the
PERSONAL LOG The Flowcus app provides detailed information about your flow history, allowing you to track your most flowful times and activities.
FLO
OWCUS
ELLY Collaborative Savior on Thames Elly is a lifesaver in water. It is efficient and stable that help with drowning people. We are designing for the future scenario to make Thames the Safest river by 2030. Team with: Dongyuan, Xiaoyi, Yang
DOOR KNOCKER a Birdbox for HUNTER In this project, we were asked to refine the design and manufacture the product based on the result the other group delivered. Our case was to design a birdbox for the brand HUNTER. Team with: Andrew, Bob, Lewis
+ PROTOTYPE In order to have a nice matte finish in the given time, we chose to CNC the positive mould, vacuum form it to make the negative and then resin cast. We also tried with silicone moulding but that would take too much time. The bird is attached on spring steel welded on the metal plate. On the back is a acrylic plate which make cutting off excess resin easier and leaves neat fringe. Pouring resin was tricky, we had loads of failures, from which we learned graudually and finally mastered it.